You go to see a new doctor and he seems nice enough, with good bedside manner and all. He tells you that he graduated from medical school fifteen years ago and says, “I was so glad to get out of school with the hours and hours of study that I haven’t cracked a book since. I’ve never been to a medical conference in fifteen years, either. I’m just not interested in such things.”

Would you go back to him? We want a doctor who keeps up on the latest medicines and medical techniques!

You go to a new mechanic. He tells you, “I haven’t bought any new car manuals or gone back to any of the mechanics’ seminars in ten years. I don’t care much for all this new-fangled stuff they put on cars.” Would you go back to him with your car that’s only five years old?

By the way, the mechanic and doctor ended up needing each other’s services. The doctor took his car to the mechanic. He got it back and paid the bill. A few weeks later the mechanic needed open heart surgery, which the doctor performed. On his way home, the mechanic opened the doctor’s statement. He was shocked. He went to the doctor and said, “This bill is outrageously high! We’re both professionals. I didn’t charge you an outlandish amount like this!”

The doctor replied, “Did you try to fix my car while it was running?”

“Well, no,” replied the mechanic.

“There’s your answer,” the doctor said.

We don’t want our mechanics or our doctors to be happy with what they know and with their level of expertise. We don’t want them to just maintain the status quo in their work.

THE BEST IS BEYOND THE STATUS QUO
Have you ever noticed that some of the most famous stories involve a journey? J.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is a good example. The whole story is about a dangerous, challenging journey for Frodo and Sam. In such stories the characters don’t stay where they are: they move on, and they’re often changed in the process.

The Christian faith has often been compared to a journey. Jesus met people where they were, but then He asked them to follow Him. The gospel writer Matthew recorded Jesus’ saying “Follow me” on six different occasions.

The apostle Paul wrote about knowing Jesus Christ and growing in his relationship with Him. Then he added, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12-14)

Paul knew that he had a long way to go in his relationship with Christ, so he kept pressing on — ever onward and upward. The Lord meets each one of us individually — and meets us collectively as the Lord’s church — where we are, but He doesn’t plan to leave us there! If we’re serious about being God’s people, we must be dissatisfied with ourselves!

We’re often satisfied with the status quo in many areas of our lives. First, of course, is our relationship with God. It’s easy to find it acceptable. We may not be spiritual giants like Billy Graham, but we think we’re OK. We can be happy with the status quo in a relationship — even in a marriage. One or both people in the relationship think things are OK; however, things are brewing under the surface. Suddenly the marriage is in trouble, although it didn’t really happen suddenly. It was a slow, almost imperceptible drift into something not so good. We can do the same with our thought life, with habits and addictions and wrong ways of relating to people. We’re basically happy with things the way they are when we shouldn’t be!

IDENTIFYING STATUS QUO LIVING
It’s amazing how easy it is for us to be comfortable with things the way they are, accepting the “same old same old.” Of course this varies with people. Some people are comfortable with keeping things the same, while others aren’t. That’s true in marriage, including my marriage with Diann.

We got new tires for the van a week before our Christmas trip out to Iowa. As we drove down the tollway I took my hands off the steering wheel and said to Diann, “Look at this! No vibration! The van’s not drifting to one side.” She nodded and said, “Good.”

“Good” was all she said! She was way too unimpressed! She hadn’t noticed the difference. I had noticed weeks earlier that there was more vibration than there should be with the old tires, but Diann never noticed it.

OK — Diann needs equal time, I know. I’ll admit that the tables are turned when it comes to the need to paint a room of the house. She’ll say, “We need to repaint this room; it’s awful.” I look at it and note that it’s not peeling in big chunks. Most of it still looks reasonably clean — maybe not all of it, but most. Then we pull a piece of furniture away from the wall, and I see that Diann was right! There, behind the piece of furniture, was a sample of how the paint looked when it was new. I had been happy with the room the way it was; it had gotten dirty and grimy so slowly that I hadn’t noticed.

There are different ways we allow ourselves to settle for status quo living. Here are a couple of them: first, there’s denial. We don’t want to admit that things aren’t as good as they should be. A couple of weeks ago we were on vacation in Iowa and we attended a small church in a small town. After the service I walked around the building. In one hallway there was a row of pictures featuring the youth confirmation classes over the last 30 or so years. About 30 years ago there were about 14 youths pictured. Moving down the timeline to maybe ten years ago there were 8 youths in the confirmation class. A few years later there were about 4 or 5, then there were 2, and for the last couple of years there was only one.

As I viewed the pictures I wondered whether anyone had ever really noticed that. Then I wondered whether there was ever any discussion about why it was happening.

Ask yourself where your walk with the Lord is compared to five years ago, where your marriage is compared to five years ago, and where your thought life or certain habits you have were five years ago. Denying that things aren’t getting better — or perhaps are even getting worse — spells ultimate disaster.

A second way we allow ourselves to settle for status-quo living is by excuse-making. Writer Ted Engstrom told about an unsuccessful businessman who had reasons throughout the year why his business was going nowhere.

January: People spent all their cash during the holidays.
February: All the best customers have gone south.
March: Unseasonably cold or much too rainy.
April: Everybody is preoccupied with income taxes.
May: Too much rain and the farmers are distressed and depressed.
June: Too little rain and the farmers are distressed and depressed.
July: Heat has everyone down.
. . . and so it went.

The book of Proverbs describes such an excuse maker: “The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion outside!’ or ‘I will be murdered in the streets.’” (Proverbs 22:13) One of Aesop’s fables is about a fox who saw a bunch of grapes ripening on the vine. They looked delicious. He jumped to reach them, but he missed. He tried again, but still jumped short. He tried again and again; finally he gave up and said, “I’m sure they’re sour.”

We can always find reasons or excuses to live with the status quo. However, we can also choose to live beyond the status quo!

CHOOSING TO LIVE BEYOND THE STATUS QUO
Part of the written history of a church in Beloit, Wisconsin says, “Central Christian Church has never been satisfied with ‘being satisfied.’” That should describe each of us — and all of us together as a church. We should never be totally satisfied with where we are in our walk with the Lord. We should never be totally satisfied with our marriages or other relationships; we should realize that there’s always room for improvement. We should never be satisfied with the spiritual health of our church, or with the number of people we’ve reached for the Lord; we should realize that there’s always more to do!

Thom Rainer, in his book Breakout Churches, wrote, “Great churches were, in our study, churches that had broken out of the mediocrity of losing as many people as they were reaching. They were churches that had become outwardly focused, more intentional about evangelism than before. And they were churches where the same leader moved with the congregation during the transition. In many cases, the leaders experienced the same breakout transformation as the churches they served.” (p.189)

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, wrote, “Most of us lead busy but undisciplined lives.” (p.139) He also wrote, “Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.” (p.13)

It has been said that the good is the enemy of the best. We don’t have to settle for “good enough” in our personal lives or in our life as a church family! We can move beyond status quo living!