Passivity

I’m usually compulsive about being productive. However, for the past few weeks, I’ve been dragging. A combination of anxiety, melancholy, lack of sleep, and lack of appetite have led to a general feeling of passivity. I couldn’t motivate myself to write much last week. The two blog posts I did write were written in states of semi-consciousness. They had a numinous quality to them that I rather liked. I wondered if I should stop writing daily and wait passively until God had something to say through me. So I came to my laptop intending to write on the benefits of being passive and completely surrendered before God. I waited. Nothing came to me. After a while, I got up and did some housework. Sometimes this helps, but this time it didn’t. So I went online and typed in the phrase, ‘passivity and God’, and happened upon this article by Watchman Nee, titled “Passivity and its Dangers.”  Here is an excerpt:

The passivity of a saint arises out of the non-use of his various talents. He has a mouth but refuses to talk because he hopes the Holy Spirit will speak through it. He has hands but will not engage them since he expects God to do it. He does not exercise any part of his person but waits for God to move him. He considers himself fully surrendered to God; so he no longer will use any element of his being. Thus he falls into an inertia which opens the way for deception and invasion… He does not realize that God never demands passivity; it is the powers of darkness which have propelled him into this state…Let the Christian mark this well that once he has perceived the will of God in his spirit’s intuition his whole being needs to be employed actively in executing God’s will. He should not be passive. (Watchman Nee) http://www3.telus.net/trbrooks/passivitydangers.htm

This hit me in the face like a bucket of ice-cold water! This was exactly the opposite of what I intended to write about.

God wants us to co-operate with Him. He doesn’t want passive puppets, but active employees. Passivity turns us into inert, ineffective Christians.

How come all the people you see running outside are the ones that least need exercise, while the people who need exercise the most are not out there? Once you get out of shape, it becomes really difficult to move. The less you move, the more weight you gain. Passivity disables you further and further until you are not able to be active even if you want to.

 
How can we resist the temptation to slide into passivity? How can we remain alert enough to co-operate with God?