One danger in our relationship with the Lord is that of slipping into taking Him for granted. I believe this threat is especially possible for those who have spent many years in the faith, or been raised in the Church from an early age. The problem of coasting on "spiritual automatic pilot" is very real, and very perilous.
As a pastor, I have witnessed this behavior myself. It occurs when our senses grow dull to the movement of God among us. We actually get tired of the Lord's work! Miracles and testimonies that would have once moved our hearts are greeted with a shrug of indifference. We lose our sensitivity to God's Holy Spirit and find sameness and boredom in our routines of worship. Sometimes heads nod during the service in agreement, but sometimes they nod off.
I believe Isaiah may have had something like spiritual automatic pilot in mind when he rails against God's people: "Stupefy yourselves and be in a stupor, blind yourselves and be blind! Be drunk, but not from wine; stagger, but not from strong drink! For the Lord has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep; he has closed your eyes, you prophets, and covered your heads, you seers" (vs. 9-10). A numb spirit, with blind eyes and deaf ears, threatens the people because they have taken their attention off God.
In a passage that Jesus would later quote in Matthew 15:7-9, the prophet proclaims, "The Lord said: Because these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote; so I will again do amazing things with this people, shocking and amazing. The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden" (vs. 13-14). Jesus chastised the Pharisees as the fulfillment of this scripture because they were criticizing Jesus for not adhering to the letter of the outward law while they themselves disregarded the inner spirit of the law which gives it life. As such, they kept the outward form of religion, but their hearts were not in it and their worship was on automatic pilot. God promises to send these folks a wake-up call, "shocking and amazing," which He indeed did in the works of Jesus!
Paul also referred to this same scripture in I Corinthians 1:18-19. He focused on verse 14, building the case that God's salvation is not given to the learned and wise, but instead distributed to the weak and foolish. It is to those whose eyes are open and whose hearts are hungry that the Spirit of God comes, not to those who, in their pride, think they have it all figured out. God's foolishness is wiser than man's wisdom (I Corinthians 1:25).
Finally, Isaiah berates the people for their arrogance: "You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay? Shall the thing made say of its maker, “He did not make me”; or the thing formed say of the one who formed it, “He has no understanding”? (vs. 16) When we insulate ourselves from God's Spirit, it is easy to slip into pride. We forget the proper humility that we should have before the Lord. Isaiah's audience were believing themselves able to outsmart God. They were sadly mistaken.
Paul picked up on this theme of spiritual pride in Romans 9:20, echoing what Isaiah prophesied. He wrote, "But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, 'Why have you made me like this?'" When you coast on automatic spiritual pilot, there's no end to the amount of damage you may do to your relationship with God and to the trouble you may land in!
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