What is your greatest spiritual enemy?

Yesterday after church Sam and I and my brother went to our friend's house with our respective drive-through lunches. I was the last to arrive, so I missed the earlier part of the conversation, but they posed this question to me, to answer while my mouth was full:

What is your greatest spiritual enemy? In other words, what is it in you that keeps you from being in the place spiritually that you want to be?

They said that among all of them it was complacency, paired with laziness. At the time, with just a minute to think, I said it was probably laziness for me as well. I just don't want to put forth the effort to spend time in the Word, pray, or go through the discipline of growing.

But throughout the rest of the day, I found that I didn't agree with my original answer. Laziness does definitely have a part in it, but I'm not a truly lazy person. Sure, I have my lazy days, and I would nearly always do something fun over something that resembles work, but for the most part I'm fairly productive. In fact, I tend to evaluate myself (too much) based on my productivity. It's a very American thing to do: 'She can't get along with anybody, but, boy can she work her tail off!'

The fact of the matter is that my greatest spiritual enemy is this: obsession with my own agenda.

My agenda does not have to be a schedule, it is simply 'what I want'. In fact, my agenda is often my lack of schedule. For example, I don't spend my first time in the morning with the Lord because I prefer to either sleep in, see what Sam wants to do, do the next thing on my list, or just hang out on the computer for a while until I find the motivation to do something I 'ought' to be doing. My life revolves around me and my family, more than around what the Holy Spirit might be speaking.

As I have been aware of this, I have seen so clearly how many times I have the opportunity to choose to pay attention to the quiet voice of the Lord over just doing whatever I want to do.

So this morning, though I slept in late - which I have needed to do, since I've been really exhausted and haven't slept well for the last several nights - I did get up and have something of a quiet time. Nothing outstanding, but still profitable, I believe. And I believe it was important for me to take the time to express this today.

My prayer is that I will pay attention to the times that I sense the Holy Spirit reminding me that I don't live for my own agenda, but His, and that I will respond instead of ignoring His words.