Do you put off until tomorrow what you should have done yesterday?
When you kill time, you kill those callings God has placed within you. The Living Bible’s version of Ecclesiastes 11:4 says, “If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done.”
The first step to overcoming procrastination is to eliminate all the reasons and excuses for not taking immediate action.
Everyone is on the move. People are moving forward, backward, and sometimes nowhere at all as though they are on a treadmill. The mistake most people make is thinking that the main goal of life is to stay busy. Such thinking is a trap. What is important is not whether you are busy, but whether you are progressing. The question is one of activity versus accomplishment.
A gentleman named John Henry Fabre conducted an experiment with processionary caterpillars. They are so named because they have a habit of blindly following each other no matter how they are lined up or where they are going. In his experiment, Fabre placed the tiny creatures in a circle. For twenty-four hours the caterpillars dutifully followed one another around and around and around. Then Fabre placed the caterpillars around a saucer full of pine needles (their favorite food). For six days the mindless creatures moved around and around the saucer, dying from starvation and exhaustion even though an abundance of choice food was located less than two inches away.
They confuse activity with accomplishment.
Christian need to be known as those who accomplish great things for God-not as those who simply talk about it. Procrastinators are good at talking, not doing. Mark Twain said: “Noise produces nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as though she laid an asteroid.”
We need to be like the apostles. They were not known for their policies, procedures, theories, or excuses. They were known for their acts. Many people say that they are waiting for God, but in most cases God is waiting for them. Together with the psalmist, we need to say. “Lord, my times are in your hands’” (Psalm 31:15 NIV). The cost of growth is always less than the cost of stagnation. As Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
The longer we take to act on God’s direction, the less clear it becomes. Procrastination is a tool of the devil to hold us back and to make us miss God’s timing in our lives. “The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to labour” (Proverbs 21:25).
Occasionally you may see someone who doesn’t do anything yet seems to be successful in life. Don’t be deceived. Remember the old saying, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” Let’s make progress-not excuses.
