Procrastination – The Sin of Putting It Off – Soul Care – From the Edges

How Is It With Your Soul?

Soul Care – Day 14

Procrastination – The Sin of Putting It Off

Prepared by Pastor Calvin Cook – 11-19-24

Ecclesiastes 3:9-14 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.

In our soul and in our walking around lives we know what we ought to be doing. We have dreams, hopes, aspirations, visions of a happy and whole lifestyle. But yet why haven’t we got to that place. Why haven’t we crossed into the place that we desire to be. The larger question is this are we in the place God desires us to be or are we in the place we desire to be, and is this place good?

Proverbs speak about the sluggard or in contemporary versions the slacker. We are all slackers in one sense or another. We truly know what we should be doing but are we doing. But are we doing it? Do we even know what it is?

I have been spending a lot of time reading the stories of calls of some great people. Abraham was called to be the father of many nations, Moses the liberator of the Israelites, Noah to build an ark and save the faithful, David to fight every battle for the Lord, the disciples to spread the good news throughout the world. Did they question, make excuses, procrastinate? You bet they did but it brings it to us. Are we hearing God’s calling on our lives and living out the course set for us.

Unfortunately, I confess I procrastinate. I allow other conditions, opinions and even culture to keep me from doing what I know in my heart God is calling me to. I try to perform and carry out the plan, but I procrastinate. Tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, seem to always be the option instead of right now, following through, doing what God is calling me to do.

We guise all of this in very clever ways, “talk about it”, “we will have a meeting”, and my all-time favorite “let me pray on it” well prayers bring answers and direction are we listening? All of this and so much more is procrastination and its sinful because it keeps us away from God’s good and perfect plan.

Why did God raise up Abraham, Moses, David, the Disciples. To lead the people to God! What is God calling us to? To lead a world, a nation to God, and for those who have wandered off and caught up in the captivity of sin, back to God? Are we doing that? Seriously what are we doing for God?

Because of this sin of procrastination being a sluggard or a slacker, our souls are in trouble and need help. Our families, our friends, our neighbors are in need of soul care which draws us back to the heart of God. God did it before and will do it again!