Wake – up lazybones! God did not make you lazy! It’s an excuse.

Do you know that most people on earth have the tendency to be lazy if they allow themselves do whatever they feel like doing. Even people that work hard today and you think they could never survive without working may have been lazy if they had followed their feelings. A number of hardworking people we see made a decision not to be lazy; while others were so traumatized by their parents about laziness that they could not but work hard. Just to be certain I understand the word, I checked the dictionary for the meaning of the word and chose a simple one which describes laziness as, apart from being the same word as indolence, disinclination to activity or exertion despite having the ability.

Proverbs 12: 24 “work hard and become a leader, be lazy and become a slave.”

Proverbs 21: 25 “Despite their desires, the lazy will come to ruin, for their hands refuse to work.”

My worry today is the number of believers that honestly believe that we are meant to be the head and not the tail and pray seriously about being the head but are lazy. My thing is this, even if for purposes of argument, you wake up one day and by stroke of something, you find yourself head, you will then have to work as head. Successful headship or leadership requires hard work. If God got you there, you have to work to keep the job otherwise even He would have to remove you because He is the ultimate employer. Be assured no employer wants to keep paying lazy staff whether they are physically or brain lazy or even both. At some point the employer is fed up no matter how nice the staff is.

Proverbs 10: 26 “Lazy people irritate their employers, like vinegar to the teeth or smoke in the eyes.”

To quit laziness is a decision. When we set out to work hard, heaven supports us by giving us abundant grace. The grace is available to all so stop making the excuse that some people have the grace; you have it too but have decided to continue in laziness. I am convinced that it is a quality that is acquired. The seed is in everyone, at least every believer because God knows you cannot be head without working hard. Moreover, He tells us that if you don’t know how to work hard, you can learn from the ants. God did not say to get the energy from the ants because He knows you have it; He says learn from the ants or be challenged/provoked by the ants. 

Proverbs 6: 6 “Take a lesson from the ants, you lazybones. Learn from their ways and become wise!”

The bible is replete with scriptures that show God’s disgust for laziness so why would He be so “mean” as to make you lazy? Do you honestly think He looked at you and decided He hates you so He made you lazy? The problem with people who refuse to leave the lazy zone is that they have all sorts of excuses for being lazy so that they have great difficulties accepting counsel that would bring the required change into their lives. They are certain they know what they are talking about when in truth they don’t; all they are doing is making excuses because they do not feel like working hard. The thing is such people are carnal Christians who resist the word of God and are happy to live according to the dictates of their flesh. My question to you is this – will you really be the head?

Proverbs 25: 26 “Lazy people consider themselves smarter than seven wise counselors.”

Don’t be Ashamed: You can retreat to advance

I honestly believe that we, as believers would suffer less losses if we could respond wisely to situations. Our God is the all wise God from whom nothing is hidden so that His counsel is always the wisest in every situation even when it looks like foolishness. Amazingly, God is even more desperate to give us this wisdom than we are to receive it. He calls Himself wisdom in the book of proverbs and then tells us that wisdom is calling out to us. So who more than believers should respond appropriately in every situation even under sudden attack when wisdom is readily available to us?

James 1: 5 “If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and He will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.”

Unfortunately, believers have a higher propensity to respond foolishly in situations. We are often so irresponsible and presumptuous that we respond wrongly. Irresponsible because we wouldn’t think things through checking it against the word of God; we feel we have a right to do whatever we want and it’s up to God to work everything out for our good. Presumptuous because we often assume that we are walking by faith but it is our own idea of faith. Unfortunately, we often do not have the faith we like to pretend we have and a lot of us don’t understand what faith really is. For example, would you have considered it an act of faith that Joseph ran to Egypt with baby Jesus just because an angel told him to do so, but it was. There was no sign of danger at the time and he was asked to leave his comfort zone with a new wife and son to a land with “strange people.” In a way, that was like Noah building an ark.

1 Samuel 30: 8 “Then David asked the Lord, ‘should I should I chase after this band of raiders? And the Lord told him, ‘yes, go after them. You will surely recover everything that was taken from you.”

As you and I know, our lives are lives of constant warfare. Even Paul admonishes Timothy to endure hardship as soldiers and there are several other scriptures confirming that we are consistently in a battle with the enemy who always wants to get us back into lives of bondage but thank God who always causes us to triumph. The difficulty is that we are never certain how he is going to attack since he uses different methods and instruments so we are often not prepared yet if we can respond appropriately, we may douse the fire immediately and not even need to enter the battle. More like defeating him before he even starts. To achieve this, we must learn to hear the voice of God as to what to do and if we don’t hear Him, there is nothing wrong with a temporary retreat.

2 Samuel 5: 17 “When the Philistines heard that David had been anointed king of Israel, they mobilized all their forces to capture him. But David was told they were coming, so he went into a stronghold.”

Retreat is not always a sign of weakness and guess what, it does not matter what anyone else thinks. If you must win, you can’t make decisions based on what people think of you. It is good sometimes that you know how you are perceived but then that should not help you decide who you are and also what you should do. What you need is God’s counsel and it may come to you directly or through His word and it could even come through anyone including your enemy but it is your responsibility to be able to discern the voice of God no matter how it comes.

BEFORE YOU GET CARRIED AWAY …

God’s desire in the Old Testament, from what we see in scriptures, was to dwell in Jerusalem. By the time David became King, He was not there because the Ark which carried His presence, was in Abindab’s house. So David made the first attempt to bring it back to its rightful place but Uzah was killed in the process whilst he was trying to help. He wanted to steady the Ark which was falling from the cart; as a result of which David angry with and more afraid of God so that He left the Ark in Obededom’s house. 

David felt that God was mean. Instead of immediately searching to see if they had done anything wrong, he abandoned the Ark. All he could think of was all the trouble he had been through; the cost of the new cart he got and so on, things he thought should make God happy with Him but a cart was not what God asked for. With God it is not obedience until it is complete. So David abandoned the Ark in Obededom’s house and God blessed Obededom excessively. I call it ‘unusually excessive’ because it must have been for it to have caught the king’s attention so much so that he wanted the ark back.

2 Samuel 6: 12 “Then king David was told, ‘The Lord has blessed Obededom’s household and everything he has because of the Ark of God.’ So David went there and brought the house of God from the house of Obededom's to the City of David with a great celebration.”

I do believe of course that the presence of God brings blessings. The bible says there are pleasures forever in His presence; however, I believe that Obededom's unusually excessive blessing was because God wanted to catch David’s attention. He wanted to provoke Him to good works – which would be the return of the Ark to its rightful place. God achieved His purpose for David was not a stubborn man. He had a heart for God. He was often so sensitive to God that he responded appropriately to God even when he had done wrong unlike a number of us who just insist on rebelling against the word. For some, of us, our disobedience is not deliberate but we are too carnally minded to perceive the mind of the Spirit of God even with the best intention.  

1 Timothy 4: 2 “These people are hypocrites and liar, and their consciences are dead”

It would have been sad if Obededom was deceived by his newly acquired wealth and felt powerful enough to oppose the king. Funny as this may sound some of us may be that deceived by wealth. We would suddenly gain unusual confidence based on the unusual blessing not even mindful of the fact that the God who gave it suddenly can also take it suddenly. Be assured that confidence built on anything or anyone other God and His word will give way and the end is foolishness. We forget that since it was the king’s “stupidity” and the mercy of God that made the Ark come to us, if we act stupidly too, it may go to another. God may choose to use another to provoke us to good works. 

Romans 10: 19 “But I ask, did the people of Israel really understand? Yes, they did, for even in the time of Moses, God said, ‘I will rouse your jealousy through people who are not even a nation. I will provoke your anger through the foolish Gentiles.”

REALITY CHECK: Is your mind open to the word of God?

Some wives waste time trying to re-train their husbands; abandoning the children they ought to be training in the process. By the time they realize they can’t change their husbands, their children are too old to be trained. I say to such wives, you can’t change your husbands. He is too old to be re- trained by you. If he has challenges, leave him to God and focus on training your children. Today, I am going a step further to say to everyone reading this blog – you cannot change any adult except they decide to change and guess what, not even God can. It takes man allowing his/her will to be engaged by the truth (the Word of God) for change to occur despite the capacity and/or potency of the word to transform.  

Romans 12: 2 “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you.

You have to expose yourself to something else for you to change. You can’t be infl

uenced by something you know nothing about. So, for the word of God to transform a life, the mind of the person has to be exposed to the word. To be exposed to something is not just to hear it but to have an open mind toward it. You have to either deliberately or inadvertently give that thing the opportunity to influence you for it to have that power. So that you can be in church every day, listening through every sermon and yet not be transformed because your mind is closed to the word of God.

Being fair to one’s self is giving yourself the opportunity of hearing the word even if you elect to reject it at the end. The only thing we are to shut our minds to is evil, concerning which the bible admonishes that we remain totally ignorant. Sadly, this is the one thing believers often have an open mind toward in our day so that we are also beginning to have “gray areas” arguing that bad or good is based on perception. Sometimes our minds are so closed that we can’t help but approach God and/or His word with a closed mind. Unfortunately, this deprives one of fresh revelation because even if God was shouting, you will only interpret His word through your closed or set mind. 

1 Corinthians 14: 20b “Be innocent as babies when it comes to evil”

Unfortunately, the greatest victims of the closed mindset are often stubborn or strong willed believers. Before you accuse boisterous believers since such traits are more easily exposed in them, check that you are not quietly defiant because it is the same offence with the same consequences. Such people hardly expose their minds to thoughts that challenge them, not even God’s. They are so quick to speak that while you are speaking, they are forming their next argument so they reject your views without giving themselves the benefit of hearing you. In their own eyes, their opinion is always best.

They are often convinced that if you listened to them enough to understand them, you would agree with them. If they respect you, they may go quiet after a while but if you have the same discussion a few days after, they say exactly the same thing they said the last time reaffirming that they remain where they were. Even when they manage to hear God, they have explanations for why they cannot obey Him and don’t know it is disobedience; the thing is though they heard, they interpreted Him through their mindset. They believe God understands but the thing is this - our disobedience does not really affect God, instead it keeps us on a longer than necessary journey to success.

Some things are serious; the process must be hidden until the work is complete

The Easter story is truly an amazing one. I like the fact that the stone that covered the tomb was rolled away. We assume that it was rolled away for Jesus to come out but we don’t know for certain that He walked out through the door. He is a Spirit and could have left in any way that He chose. After all the bible tells us that the apostles were in a room praying when He appeared in their midst. Though we don’t know why, God must have had a reason for making obvious the fact that the stone was rolled away. I would like to suggest that one of such reasons may be that He wants us to know that He sometimes goes step by step ensuring everything is sorted out so that we will be comforted when He elects to do a step by step work in our lives.

John 4: 24 “For God is a spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.” 

We often expect God to upturn due process for us “since He is God and controls all things” but if the stone needed to be rolled away for Jesus, then we must know that our God is orderly and honors due process except in exceptional cases. Maybe He wants everything done perfectly in your case so He may not upturn a process for you just because He can but He will still come through. Interestingly, though raising Jesus was the most important miracle that weekend, it was not the dramatic. We are told though that it was an act of God by the Holy Spirit; but the lesser job of rolling away the stone was so dramatic even the angel could not be ignored because of his appearance. God sometimes works behind the scenes to bring to pass the real blessings so don’t stress if there is yet no drama around you.

Mathew 28: 2 – 4 “Suddenly there was an earthquake! For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, rolled aside the stone, and sat on it. His face shone like lightning, and His clothing was as white as snow. The guards shook with fear when they saw Him, and they fell into a dead faint.”

The real miracle was the resurrection of Jesus which was done quietly. God does not need a lot of noise to do what He wants to do in our lives. He has a way of distracting the enemy while He is working out His purpose. When God begins to work blessings in our lives, He often hides it. I dare to suggest that He does not like people toying with unfinished jobs. The problem with us however, is that we like to announce that God is working whilst the work is in progress. Instead of hiding, a strong desire to be relevant draws us out of hiding because we can’t wait to show others that there is something happening in our lives. We feel a compelling need to let others know that “though we are going through difficulties, things are happening in our lives too.” In that process the announcement is too soon and the enemy attacks aborting the process.

Mathew 28: 7 “And now, go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead, and He is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see Him there.

There is a time for everything under the sun so there is a time for announcement of the blessings and God does that Himself. It was the angels that announced to them that Jesus had been raised and gone ahead of them to Jerusalem. Jesus could have done it Himself but He did not. Don’t be in a hurry; He will make the announcement when He is ready.