IS IT PROCRASTINATION OR JUST RESTING?

IS IT PROCRASTINATION OR JUST RESTING?
“Procrastination is the nail used in building the houses of failure” this is what Dr Creflo Dollar told me two years ago when I first met him on LTV. Actually, I had postponed the writing of this chapter for tomorrow but remembering John Maxwell’s words “pay now play later, play now pay later” I’ve decided to pick up a pen and pepper and start scribing.
Procrastination is delaying to do something that you should be doing at this right time. You keep pushing it ahead usually because you feel you have some other important stuff to work upon if not being tired or lazy. Most of the time procrastination is mistakenly regarded as resting and most people dodge their responsibilities at a time as they postponing for tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year and so on and so forth.
We should not call procrastination resting neither should we call resting procrastination. In fact, God loves to rest His people but on the centrally He hates procrastinators and this is because He Himself is not a procrastinator. The Bible tells us that God created the whole world in only six consecutive days and rested on the seventh day. Being the creator He would have delayed the process by just one day to have a rest in the middle, but He never did that, He did all His work and rested on the last day. So, by making as in His own image God wants us to do all our duties on time and then rest after wards. There is something I’ve come to realize about procrastination and that is; it will never give you a chance to finish your duties and responsibilities, not at all.
I remember the days when I would postpone doing my home work for tomorrow in preference of watching the TV soup woman of my life on WBS TV only to have it still undone the next day and mostly I would realize it during class time because even in the morning I would be hurrying to catch up with daddy for transport to school and the end result would be whips from the teacher teaching that particular subject. And at end of the term my grades were horribly shocking. What does this mean? This means that every procrastinator knows what exactly is to be done and has work to do only he’s lazy and sluggish. William Danforth gives a hint about breaking this habit, “the best cure for a sluggish mind is to disturb its routines” he says. For my case the teacher had to give a spank and daddy and mummy monitored my television watching schedule. I was only allowed to watch only news and quiet interesting my grades had risen by the end of next term.
Procrastinating is surely one way through which we dodge our responsibilities given to us by God and in this way one slowly but surely kills his God-given gifts ( Talents), yet He who gives the talents cannot at any one moment afford to see His precious gifts perishing, decaying and being misused. Remember the story of the three servants who were given talents to keep, and what happened to the third servant? It is quite sad that even the one talent he had eventually the master removed it from him and gave it to the one who had put his to proper use. As if that was not enough for an example. Jonah chapter one is yet another good reference for this case. We see God sending a violent storm over the waters and a huge fish to swallow stubborn Jonah and put him in the right place from where he is supposed to put his God-given talents to proper use. And the same applies to you; if you become stubborn dodging your responsibilities God will either take that responsibility away from you or He will forcefully put you in your rightful place.
“Hey, do you mean to say, that we should be working twenty four seven?" No, but I want you my brother/sister to clearly understand that there is a big gap that separates between procrastination and resting. When resting comes as an excuse for work then you are procrastinating. Understand that procrastination moves along with a bunch of excuses that are mostly not worth at all. And whoever is good at this game is what Pastor Peter Ssematimba calls AN EXCUSIOLOGIST. Are you one? If so, then what have you done to get rid excusiology? Nothing? Now you should understand still that the God we serve is a God of exercise not excuses, a God of challenges not chances. And He does not entertain excuses especially when they are given against His will over His beloved Image-Man. Jeremiah 1:4-9 gives a very good example here. Jeremiah thought that being young and having difficulty speaking would surely ‘save’ him from the responsibilities God wanted him to fulfill. However, this wasn’t going to be true for him. Perhaps, ‘young’ Jeremiah did not know that he was talking to a God who knew him before he was born.
In verse seven we see God dismissing Jeremiah’s excuses and commanding him at the same time. “Do not say that you are too young, but go to the people I send you to and tell them every thing I command you to say.’’ Says the Lord. When God gave you that talent, He certainly was commanding you to go and serve His people through it, and you serve them first for His glory and your success.
‘He spoke to Jeremiah, now how do I know if He is speaking to me?’ You might be asking. God speaks to us in different ways and ideas are one way. In this case, the ideas are developmental and more still they are to develop all God’s children in a way that glorifies Him. Some times we get such good ideas but after two, three minutes we forget them just like that. This is how I usually advise friends who face this problem. If you cannot maintain a good idea within your head, then write it down. For even the Lord tells us in Habakkuk 2 that, “ Write down clearly what I reveal to …… because what I show you will come true.” Surely you should the culture of writing all your ideas because they won’t, something must be done about them and the immediate thing you can do about them is to have them written down and you refer to them latter when you’re done with your daily work. This system works a lot of wonders especially for those who are so forgetful like me. I’ve used it for years now and the last time I counted my journals they were over twenty. All full of ideas, stories, motivational and inspirational stuff, nice pictures of flowers and cartoons from news paper cuttings. Wow, it’s just wonderful opening the pages of my journals.
Talking more about resting, you shouldn’t get me wrongly. You shouldn’t quote me as saying that we mustn’t rest, no. In fact I love resting and to be honest I want to tell you I am one big sleeper. I sleep till late because I know that God is the initiator of resting, (Gen 2:1-4). Nevertheless, I realize there is one fundamental rule about resting, for Him to rest, God finishes all His work and should His image. For your resting to be due and worthwhile, exercise must come first. Therefore, if you rest before you work then that ceases to be it, it instead becomes procrastination.
And more still, it is no guarantee that one must rest after each and every exercise. No way, there will be certain instances when rest must by all means be interrupted. Take for example; Jesus was woken up by the disciples to calm down the violent storm, (Mk 4:38-39). This means His sleep (resting) was interrupted as duty was calling.
Note that Jesus never gave any excuses to have to complete His sleep; instead He woke up immediately to stop the storm. ‘Why, He would have continued with His sleep’ one young lady told me. ‘Be cause, Jesus knew better, that he who is good at making excuses is seldom good for anything else.’ I replied. George Washington is quoted for saying that ninety nine percent of failure come from people who have the habit of making excuses. Our Lord Jesus Christ never had this habit and I think that is why His mission is full and complete.
Therefore, beloved, even though it is your right to resting, it should not be a step to giving weird constant worthless excuses since they can only breed procrastination and eventually you’ll find yourself going downhill.