What Are You Really Running From?

Greetings, my friend,

Welcome to The Arsenal, your bi-monthly resource for training and equipping you to live a set-apart lifestyle.

After over four months of being on hiatus due to several major life changes, it makes my return to writing that much more thrilling. Your patience for new issues of this publication has been greatly appreciated, and I pray they don’t disappoint. 

One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten back into the routine of writing on the topics that I do is that I’m reminded of just how diligent and consistent you have to be at keeping your mind sharp, gathering information for new releases, paying attention to what the Spirit has laid on my heart to write about, and simply putting in the time and effort daily to ensure I’m always maximizing my potential. 

I’ve also noticed that the Spirit seemed to use that, in addition to several passages from Scripture that I’ve read through again recently, as a way to reveal the spiritual significance behind hard work and combating laziness in every area of our lives. 

I’m sure most of us would agree that we don’t want to be lazy, right? We all understand that being lazy and shirking our responsibilities is bad, and none of us would willingly take on the reputation of being a slacker, publicly or with our self-image, when it comes to our jobs, schoolwork, parenting, or whatever else we’ve been tasked with. 

But yet, so many of us willingly choose laziness for ourselves every single day. Think about it: Can you come up with a list of things you’re really not looking forward to doing and also probably should have been done a lot sooner? I can guarantee among everyone reading this, there’s a significant range of sizes of these mental lists of dreaded tasks. 

Does all of this sound familiar? Good, it means you’re good buddies with procrastination.

If you weren’t already aware, procrastination is, while seemingly harmless in the moment, an extremely strong and dangerous opponent to living a set-apart lifestyle for the Most High. What makes it so dangerous is how it plays on our fleshly desires to prioritize what feels good to us rather than what we’ve been called to do with our lives each and every day.

If procrastination has made a noticeable impact on you being able to reach your goals and achieve the type of lifestyle, relationships, and spiritual connection with Yahweh that you want, you must declare war on procrastination. And that declaration of war looks like asking yourself the hard questions, slowly getting closer and closer to the true cause of why you found yourself becoming buddy-buddy with procrastination in the first place.

You may be wondering, “I struggle with getting myself to do many different things, where do I even begin?” Let me give you three questions to progressively ask yourself to help conquer procrastination for good.

Stage 1: What Causes Me to Procrastinate?

At the surface level, the answer may be simple, that you simply just don’t feel like doing what you need to right then. And for some, that’s as deep as it goes. Maybe after taking some proactive measures to get their head in the game by getting some extra sleep or eating a bit healthier to clear their minds and have more energy, they’ll feel more motivated and have no problem finally tackling their tasks. And perhaps you fall into this bucket too. 

But the truth is, there’s almost always a deeper, emotional reasoning behind every decision we make. This is a tried-and-true concept in the business world especially: Every good salesperson relies on the fact that people make decisions emotionally and justify them intellectually. This applies to our personal lives too, and it’s important to have that awareness when making the decision to wait till tomorrow or some future date to do that task.

So what does that emotional context of everyday decision making really mean, particularly when we decide to put off doing something yet again? That’s the next stage we’ll discuss.

Stage 2: What Am I Really Running From, and Why? 

While there can be a plethora of emotions that drive our decision-making when it comes to procrastination, easily the most common culprit is fear. And the truth is, fear and procrastination go hand in hand. Why is that? Because fear can take on multiple forms applicable to almost any situation. 

Take this example: Many people have a fear of failure. Let’s say you’re a college student and you have a couple of final exams coming up that will determine if you can bump your overall GPA up just enough to receive a significant scholarship for the rest of your education. If you have a fear of failure, the following thoughts may begin racing through your mind: 

“What if I don’t get a good enough grade even after I spend hours studying?” 

“What will others think of me if I flunk these exams?” 

“How could I ever live with myself if I don’t make it after I’ve come so close?” 

“How will I find time to work and pay for my tuition if I don’t get this scholarship?”

Another example involves a fear of the unknown. Imagine you’re a salesperson at a large company that you just don’t enjoy working at as much anymore, and one day, you finally receive that incredible business idea you’ve been praying for that you believe could make a lot of money.

But then, reality sets in and you begin to think about how you have a pregnant wife and four other young children at home to provide for. Not to mention your job at this company has a lot of great benefits (insurance, a company vehicle, a great 401(k) program, etc.). With all this in mind, you begin to weigh your options, and begin thinking things like:

“Will people actually want to buy my product or service?”

“What do I do if I quit my current job, and then my business plan fails?”

“What if I can’t find another job for months on end?”

“Can we really afford to live off of our savings if we have to?”

While these types of thoughts in both examples may be motivation for many, some may focus so much on the possible negative outcomes these thoughts imply that they’re too paralyzed by their fears to even try. They find themselves running from those potentially negative outcomes. 

If you find yourself in similar scenarios to the two examples I gave, you most likely have a deeply rooted fear causing you to feel that way. I would encourage you to search yourself and try to identify what that fear is: What are you truly scared of, and why do you run from it?

Stage 3: What Are The Consequences of Letting Fear Control My Decisions?

You may have already recognized this in your own life, but all things considered, procrastination is a short-term gratification of the flesh that only makes things worse in the long-term. And it’s even more important to understand this: Fear is one of the Enemy’s most common and powerful tools he uses to manipulate and scare us away from striving for Yah’s best for us.

I’m sure you can think of multiple instances in your life where you regret not acting on a particular desire or opportunity you had because you let your fearful thoughts overtake you. To help you fully understand the dangerous implications of this behavior, consider your current life goals and dreams for the future. Think about where you wish to be and what you hope to achieve within 5-10 years’ time. Now, even though it might make you cringe, recall the last time you felt a deep sense of regret for being too afraid to act when you probably should have. 

Hypothetically, what if you felt that pain of regret surrounding every single goal you currently have? How would you feel about yourself? And where would you actually be in 5-10 years if you didn’t learn to do the hard things you should right now and push through your fear of doing them? Create a picture of that in your mind. That’s the potential reality that awaits you if you don’t learn to kick your emotions out of the driver’s seat.

To wrap things up, here's a hard fact for you: As difficult as it is not to be sometimes, being afraid is extremely unbiblical. Did you know that across the entire Bible, we’re told not to be afraid 365 times? That speaks to me that we should be courageous and face our fears at least once a day. Every. Single. Day. 

And circling back to a more surface level understanding of procrastination, laziness is another habit we should be desperately seeking to avoid according to the Scriptures. While laziness is often the unintentional result of your more deeply rooted fears, it often plagues many of us at the surface level too as previously mentioned. 

Finally, sometimes in an effort to motivate or validate ourselves in light of our fear to step out and do those big things, we’ll speak up about them to others within our families and communities: We’ll talk about how excited we are about our hopes and dreams and how we’re going to take certain actionable steps toward making them a reality. But I want you to ask yourself something: How often do you do this, and more importantly, how often do you actually step out and do those big things you speak with others about?

Believe it or not, Scripture actually has something quite notable to say in this scenario. As it is written:

As believers, the last thing we want to do is be idle in living out our faith. So, in our due diligence, we should also be paying attention to what we say to others about doing that very thing. And this principle even applies to non-faith related things too: Regardless of what it is you mention you’re setting out to do, if you say you’re a believer (and especially if you mention that you feel like the Father has commissioned you to do something), but you fail to actually act upon it, you look lazy yourself. But more tragically, you also bring the validity of Yah’s ability to move in this modern world into question in the eyes of those who may not have the same level of faith or even the same belief as you altogether.

So, as a man or woman of Yahweh striving to improve themselves every day, and as someone who’s discovered they have a procrastination issue caused by a deeply rooted fear of something, what does Scripture say to help encourage and instruct you to step out in faith and do those big things that bring glory to the King? Let me leave you with ten of my favorite verses on these topics, five on laziness, and five on fear, that will help give you a new outlook on things:

LAZINESS:

FEAR: 

Strive to apply these verses (and many others you’ll come across on these topics) to your life starting today. Pray for the courage you need to step out in faith and do what you need to accomplish. And put your full trust in Yahweh, who hears your prayers and will supply everything you have need of along the way. 

Be blessed.