Defeating The Spirit Of Laziness
He who is slothful in his work Is a brother to him who is a great destroyer. (Proverbs 18:9)
Because of laziness the building decays, And through idleness of hands the house leaks. (Ecclesiastes 10:18)
Slothfulness aka laziness, is a big hindrance to many people these days, especially in a modem world where much is done for us. We want things to come easy for us. We want that EASY button so we can hit it when things get tough. We often ask God to remove our problems and strongholds because they are too difficult for us to overcome. Many times we set out to accomplish a task or goal but end up feeling defeated or running out of steam in the midst of it and we see this when trying to overcome a difficult area in our life. Many times we base our accomplishments or defeats on what we see on the surface instead of not looking at the surface and trusting God to see us through.
Slothfulness oppresses many people from persevering through the trial or accomplishing a goal. It can cause a person to lie and manipulate just to get what they want and not have to do the work. It causes us to become tired and even discouraged in completing our tasks and goals. Today there are many great inventions that add to our laziness...computers, video games, and tv for a start. We are spending more time in front of them than doing what we need to be doing. In the meantime the house, our bodies and are lives begin to fall apart because we don't want to take the time to work on them. Our work habits suffer and our minds become accustomed to the laziness of not wanting to continue on. This is only one area where laziness creeps in and takes control. We can become lazy in our recovery as well. When we try to overcome a stronghold or bad trait and Goliath raises his ugly head to try and stop us, we can tend to back down feeling it is to difficult to accomplish and the enemy has now achieved his goal...to get us to quit. He puts other things in front of us that will soothe us and make us feel better temporarily or put something in front of us to help us to achieve our goal quicker. Quicker isn't always better though. Usually when we take a quicker route, there are consequences and side effects to this and we don't realize it until later down the road when its too late. At this point our recovery or situation can take longer than it should.
God does not care for laziness and his word speaks of this. We see what can happen when we allow laziness to slip in to our lives in the scripture above in Ecclesiastes 18:9...because of laziness the building decays. We can look at this in both the spiritual and physical sense. In 1 Corinthians 6:19 it states:
"Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God?..."
When we become lazy spiritually, our body's on the inside will decay. We will become more like the world doing everything the opposite of what we are suppose to do. When we are not spending time reading the Word of God, worshipping God, spending time in prayer and fasting we become more worldly...more greedy, prideful, vain, fearful, judgmental, aggressive etc.
The Temple of the Lord within us decays and falls apart while the temple of the enemy begins to build within us. It's no different than when we don't take care of our physical bodies. We can eat right and exercise and take care of ourselves and we see the fruit of our labor...a strong and healthy body. But when we start neglecting our body, eating the wrong foods, become lazy and stop exercising...we see the fruit of our lack of labor...we become out of shape and unhealthy and it shows on the outside and we feel it on the inside.
We need to be aware of slothfulness and how destructive it can be to our lives and how it can be a huge obstacle in overcoming our problems and strongholds. We need to persevere through our trials and not become discouraged by what we see on the surface. You may not see the effects of your exercising right away and feel it's not working, but what you can't see is how it's strengthening you on the inside of your body...you just need patience until the outside catches up with the inside! The same is true for whatever we are trying to overcome. We must give God time to work in our lives and we must do our part as well. We may not see the effects of God's work and our work right away and may even feel as though we aren't progressing at all...but with God there is always a plan and always a method. Many people pay too much attention to the visual...what they are seeing on the surface and allow that to be their deciding factor on whether to continue on through the trial or to quit. By doing this, it stops the process of what God is trying to accomplish in us and in the situation and some never make it to the end to see that process completed and the healing obtained. When God starts something, he doesn't stop until it's completed because he is a God who is committed and keeps his promises so when he starts something in us, he never stops until it's completed...unfortunately we are the ones who stop the process by quitting in the midst of the difficult trial. Then when we quit, we never get the chance to see the outcome.
In some cases we may need deliverance from that spirit, but it also changes when we do the opposite and become more active.
"...because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." (Philippians 1:5-6)
So if you are going through a difficult trial or are trying to overcome a stronghold...don't give up! The trial will get harder and you will be pushed to go further even when you think you can't. By persevering and forcing yourself to go that extra mile...that extra lap...God is conditioning you just like a an athlete running a race! A runner never stays at the same speed in training and a good trainer never allows him to stay at one speed. A good trainer will encourage that runner to run a little longer, go an extra mile knowing the further he goes, the stronger he becomes. God knows what he's doing...he knows just how much we can handle and sometimes pushes us to go that extra mile because it will make us stronger. On the surface this means the heat may be turned up in our situation and things will be a bit more difficult...but through this we learn to rely on God and trust that he will see us through it and the outcome will be a more spiritually stronger person!