PROCRASTINATION IV

Procrastination(Continue..)

Procrastination is a cancer that will consume your whole life. It will affect your relationships, your job, your marriage and your faithfulness to God’s will in your life. Master your moods. Attitude is everything when it comes to procrastination. It’s attitude that gets you in the slump in the first place. It’s your moods that manipulate you and cause you to put off what you know would be the right thing to do. Your moods go through eight stages of procrastination.

1. “I’ll start early this time.” That’s hopefulness.
2. “I’ve got to start soon.” You start to feel a little bit of tension.
3. “I should have started sooner.” You start to feel a little creeping guilt
4. “There’s still time to do it.” That’s false reassurance.
5. “What’s wrong with me?” Desperation starts to set in.
6. “I can’t wait any longer.” Now you’re getting to the stage of intense pain.
7. “Just get it done.” Stressed out and feeling burdened, you finally act.
8. “Next time I’ll start earlier.”

And the cycle repeats itself. If you’re going to learn to break free from procrastination you must learn to master your moods. You cannot be manipulated by your emotions and feelings. Most of what gets done in the world is by people who didn’t feel like doing it when they did it. If I only taught you when I felt like it, I’d quit right now. The fact is you have to do things you don’t feel like doing. You must master your moods.Philippians 4:13“There is nothing I cannot master with the help of Christ who gives me strength.”Set a deadline and schedule it. Proverbs 13: 16says, “A wise man plans ahead but a fool doesn’t.” The best intentions aren’t good enough. We say, “I’ll do it when I have time for it.” You never have time for it. You have tomake time for it. If you just think, “I’m going to do it someday,” days turn into weeks. Set a deadline. Write it down on your schedule. If you don’t schedule it, you’ll never do it. Many of the projects that we procrastinate over in life, we do because they’re huge projects. So in order to make a schedule sometimes you have to break it things down into bite size pieces. Like that old phrase, How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So what do you need to schedule? What is your first step you need to take?
Next, get an accountability partner, someone you can be accountable to and who will help you work through this issue in your life. Don’t face this alone. Romans 1:12 “I want us to help each other with the faith that we have. Your faith will help me and my faith will help you.” That is the principle of a spiritual partner. Anything that you procrastinate on, get a partner. It is always helpful to have somebody who’s going to walk you through this as a partner.
Start now! Not next month. Not next week. Not even tomorrow. Start now. Don’t say, “I’ll do it some day.” Someday is today. Don’t say, “When things settle down.” They’re not going to settle down. Don’t say, “When I get around to it.” You’re never going to get around to it. You’ve got to do it now. There’s no time like the present.
James 4:17 from the Message paraphrase “If you know the right thing to do and don’t do it, that for you is evil.” Procrastination is not some little innocent fault or shortcoming. It’s evil. It keeps you from being all that God intends you to be. That’s why procrastination is so serious. It limits your potential. It wipes out your opportunities, but most of all it presumes upon the future that you or I may not have. None of us is guaranteed a tomorrow and neither are your loved ones. Whatever God’s calling you to do with your life do it now. If you need to make a change in your life, do it now. If you need to mend fences with somebody, do it now. If you need to get started on a dream, drop a terrible habit or even get out of debt, start now. Because none of us are guaranteed tomorrow.
I want you to identify, right now, an area or issue in your life God is calling you to address and where you need His help. You know what’s right and you know what you need to do but you’ve been procrastinating. You know you need to make a change, but you’re stuck and haven’t acted on it. It is an area of your life where there might be shame, some fear and some resistance in your heart. You need to quit rationalizing, respond to the call of God and call it what it is: a spiritual problem. Just say, 'God, I can’t, but You can. I need Your help.' Today, you can make this promise to God to stop procrastinating and then turn to him to empower you to get up and act and become the person God has called you to be. Make the commitment to act on His transforming purpose for your life. In Jesus’name. Amen.