Slaying the Giant of Procrastination

Message Description: Putting off an unpleasant chore is one thing. But procrastinating on spiritual matters could have far more eternal consequences. Dr. David Jeremiah takes a closer look at the dangers of pursuing pleasure today and pushing everything else into tomorrow.

How many of us when we get to heaven will be able to for a brief moment until God washes away all of our tears, look back over our lives and remember moments of decision when we could have done something great for God and because we decided to procrastinate, the opportunity was no longer there.
You know, I think that sometimes maybe I’m not like everybody else here, but sometimes I don’t hear the Lord speak out loud, but I hear the Lord kind of talk to me about something I should do.
Maybe you should call that person. Maybe, you know, you just get an impression, you should do it.
And when you’re responsive, you usually find out that there was something going on there and God was.
But sometimes I get busy and I don’t do that.
Sometimes I allow the circumstances of life to press me in another direction.
And then I find out later that I should have been there. That’s an awful feeling.
It’s a wonderful thing to be sensitive to almighty God when it comes to serving him.
So that when he speaks to us about saying a word of encouragement to someone calling someone on the phone, ministering to someone in the way that God calls us to minister.
We hear his voice and we respond and we don’t procrastinate. We do it now.
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Go forth faith to face foes, greater and mightier than ourselves.
Giants, great and giants cunning and cruel.
But let us not run from the battle, run to victory for our God goes before us as a consuming fire that we may fight the giant of fear.
Destroy the giant of discouragement, be liberated from loneliness.
Win over one guard ourselves from guilt.
Tame the giant of temptation, attack, anger, disarm doubt when we feel overtaken and find freedom in defeating failure.
Our God will slay the giants in the land and bring them down before us through his power.
We shall drive them out and destroy them quickly as the Lord has promised us, do not be afraid, our God will be with us.
He will empower us. We can defeat our giants.
We can win the battle, we can live victorious through the Bible.
God has promised to provide the tools we need to overcome every fear, every failure, every temptation, every giant remind yourself of God’s promises with turning points.
Giant Slayer scripture cards, each card features specifically selected verses to help you overcome the giants in your life.
Full color and bookmark sized. These powerful reminders can be tucked into your Bible or displayed on your desk as you gear up for battle each day request yours today, they did a survey not long ago and 98% of the people in any large audience have experienced procrastination at one time or another.
And the other 2% hadn’t gotten around to thinking about it yet.
They’re like the guy who said he was going to stop procrastinating, but he decided to put it off until tomorrow.
You know how that is? Someone has written procrastination is my sin. It brings me nothing but sorrow.
I know I should stop it.
In fact, I will tomorrow you got it years ago, a very famous preacher surveyed the Bible to find out what were the most important words in the scripture.
For instance, he wanted to find out what was the saddest word in the Bible?
What was the happiest word? He looked for the word that had the greatest emotion attached to it.
And there was a whole list of these words in the book that he wrote.
But when he came to the most dangerous word in the Bible, the word that he chose was the word tomorrow.
Tomorrow can be a dangerous word for tomorrow has robbed many dreamers of their dreams.
It has robbed students of educational achievement and scholarship opportunities.
It has kept more men and women from coming to Christ than any other word in the dictionary.
Let me tell you today that Satan’s favorite word of all words is the word tomorrow.
But the word that is dear to the heart of God is the word today.
I want to talk with you for a few moments about procrastination, how it affects our lives.
I want to talk in a general way in the first two sections of this message and then become very specific as we come to the conclusion.
First of all, let me remind you that when you procrastinate, you rob yourself of opportunities to serve Almighty God.
On one occasion, the Lord was speaking to some of his followers about discipleship and he was trying to illustrate the importance of their immediate response to the call.
And he said to another follow me. But he said, Lord, let me go first and bury my father.
Jesus said to him, let the dead bury their own dead.
But you go and preach the kingdom of God. And another said, Lord, I will follow you.
But first, let me bid farewell to those who are at my house.
And Jesus said to him, no one having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.
Luke chapter nine verses 59 through 62.
Now was Jesus saying that it’s not important for us to bury our own dead? Hardly.
Was he saying that it’s wrong for us to greet the people who are at our home?
No, what Jesus was saying is that it’s very easy when the call of God comes upon our life to think of a lot of reasons why we won’t respond to it.
At that moment, things we need to do first and after we get done doing all of those things, sometimes we lose the ability to hear God’s voice.
Matthew 26 tells the story of one of the saddest experiences in the New Testament in my estimation.
As you remember right about that place in the narrative of the passion of our Lord.
He was going to the garden of get to pray.
He left eight of his disciples at the gate of the garden and he took Peter James and John with him further into the recesses of the Garden of Gethsemane.
And in Matthew 26 verse 38 Jesus spoke to those three men and he said, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death.
Stay here and watch with me. You remember that?
And Matthew 26 39 A says he went a little further and fell on his face and prayed.
And when he returned, he didn’t find them watching, he found them doing what class they were sleeping.
And so he instructed them in Matthew chapter 26 verse 41 he said, watch and pray lest you enter into temptation.
The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. And all of us can say amen to that.
That’s true, isn’t it? We want to do the right thing, but sometimes the flesh is weak and we say we have to watch and pray twice more.
Jesus went into the garden to agonize over the will of God and over our sin and his sacrifice for our sin, dealing with the human aspect of the passion.
And twice more, he came back and found his disciples asleep.
And finally in Matthew 26 verses 45 46 we read Jesus came back and he said, are you still sleeping and resting?
Behold? The hour is at hand. The son of man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners rise.
Let us be going. My betrayer is at hand.
I doubt if the disciples, Peter James and John had any idea what was going on at that moment.
They could not have known what was happening.
They could not have known how that event would have been viewed historically or they never would have allowed themselves to fall into the trap of indolence instead of watchfulness.
All three of them went on to write major books describing the life of Christ and his sacrifice and his death.
All three of them were champions in witnessing for the Lord.
Two of the three gave their lives and martyrdom for their faith.
And yet there was one thing they could never again do.
They could never again go back to that moment when they had been given the opportunity to watch with the Lord.
In his hour of trial, they had passed it by, they had pushed it aside.
They had forgotten the opportunity and the opportunity never came again.
How many of us when we get to heaven will be able to for a brief moment until God washes away all of our tears, look back over our lives and remember moments of decision when we could have done something great for God and because we decided to procrastinate, the opportunity was no longer there.
You know, I think that sometimes maybe I’m not like everybody else here, but sometimes I, I don’t hear the Lord speak out loud, but I hear the Lord kind of talk to me about something I should do.
Maybe you should call that person. Maybe, you know, you just get an impression, you should do it.
And when you’re responsive, you usually find out that there was something going on there and, and God was, but sometimes I get busy and I don’t do that.
Sometimes I allow the circumstances of life to press me in another direction.
And then I find out later that I should have been there. That’s an awful feeling.
It’s a wonderful thing to be sensitive to Almighty God when it comes to serving him.
So that when he speaks to us about saying a word of encouragement to someone, calling someone on the phone, ministering to someone in the way that God calls us to minister.
We hear his voice and we respond and we don’t procrastinate. We do it.
Now, another poet has effectively communicated the importance of serving God and ministering to others when the opportunity is available to us.
He wrote these words. If with pleasure, you are viewing any work a man is doing.
If you like him or you love him, tell him now, don’t withhold your approbation till the person makes oration.
And he lies with snowy lilies on his brow for no matter how you shout it.
He won’t really care about it. He won’t know how many teardrops you have shed.
If you think some praises due him now is the time to slip it to him for, he cannot read his tombstone when he’s dead.
More than fame and more than money is a comet kind and sunny and the hearty warm approval of a friend for it gives to life a savor and it makes you stronger, braver and it gives your heart and spirit to the end.
If he earns your praise, bestow it.
If you like him, let him know it, let the words of true encouragement be said.
Do not wait till life is over and he’s underneath the clover for, he cannot read his tombstone and he’s dead.
It’s true, isn’t it? How often we wait too long to do the thing that God has told us to do.
And in procrastinating, we lose the opportunity of service.
Charles Hanson Town, another poet wrote these lines that bring conviction to my soul and it probably will do the same for you.
So hang on around the corner. I have a friend in this great city that has no end.
Yet. Days go by and weeks rush on and before I know it a year has gone and I never see my old friend’s face for life is swift and terrible pace.
He knows I like him just as well as in the days when I rang the bell and he rang mine and we were younger then and now we’re busy and tired men, tired with playing a foolish game, tired with trying to make a name.
Tomorrow, I say I will call on Jim just to show that I’m thinking of him.
But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes and the distance between us grows and grows around the corner.
Yet miles away. Here’s the telegram.
Sir Jim died today and that’s what we get and deserve in the end. Around the corner.
A vanished friend, procrastination keeps us from ministering to one another.
We put it off and we don’t get it done.
Let me give you another reason why procrastination is a dangerous thing to play with.
Let’s just assume that we’re not even Christians here, terrible assumption.
But just for a moment, procrastination will rob you of success in your life.
No one who is a practicing procrastinator succeeds at anything. We’ll do it tomorrow.
He slept beneath the moon. He basked beneath the sun.
He lived a life of going to do and he died with nothing done.
You see if we cannot take action when it is thrust upon us, we are doomed to defeat and failure.
He was going to be all that immortal should be tomorrow.
No one would be better than he.
Tomorrow each morning, he stacked up the letters he’d write tomorrow. The greatest of workers.
This man might have been tomorrow. The world would have known him, had he ever seen tomorrow.
But the fact is he died and faded from view and all that was left when his living was through was a mountain of things he intended to do tomorrow.
That’s not success, talk to any salesman, any businessman and the art of succeeding is being able to know what to do when it needs to be done and doing it at that moment, Thomas Huxley, who we would not endorse but who wrote some very interesting thoughts, said this, the most important result of all education is to make you do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done.
Whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned.
And however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he ever learns thoroughly.
What is that lesson to do? The thing you have to do when it has to be done?
How many of you use a do list?
You, you use a yellow pen, you write down all the things to do anybody here beside me.
Do you ever go through that list and say?
All right, what is the worst thing on this list? What is the thing?
I dread the most and put it at the top or do you take that thing?
You dread the most and keep adding things above it till it keeps pushed down.
I mean, it’s been on there for three weeks now.
Friends, you might as well get to it, the papers, do the exams coming, whatever it is and the person who is able to elevate that difficult thing to the top of the list and do it when it needs to be done, that person has taken a major step toward success.
In fact, there is a positive mental attitude speaker.
I won’t give you his name who has built his whole career on how to get things done by taking action on those items that are so difficult for us to deal with how to be successful.
But I said all of this by way of introduction and let me bore in on the most important thing about procrastination because not only will it keep you from serving God and keep you from being successful in life, but procrastination will keep you out of heaven.
It’ll keep you from becoming a Christian.
And I want to share that with you from a story that’s found in the New Testament.
So if you have your Bibles turn to acts chapter 24 I want to tell you about two people.
You probably haven’t heard much about.
One of them is a man by the name of Felix and his wife, whose name was Drucilla. Felix.
And Drucilla, not necessarily major characters in the New Testament Scriptures, but key illustrations of what happens when procrastination enters into the relationship we have with God.
Now, the identification of the procrastinator in the story in Acts chapter 24 is found for us in verse 24 where we read.
And after some days when Felix came with his wife, Drew Silla who was Jewish.
And let me just stop there long enough to give you a little information about these two people.
Felix, whose real name was Antonius. Felix was Greek by birth.
He was well connected with the Roman Empire because he actually got his appointment as pro curator of Judea from his brother.
When Paul was brought before Felix on trumped up charges of sedition.
This great apostle preached the gospel to Felix seated with him there as a part of his reign as procurator was his wife Drucilla.
She came from some bad blood. She was one of three daughters of Herita Gripper.
The first Felix had induced her to leave her former husband and marry him.
One of her sisters, Bernice married King Agrippa and her father, Herod Agrippa.
The first was the one who murdered James John’s brother and tried to kill Peter.
As we read in acts chapter 12.
Her great uncle Herod Anus was the one who took John, the Baptist head off.
And her great grandfather, Herod the great killed all the babies in Bethlehem and sought to kill Jesus.
And Drucilla came from that line and she was Felix’s third wife.
They were a royal couple and they were also a wicked couple living in sin.
So Paul is standing before Felix and somebody said it really wasn’t Paul before Felix.
It ended up being Felix before Paul because when Paul came to give his defense before the pro curator of Judea, he didn’t stand up and defend himself.
He stood up and started talking about Jesus about Christ. He preached the gospel to him.
How many of you know that wherever Paul went, no matter what the circumstances were, he always seemed to preach the gospel.
He had one message and he got to it as quickly as possible.
So he didn’t stand up and try to justify much.
He just got up and the Bible says he began to preach to Felix. Andrew Sila about Jesus Christ.
And we read about his message in the instruction of the procrastinator in verse 24.
If you have your Bibles open notice what it says.
And after some days when Felix came with his wife Drucilla, who was Jewish, he sent for Paul and he heard him concerning faith in Christ.
And the scripture says, he reasoned with him of righteousness, self control and judgment to come.
Now, that’s a pretty good sermon.
That’s a good three point sermon right there, righteousness, self control and judgment to come.
And it was well suited to the people who were listening to him for.
We’ve already established that Felix Andrew Silla were unrighteous.
They thought Paul was going to come and discuss the differences between Judaism and Christianity.
He got in the presence and he started preaching righteousness and you can begin to see them feel a little uncomfortable.
This isn’t what we expected. So he got through the first point and they took a sigh of relief and he got to point number two, guess what it was about self control that surely didn’t belong in their vocabulary because they had not exhibited any self control.
They had lived for a long time in sin without any control.
And Paul begins to talk about self control and temperance according to the old King James version.
And they’re almost now under the table with conviction.
And Paul ends up his sermon with a strong point number three.
And you know what it was judgment to come. That’s just what they needed.
They heard all about righteousness and all about self control.
And Paul concludes it by saying, and the important thing you need to realize is that while you sit here on the throne as pro curators of Judea, there was someone who was sitting on a throne much bigger than this before, whom you will be brought someday and you will be judged.
And the judge is even now at the door, judgment to come man, that must have been a sermon.
And the Bible tells us that something happened in response to his preaching that you don’t see happen very much anymore.
I remember reading the story of uh one of the early preachers in our, in our country who used to preach and when he preached, people would hang on to the front of the pew and tremble in conviction.
They would hang on to the pew in order to keep from getting out of the pew and going.
They would be under such conviction. You don’t see that kind of outward conviction.
But the Bible says that the impact on the procrastinator, the impact on Felix that day was Felix was afraid.
And literally the, the spirit of God uses a special word in the text of the New Testament to describe his fear.
He wasn’t just a little bit afraid. One translation says he was terrified.
Another translation says, he trembled, God almighty.
Had spoken to Felix’s heart through the Apostle Paul and his three point sermon on righteousness, self control and judgment to come.
And when Paul got done, Felix was filled with fear and he trembled.
It was a moment when God had grabbed hold of his heart that he would never ever forget literally shaking in his boots in conviction.
But we read something very tragic that happened at this moment, the intention of the procrastinator verse 25.
Now, as he reasoned about righteousness and self control and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid and answered.
Go away for now. When I have a convenient time, I will call for you. What did he do? Class?
He procrastinated. He said, I’ve heard what you’ve said, Paul, but I want you to go away now and another time I’ll have you come and we’ll talk.
It is interesting that the word intention in the dictionary comes just before the word in, in turn means to bury how many of our dreams and our futures have been buried by the words I was going to, I almost did maybe tomorrow later, we’ll talk about it.
And you know what Felix did hear Paul again as we read in the New Testament.
Paul and Felix had another meeting, but it was never like it was that day when Paul preached and Felix trembled.
Now, I wanna say just two things to you about procrastination as we bring all of this to a conclusion.
First of all, procrastination gives us the impression that we’re in control of tomorrow.
Procrastination does not take into account the uncertainty of life.
If we could be sure that tomorrow would come, perhaps we could put our opportunities beyond us today and wait for another time.
But the uncertainty of tomorrow makes procrastinating a very dangerous indoor sport to say I will do it tomorrow is to assume that you have tomorrow in your hands.
And what is it that the book of Proverbs says, boast not thyself of tomorrow for you do not know what a day may bring forth.
Don’t say tomorrow because you may not have tomorrow in the Bible.
There are 18 different metaphors to remind us of the traitors and the brevity and the uncertainty of life.
Life is like a vapor. It appears for a moment and then it’s gone.
How many of us have had major changes in our lives because of something that happened on a tomorrow we never dreamed would ever come.
So for us to assume that we can put off from today’s assignment.
What God wants us to do today until another day is to make a major assumption that is very foolish and very dangerous James writing in his epistle said, come now you who say today or tomorrow, we will go to such and such.
Such a city. Spend a year there, buy and sell, make a profit.
You do not know what will happen tomorrow for what is your life?
It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
Some of you here today have said, you know what I hear? Pastor Jeremiah preach every Sunday.
I even listen to him on the radio sometimes during the week and I know he’s right about salvation.
And one of these days I’m gonna make my decision and I’m gonna become a Christian.
I’m gonna do it tomorrow.
How foolish when you know what to do to postpone it to a time, you have no control over.
Tomorrow is the most dangerous word in the Bible because it assumes control over a period of time.
You can’t get your arms around. Today is God’s word.
But let’s assume for a moment that you did have control of tomorrow.
Let’s assume for a moment that tomorrow was in your hands that you knew tomorrow would come for you and you would have all of your tomorrow to do what you didn’t do today.
There’s still a problem that you need to face and that is you need to face the uniqueness of conviction in your life.
And there are certain times when God deals with us, I like to call them defining moments.
How many of you remember when you accepted Christ that there were circumstances around that, that brought you to a decision to receive the Lord.
There were certain things that happened in your life that brought you to a hearing that you would not have, you would not have accepted before.
And in that moment, in that defining moment, God spoke to you and you heard His voice and you were saved, you see, you may get a tomorrow, but you have no guarantee that when your tomorrow comes, God’s voice will be heard at the same level of intensity that God will, will speak to you in such a way that you will have the same response.
The the fact of the matter is that Felix met with Paul after that, but we never again read of him, ever trembling.
And there’s no record of Felix ever responding to the gospel.
As far as we know, he went out into the dark night of eternity without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
There is a moment in our life when God speaks and for us to postpone a decision until some other day is to assume that God will continue to say, well, why wouldn’t he speak?
You know, tomorrow, your life may be filled with thoughts of other things that will cloud out His voice.
Tomorrow, you could be on a trip to some other part of the world on business that will take you clear away from the sensitivity that He’s given to you.
Today, tomorrow changes everything it is today that God has spoken.
And that’s why in the word of God over and over again, we have the message of urgency that when God speaks to us, when He calls us, when He brings us to a place of conviction, that’s the moment that we respond.
And if we do not, we risk everything.
ST Augustine said, God has promised forgiveness for your repentance, but he is not promised tomorrow for your procrastination.
And that’s true in the Bible over and over again, we find the reference to the importance of deciding when the moment is upon us.
Psalm 27 8 says when you said, seek my face, my heart said to you your face, Lord, I will seek.
When did he seek the Lord’s face? When the Lord said, seek my face.
When the moment came, Isaiah 55 6 says it this way, seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call upon him when he is near.
Well, isn’t the Lord available all the time? Yes. But do you get the message of Isaiah?
There’s a time when God speaks a time when his voice is being heard.
It’s at that moment that you need to respond when he’s near.
Isn’t God always as near at one time as He is.
Yes, but we’re not always as sensitive to his nearness, are we?
And when God by the Holy Spirit brings us a sensitivity to his nearness, that’s the moment when we respond.
Not tomorrow, not tonight. But now the Psalmist said in Psalm 119 verse 60 I made haste and did not delay to keep your commandments.
And Solomon writing in the book of Ecclesiastes says, remember now your creator in the days of your youth before the difficult days come and the years draw near.
When you say I have no pleasure in them.
You see when we procrastinate, when we let the giant of procrastination take over our life, we lose our opportunities to serve God because we’re always putting it off until another time, we will be unsuccessful in life because no one who succeeds procrastinates as a lifestyle.
And ultimately, we will spend eternity apart from Christ because we keep thing, there’s a more convenient time than today.
Do you know what the most convenient time is to receive Christ?
The very moment you hear him calling you and you recognize in your heart that you haven’t received him already.
You say, well, Pastor Jeremiah, what are you talking about when you say receive Christ?
I’m simply saying you come to a moment of understanding that you’re a sinner that you cannot save yourself, that you stand guilty before Almighty God because you have violated his perfect standard of holiness.
How many of you know, God doesn’t grade on the curve, God grades on an absolute percentage basis and there’s nobody here, nobody ever anywhere who could ever live up to that perfect standard.
So Jesus Christ came to this earth to take the test for us and he went to the cross and he got 100 on the test and he wants to give us his score so that we can get into heaven.
And he will do that if we invite him into our life.
But if we do not invite him into our life, his death on the cross will have no impact upon us whatsoever except to be the judgment to send us to a priceless eternity.
And if you recognize today that you have never trusted Jesus Christ as your savior, that you’ve never invited him into your life and asked him to forgive your sin.
And you’ve accepted his free gift of eternal life. This is the decision you must make.
Now while you hear his voice speaking in your heart, while you’re listening, you may never walk this way again.
You may never have the sensitivity that you have.
Now again, you may never hear the gospel in a context where you’re willing to listen again.
So now, while the spirit of God speaks to you, this is the moment today is the day of salvation.
Says the book of Corinthians today is the moment when you receive Christ, which giant is intimidating, you perhaps fear has your number.
Maybe loneliness. Has you locked out? The reality is that you never walk alone and never have to live defeated.
You can overcome debilitating sin and temptation slaying the giants in your life is designed to help you stand against the giants that seek to destroy.
You, remind yourself of God’s promises. With turning points.
Giant Slayer scripture cards, each card features specifically selected verses to help you overcome the giants in your life, learn to recognize and banish giants from the promised land of your life and walk in victory request yours today.