Diligence, not excuses

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"What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence."
(Samuel Johnson)

Being excited about something is not enough. You must also know what you are doing. Don’t rush into something, or you might do it wrong. (Proverbs 19:2)

For lazy people, life is a path overgrown with thorns and thistles. For those who do what is right, it is a smooth highway. (Proverbs 14:9)

Faith demands diligence - we cannot focus on obedient steps until we are diligent to consider and act upon all God has shown us. There is absolutely no place for laziness in our Christian walk. We may want to 'rest upon our laurels' a bit, but when we consider what happens when we do, we might just reconsider that desire! Resting upon one's laurels means we settle for remembrance of past success - we fail to move forward. We do absolutely nothing to ensure our present or future success. We might hear God asking us to get up, get busy with him, and move on, but we are most 'content' to just 'rest' right where we are at. The enemy of diligence is laziness, my friends!

Noah could have delayed in doing what God asked him to do. We know Jonah delayed and look what happened to him! At times, we want to make all manner of 'excuses' for why it is not the right timing for us, the task being too hard for us at present, or something requires more of our attention than what God is asking us to do. Jesus told a parable about such 'excuses' (Luke 14). Those who were invited to the 'great feast' refused to come for one reason or another. One needed to look at a recently purchased field, while another wanted to try out his recently acquired work animals. Each with their own excuse - each missed out on the best invitation of their lives! Excuses might work for a while, but we never know when we will miss out on the best 'invitation' of our lives disguised in the form of a step of obedience!

Being excited is not enough. Considering something is good, but is it enough? No, we need to take the steps as God directs 'into' the plan he has prepared. Will we always know where our next step of obedience will take us? No, but this doesn't give us the 'privilege' to make an excuse to just stop. Our faith grows in proportion to our obedience. This isn't an easy lesson to learn, though. Somehow, I think we all want our faith to grow while we wait, but God intends for it to grow as we put one foot in front of the other in steps of obedience to what he reveals, as he reveals it. Just sayin!

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