Live Free with Josh Howerton - What Are You Putting Off Today? | Ep. 308 | Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

“Tomorrow” might be one of the most dangerous words in the English language because it blinds us to the here and now. It may give us a strange sense of power to put things off until the next day, but it may also increase our stress levels. Procrastination comes from indecision, perfectionism, fear, control or laziness. What are you putting off today? For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.com. Church slash daily drive. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, welcome to the Daily Drive podcast. My name is Mike Bro, and we hang here for a few minutes every weekday. And for the past few days, in keeping with the conclusion of March Madness and the road to the final four, we have been looking at the fatal four.

Four things that can take you and me out. And these are not like those unknown teams that can sneak up and pull the occasional upset. These are big-time opponents that have dominated people for a long time. Now, you may disagree with my brackets. There certainly are many other formidable enemies. But I got pride as the number one seed, followed by anger as the number two, and then envy. And we spent the last several days just exposing those things, kind of watching game film, so to speak, talking about a strategy to win. You can go back and check out the episodes if you've missed any of those.

And today I want to reveal the one I believe checks in as the number four seed, at least it has in my life. Procrastination. procrastination procrastination is my sin it brings me only sorrow I know that I should give it up in fact I will tomorrow

I want to suggest to you that tomorrow might be one of the most dangerous words in the English language tomorrow can blind us to the immediate needs of people it can make us apathetic it can keep us locked into the comfort zone it can keep us from making a difference with the short life that we've been given

My old family and I, we lived in Ventura, California for the past eight years, and there's a marine layer that rolls in in the morning, kind of a fog, rolls in over the ocean. At about 9 o'clock every day, it just kind of burns off. And James, chapter 4, verse 14, says your life is like that. He says, how do you know when your life, what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog. It's here for a little while, then around 9 o'clock, it burns off. Moses prayed in Psalm 90, O Lord, teach us to number our days.

and spin them as we should. Moses, by the way, he got to see this word tomorrow. Play out in a head-shaking way. The word appears in a passage that is an incredible display of human nature in Exodus Chapter 8. Let me give you a little background. The Israelites have been living in slavery for a very long time in Egypt. They've had a very bad labor contract, so to speak, work and then die.

That was it. And they want freedom. Well, Moses is their top union guy, but he doesn't have much leverage on his own. there's not a whole lot of support forming behind him. Management is represented by Pharaoh as this hard-nosed negotiator. So God gives Moses some pretty powerful bargaining chips, known as the plagues, to kind of level the playing field. In one of them, the water in Egypt turns to blood.

Other plagues involve gnats, flies, locusts, and boils. And in the midst of this, one of the most memorable plagues is written about in Exodus chapter 8. Frogs. Frogs cover the entire land. Frogs are... everywhere. Let me read what it says in Exodus 8. Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and begged, plead with the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people. I will let the people go so they

can offer sacrifices to the Lord. You set the time, Moses replied. Tell me when you want me to pray for you, your officials and your people. I will pray that you and your houses will be rid of the frogs. Only the frogs in the Nile River will remain alive. And here's that word, Pharaoh says. Tomorrow. Yeah, do it tomorrow. You want to ask Pharaoh this question. What? What are you thinking? Moses is here, Aaron is here, the frogs are out of control. They said just ask. Verse three says the frogs will be in your bedroom and on your bed and in your ovens and your needy troughs. Pharaoh can't even get his chariot out of the garage without killing a hundred frogs as pizza cover for frogs.

If his home was anything like mine, his wife and daughter have been standing on chairs screaming to sup, and ever since the plague began, there are frogs everywhere. Yet when Moses offers to get rid of them, what is Pharaoh's response? Tomorrow. What? Why spend one more night with the frogs? Now, if you look carefully, Pharaoh's behavior isn't so unusual. Because I've been there myself, haven't you?

There's that stupid pride thing again. Seems to be the strange sense of power in putting things off until tomorrow. We all occasionally decide to spend another night with the frogs. Let me give you a quick procrastinator's quiz. Do you feel resentful when someone reminds you of tasks left undone? Do you feel you got too much to do every day? Do you sometimes delay a task so long that you're embarrassed to do it? Do you find yourself frequently making excuses for work unfinished?

Do you spend time on non-essentials while letting important work go? Do you have a hard time determining what to do first? Do you often agree to do a task and then regret it? Have you ever put off signing your kids up for something and they missed out? Do you sometimes think that by waiting long enough, the task will not have to be done? While listening to this podcast on April 10th, are you saying, I got five more days to get my taxes done? If you're still intending to have a talk with Junior about the facts of life,

and Junior is now 40 years old, if you've ever spent another night with the frogs, mass confession time, how many of you at least once in your lives have procrastinated? Now, if you found yourself answering yes to a bunch of those, I probably don't have to tell you how it causes your stress levels to go up. It erodes your sense of joy. It gives you a chronic sense of guilt. It eats at your self-esteem, just like envy that we talked about. It may seem subtle. But, man, this is a dangerous enemy.

I know. I'm a recovering procrastinator. I have had to cooperate with the Holy Spirit of God to change that in my life through the years. I've had to ask, what causes us to live this way? And I've determined there's a few causes. First of all, I think it's indecision. Just indecision. You ever drive your server at the restaurant crazy

because you just can't make up your mind? Are you ever late for work because you stood in front of your closet too long, deciding what you're going to wear? Ever miss out on a great investment opportunity because you just couldn't pull the trigger? James 1-8 says a double-minded man, a double-minded woman, is unstable in all that they do. Unstable, man, that was an accurate word to describe the end.

decisiveness in my mind. Another cause is perfectionism. That sounds strange, doesn't it? But it's true. Many procrastinators are closet perfectionist. It's either, I'm not going to do it until I can get it perfect, or I'm going to continue to work on this over and over and over and make it perfect while other things important slide, or, oh, it'll never be good enough, so I finish or even start. Ecclesiastes 11.4 says, if you wait for perfect conditions, you'll never get anything done. And then there's fear. I think fear is a big cause. Proverbs 26 says this. The lazy person is full of excuses saying, I can't go outside because there might be a lion on the road. Yes, I'm sure there's a lion out there. As a door turns back and forth on its hinges, so the lazy person just turns

over in bed, fear paralyzes you. How many of you put off that much-needed trip to the dentist, or that needed surgery, or that sales call, or that confrontation with a friend or sharing your faith simply because of fear. Whether it's the fear of pain, rejection, embarrassment, or potential danger, fear is nothing more than negative expectation. And when you live your life each day with negative expectation, you're going to live it with the brakes on.

Then there's control. There's control. Procrastination gives us this weird way of gaining control. And I think that was Pharaoh's deal. By saying tomorrow, he was saying, hey, I'm in charge here, and so we'll do it when I say so. When we put off fixing things at home, or paying a bill or playing with the kids, and then we get resentful and defensive when someone brings it to our attention.

By procrastinating, we are communicating, you know what, I'm in control, and no one's going to tell me what to do or when to do it. Last but not least, just plain laziness. Let's be honest, sometimes we're just lazy. The word for our culture has been easy. If it's easy, I like it. If it's hard, man, count me out. If I can simply attach electrodes to my abs and look like that,

then why would I ever exercise? I'll just sit in my recliner and eat powdered donuts. If I could stay at home and guess the power ball and strike at risk, then why go to work? Proverbs 13 forces lazy people want much, but get little, but those who work hard will prosper and be satisfied. Proverbs 2615th, some people are so lazy

they won't lift a finger to feed themselves. So you've got indecision, perfectionism, fear, control, and laziness. Those things perpetuate procrastination in our lives and keeps us living one more night with the frogs. And gang, the frogs aren't pretty. There's lots of harmful consequences like keeping us from loving and serving other people

and courageously doing what God is asking us to do. We've got to get a game plan together. So let's meet back here tomorrow in the locker room. We'll throw some strategy up on the whiteboard and we'll let our Heavenly Father kind of coach us up. See you then. Hope you have a great day. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship,

join us for our Church Online live weekend services on Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. For more information, visit lakepoint.com. Church slash daily drive.