Why Wait Until Tomorrow?

I procrastinate.  More often than not, I have lived by the motto "Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow."  I am not proud of that, but often it is true.  I put off things I enjoy and things I dread.  I put off phone calls, hair cuts, pedicures, cleaning house, opening mail, doctor's appointments -- well, you get the idea.  I think I know why I do (that's for another blog, another day), but it doesn't make it okay.  


If confession is good for the soul, I should start feeling better any time now.


Last week, as I was reading Exodus, I ran across a puzzling example of procrastination.   Exodus, as you probably remember, starts with Moses and how God uses him to deliver Israel out of Egypt.  God sends ten plagues to convince Pharaoh that he needs to let Israel leave.


It was how Pharaoh responded to the second plague that got my attention.  In the second plague, God sent disgusting frogs that covered the land.  I don't know what kind of frogs they were, but I imagine loud, croaking, slimy creatures that are literally everywhere you turn.  Frogs where you sleep, where you sit, underneath your feet, and in the food that you eat.  I can imagine frogs falling off the ceiling on top of your head and climbing up your leg.  It sounds like a horror movie.


So what would you want more than anything?  For the frogs to BE GONE!  But look what happens when Pharaoh asks Moses to take away the frogs. “You set the time!” Moses replied. “Tell me when you want me to pray for you, your officials, and your people. Then you and your houses will be rid of the frogs. They will remain only in the Nile River.”  “Do it tomorrow,” Pharaoh said. 
-- Exodus 8:9-10


Tomorrow??!!  Are you kidding me??  Pharaoh CHOSE to spend extra time with those slimy, disgusting little creatures!  Was he in his right mind??  He could have said, "Take them away NOW!"  Instead, he said, "Let me be tormented a little longer.  Just wait."


But maybe ... maybe that's what we do when we put things off.  We complain that we have too much to do, but rather than doing them we live with things that we don't have to.  Things that keep us awake at night and distract us during the day.  Things that require our attention but that we choose to ignore. We decide to do it tomorrow when we have the power to make it go away today.


Procrastination can be costly.  Just ask Elisha Gray.  Never heard of him?  You would have if he had not waited quite so long to file a patent.  He may have actually been the inventor of technology that we use daily, but he arrived at the patent office a couple of hours late.  Alexander Graham Bell filed the patent on the telephone first and gets the credit for the invention.  


What is procrastination costing you?  I don't want to put things off any longer, especially if God is wanting to do something for me and my procrastination is keeping me from receiving what He wants to do in my life. 


Ephesians 5:15 says:  Be very careful, then, how you live -- not as unwise but as wise.  I want to be wise in the way I make decisions and do things now rather than later.  I don't want to wait until tomorrow for what God wants to give me today!


I need to go.  I have things I need to do, NOW!

Finding Purpose Through Intentional Living

As I was preparing for a Bible study recently, I ran across a scripture I have read numerous times.  But on this date, God spoke to me through this passage, and I heard a message I had never received before:

Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot . .  and his daughter-in-law Sarai . . and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan.  But when they came to Haran, THEY SETTLED there.  -- Genesis 11:31.


Terah was on his way to Canaan --  the land later promised to the children of Israel, but before he reached it, he settled.  If you go on to verse 32, you read that "he died in Haran."  As I read that, I was struck by how often that happens.  We have a goal, a dream, a desire, a plan, but something happens.  We get sidetracked.  The busyness of daily living stops us dead in our tracks and rather than reaching the destination, we settle for something less than we had intended.  As I read it, it seems Terah had it in his heart to go to Canaan, but something stopped him.  He never reached his goal.  


I don't know about you, but I don't want to miss out on the promise God has for me!  I want to accomplish His purpose in my life by being intentional in the way I live.  I readily admit that I have failed miserably in the past, but thank God, "Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not." -- Lamentations 3:22.  God, in his compassion, gives us new chances each day to regroup and start pursuing His purposes.  I want to be intentional in the way I live each day for Him!