Overcoming procrastination through faith

By Daniel Francis

Procrastination is often portrayed as a harmless habit that has no major consequence in our lives. We have all been in a situation where we have important work to do, but we keep deferring the work to the next day, then the next day, until the pressure becomes too much because of the time restraint, and we are now forced into action.

However, when viewed through the lens of faith, procrastination takes on a much deeper significance that may surprise you.

I once read that “Procrastination is the arrogance that God will give you another chance to do tomorrow what He gave you the chance to do today.” I have not been the same since.

Imagine procrastination now becomes a manifestation of our arrogance. That small but present glint of defiance against the purpose and urgency that God has in His plans for us. Suddenly, procrastination looks less like a harmless habit and more like an assault on our faith and relationship with God.

In James 4:14, we are reminded of the frailty of life: “Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

Yet, in our human overestimation, we get lost in the illusion of infinite days to come. We delay our actions and responsibilities on the falsehood that we have infinite days to make up for what is not done. We believe that surely another chance will come our way, but is that the case?

What if God has laid out a plan for each of us? In this plan, we actualise His purpose for us here on earth but within this plan, many tasks require urgent action.

Urgent action requires us to embrace the present with reverence and diligence. By not acting in the moment that God requires us to act, we are moving against our divine invitation from God.

Procrastination now becomes not merely a harmless habit, but a rejection of God’s plan for us: an affront to our faith.

When you get into the core of procrastination there lies this very subtle arrogance. The arrogance lay under the assumption that God will provide many opportunities for us to make up for the actions that we did not take due to our procrastination.

He will provide a grace period for us to mend the frayed threads of time we have left unravelled due to the neglect of our duties. However, this is not always the case. Evil lays in wait for our mistakes and redemption may not always be waiting.

When we procrastinate, we forget that each day is a gift from God. As a gift from God, each day is brimming with opportunities set by Him to satisfy the purpose He has laid out for us.

He is only waiting for us to honour each moment as an opportunity to glorify Him by attending to our duties with excitement and gratitude. By procrastinating we diminish the significance of the tasks entrusted to us and act against God’s wishes for us in the present.

The funny thing is that when you take a moment to do the thing you have been putting off, it often takes less time than you have been telling yourself it would. We easily get inside our heads about these things. We tell ourselves that these tasks will take so much out of us whether it be our time or energy.

We get into a negative headspace about the tasks so much so that we create this narrative that it would be easier to defer to later when we are more “prepared.” This traps us in a cycle of delay and regret. Procrastination tends to breed a sense of complacency and stagnation which will hinder our growth.

To overcome procrastination, we must cultivate a deep reverence for the time that God has blessed us with. We must understand that God has put us here with a purpose and to meet our tasks and responsibilities with a level of intentionality and urgency. This is how we honour the mission that God has set forth for us. Let us answer the call to live fully and faithfully in service to God. May we unshackle ourselves from the burden of procrastination and seize the opportunities that God has presented to us with unwavering courage and conviction.

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Daniel Francis is a millennial helping other millennials. He is a two-time author of the books The Millennial Mind and The Millennial Experience, and an entrepreneur. Over the past four years, he has served as a Personal Development Coach whose work targets Millennials and helps them tap into their full potential. He is also a self-publishing coach and has guided hundreds on self-publishing their book successfully.

LinkedIn: Daniel Francis

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Website: www.ompublishing.org

Email: themillennialmind2020@gmail.com

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