Fear is a great way of preventing good.
One of its many guises is procrastination. Operating under the motto, why do today what can be put off until tomorrow, it is skilled and accomplished in creating reasons and justification for avoiding what is for our good, for our progress and for the process of peace to take another step forward.
Of course at the time, that’s not what the compelling inner voice says. The compelling inner voice places bigger issues than peace, progress and all things positive. That inner voice talks about things like how busy you are, how much effort it would take, how tired you are, how other things are more pressing and on very rare occasions even the brutal slap of apathy – that slap that says that you just cannot be bothered.
Procrastination prospers when we don’t nip it in the bud. Procrastination succeeds when we don’t wrestle with it acknowledging it for it is and establishing once more that it is better for us to do what we’ve committed to do now, rather than delay for dismay.
Recently I heard an inspired disciple of Jesus Christ talk about how we can be held captive by many things. Fear is one of them and fear’s prison guard is procrastination.
I know what it is to be held in that prison very well. To be fair I had got used to living in that cell for so long, I got the impression that this was my natural home. Maybe I wasn’t good enough to be released.
Over time I kept eating the prison grub of reasons to stay in the cell. It wasn’t the time … the timing wasn’t right … the circumstances were not favourable … I wasn’t feeling very well … what if I failed … maybe they were right about me … perhaps it would be better to put it off just for now …
I’d eat that slop day in and day out and at the same time delude myself by singing songs of faith and victory and praying up a storm about how great my God was. All the while I was still eating the prison slop and letting the prison guard rattle the bars to remind me that I could sing all I wanted, but there was no release in sight and I should get ready for a life sentence.
Thankfully I did get visitors whilst I was behind bars – visitors who told me that escape was possible. Visitors who kept encouraging me to believe that the Spirit of the Lord still helped prisoners get the release from what had held them bound for so long. I was grateful for these visits, but it took a special visitation for that to become a reality.
That special visitation was from the Lord who defeated the prison guard with the word that when I knew the truth, that truth would set me free. When I embraced Him as the truth, there could be no more procrastinating. When I embraced Him as the truth, I saw that the prison doors were open and there was no guard in sight. When I embraced Him as the truth, I could take those tentative steps from the cell and the confines that looked to define. I could those stuttering steps to freedom. Freedom that was about remembering what it took to embrace Him by faith and be led by Him into freedom.
It was important to remember that because every day there was still the spectre of the old cell looming in corners of my mind, giving me the impression that I still belonged there and freedom was just a dream. The truth is that I am free. The truth is that I don’t have to procrastinate. I don’t have to go for the excuses of why I can’t, why I shouldn’t, why I can afford to put it off – no. Whatever hold they have on me loses its power whenever I remember how Jesus liberated me.
Fear may well have prevented a lot of good happening in the past, but those days are over. Not everyone will agree with me. Not everyone will understand. Not everyone will applaud what I do. Not everyone will support me. I won’t always be on it and it may not always work out for me. Yet it’s far better following the Saviour along those paths of righteousness than deluding myself by singing songs of freedom whilst still in the prison of my own making.
Thank God for the freedom with which Christ has made us free. Thank God that this freedom is far greater than fear – because who the Son sets free really is free.
(Photo by Matthew T Rader on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 