Joyce Meyer - The Deception of Procrastination - Part 1

Well, I wanna talk to you tonight about "The Deception of Procrastination". I knew that I was gonna get that "Ughhhh". You know why procrastination is a deception? Because it tells you, "I'm not in disobedience because I'm going to obey God". But God spoke to my heart a few years ago and he said, "Good intentions are not obedience". See, so we think, "Well, I know what God told me and I'm going to do it". But unless he's told you to wait till another time, then now is always God's time.

And one of the things you'll learn tonight is if you don't move when God says to move, then you're likely to end up having to move without the anointing. Because when God says to do something, there's an anointing on it. See, this is the message I was supposed to speak tonight, so there's an anointing on it. Now, if I decided I was gonna do something else, it probably wouldn't be as anointed. I think, "Well, maybe I'll wait and teach that the next time I come". It wouldn't be as anointed as it will be tonight. You need to understand that.

When God puts something in your heart, it's much easier for you to do it when he tells you to do it. Because his anointing and his grace is there to help you do it. If you put it off till your timing... See, God's timing is equivalent to his will, so, if we wanna be in God's will, we have to also be in his timing. So, first, let me say, if you've been putting off receiving Christ into your life, if you've been putting off even a full surrender, you know, we talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and if you're born-again, you have the Holy Spirit. I like to put it another way, does the Holy Spirit have you?

See, I tend to think that's maybe more the baptism of the Holy Spirit. 'cause you don't like, just get the Holy Spirit for the first time. You receive the Holy Spirit when you receive Christ, because the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all one. But when I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit in 1976, I had just kinda come to the end of myself. I had tried so hard to be a good Christian. And do you know that people say, "Living the Christian life is hard"?

Well, it's not hard, it's impossible. You can't do it unless God's doing it through you. You can't do it: and you can't do it without the Holy Spirit. And the only way that you can be full of the Holy Spirit is if you give all of yourself to him. And see, what we tend to do is give him sections. I always say, "We want enough of Jesus to stay out of hell, but not enough", so, I'm just encouraging you. I know from doing this a lifetime that the areas that you think you're gonna close off to God, you're just hurting yourself. So, how 'bout opening any doors that you've had sealed shut? Even doorways that you know when you open 'em, it's gonna cause some pain.

You know, I could not get healed from the sexual abuse from my father in my childhood until I let God into that area of my life. And it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy to talk about it. It wasn't easy to tell the world about it. But I found healing through that. And sometimes when you wait, when you procrastinate, you miss an opportunity. Let's look at a couple of scriptures, Galatians 6:10. First of all, verse 9 says... Now I forget what it says. Oh, "Be not weary in well doing, for in due season you shall reap if you faint not". And then verse 10 says, that we should be mindful to be a blessing, especially to the household of God, and take every opportunity.

You see, when the offering was received tonight, it wasn't somebody trying to get your money. It was an opportunity for you to reach out beyond yourself and do something for somebody else. We have to get over this mentality that the church is trying to take something away from you all the time. Everywhere you go, they talk to you about money. Church is the only place where it bothers us. You go get something to eat when you leave here, they're gonna ask you for money. You stop and get some gas, they're gonna ask you for money. You go to the grocery store tomorrow, they're gonna ask you for money. For the life of me, I don't know why we get bothered when the church says, "We need money". Everybody: "I love your television program".

My goodness, if everybody who loves it would just send in an offering occasionally. See? We love free stuff, but do you know that free is not actually good for you? It's really not. Paul, in one place in the Bible, he said, "I did you a disservice because I didn't receive offerings from you. I worked and took care of myself", and he said, "I actually did you a disservice".

See, there's no relationship if one person does all the taking and the other person does all the giving. Relationship only comes through give and take. So don't let opportunities pass you by. And then Ephesians 5:16 says that "We should also take advantage of every opportunity that we have that comes our way". It's just talking about living your life. And when you're out living your life and you have an opportunity to talk to someone, to encourage someone, to bless someone. You know, you have a ministry and very few ministries are up here. Most ministries are out there. And they're where you work and where you live and where you go to school.

And if the world is gonna be saved, it's gonna take you. It's not gonna happen through a handful of people. And our job is to train you up that you should go out and do the work of the ministry. That's the five-fold ministry. We're not supposed to just do all the work. We're supposed to teach you how to get out and do the work. And so, procrastination is really deceptive. And, now, you know, I usually have more in any given day to do than what I can do.

And so, there's always things that I have to put off until the next day. But I'm not procrastinating. It's things that I can take care of the next day. And then at the end of that day, there's things for the next day. But when God tells me to do something, I've learned the hard way that I don't wanna put it off. First of all, he'll be very good to you in the beginning and he'll nag you until you obey him. Sometimes God will put on my heart to give somebody something and man, if I don't, I'll just keep hearing it, and keep hearing it, and keep hearing it.

And in the beginning of learning how to hear from God, that was one of the ways that I learned how to hear from God. Was I knew that if he just kept it up, it just kept coming back, it kept coming back. Couple months ago, I had a girl on my heart that I hadn't seen for years. And she just kept staying on my heart, kept staying on my heart. And so, I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna call her". So, I called her, and she said, "I'm so glad you called". She said, "I fell. I'm in the emergency room and I broke both of my wrists".

And so, it was just a good time for her to have some encouragement. So don't miss opportunities when God gives them to you. 'cause you know what? God will find somebody to do what he wants done. If he has to go through a thousand people, he'll find somebody that will do what he wants them to do. But when he gives you the opportunity, you don't wanna let it pass you by. Okay. In Exodus, Pharaoh was not obeying God to let the people go. It was time for Moses to lead the people out. They'd been in bondage for many years, over 400 years. And God heard their cries and he sent Moses to lead them out. And Pharaoh was not obeying him, so God sent ten plagues on Egypt. And one of those was a plague of frogs.

Now, if you're a frog lover, I don't mean to offend you. But I personally am not crazy about 'em. First of all, I guess they're slimy, they look slimy. And they croak. And I don't like croakers. They jump, and you never know which way they're gonna jump. And I don't like that either, because I kind of like to know what's gonna happen. And so, I don't do frogs. And the Lord sent a plague of frogs on the land of Egypt. And beginning in chapter 8 verse 1, it says, "Then the Lord said to Moses, 'go to Pharaoh and say to him, "This is what the Lord says: 'let my people go that they may worship me. And if you refuse to let them go, I will send a plague of frogs on your whole country. The nile will team with frogs. They will come up into your palace'"'".

Now, I want you to try to imagine what this would be like. "'"'they will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, and into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and your kneading troughs. The frogs will come up on you and your people and on all your officials'"'".

Now, just imagine if you went home tonight, you drove in the garage and you heard "Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch". And when you opened your car door, three frogs jumped on you. And then, you got out of the car and five more frogs jumped on you. And you're trying to throw them off and you got over to your door and you open the door to your house and there's more frogs. And you went to the bathroom and there's frogs in the toilet and there's frogs everywhere.

So, you think, "I'm just gonna go to bed," and you get in bed and there's frogs in the bed. Now, you know, Pharaoh wasn't real smart. "Then the Lord said to Moses", verse five, "'tell Aaron, "Stretch out your hand with your staff over the streams the canals and the ponds, and make the frogs come up on the land of Egypt"'. So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came and covered the land. But the magicians did the same thing by their secret arts".

Now, you know, I say that Pharaoh wasn't very smart because if he's already got a land full of frogs, why would he have his magicians make more frogs? You know. So, they got more frogs. Verse nine, "Moses said to Pharaoh, 'i leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs'", so, he said, "I'll tell you what, when I pray, the frogs are gonna go, but I'm gonna give you the honor of setting the time". Well, I would have said, "Now, right now". But Pharaoh said, "Tomorrow". Now, who in their right mind would want to sleep with frogs one more night if they could get out of it? Hmm. "Tomorrow".

What are you putting off? Forgiving someone that you're angry at, confronting somebody who's taking advantage of you and you just keep letting 'em do it, a job that needs to be done, the closet, the garage, the basement, whatever it might be. Losing weight, gaining weight, getting out of debt, hmm, apologizing to someone you know you hurt their feelings and you just keep putting it off, "I'll do it tomorrow". Going to the dentist. Mm, going to the doctor to see about that pain you've had for two years, but you just keep putting it off because you really kind of don't want to find out what it is. Starting a regular exercise program and sticking with it. Setting a regular time for prayer and Bible study. Setting aside a generous amount of money that you give to the work of the kingdom.

Ecclesiastes 11:4 says, "He who observes the wind [and waits for all conditions to be favorable] Will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap". I love that scripture in the Amplified Bible. If you wait for every condition to be favorable, you'll never get around to sowing in any area of your life. And I'm not just talking about money. You know, every act of obedience is a seed that we sow. And so, why do we put it off? We think, I don't know, we think the problem will disappear overnight. You think, you know, if you're deep in debt and you just keep putting more and more things on credit, do you think it's just gonna disappear maybe if you just ignore it long enough?

You know, when we ignore things long enough and they get so big that they come crashing down on our heads. Thirty-eight years ago, I went for a mammogram and found out that I had breast cancer. And, I mean this is just a good lesson. The doctor told me, he said, "It's a good thing you came in when you were supposed to". He said, "This tumor was very tiny. And the radiologist did a great job in reading it accurately, but he said it was a very fast growing type of cancer. And if you were to put it off, you might have ended up dying". It's just not wise to put things off.

So, I'm just asking you tonight, if you're sitting here or you're watching this by television, you're in the overflow rooms, if there's something that you know that God has put on your heart and you're putting it off, it's not gonna get easier tomorrow. It's not gonna get easier next week. It's not gonna get easier next year. Matter of fact, I think the longer you put it off, the harder it gets because when we keep putting things off, they nag at us, don't they? Kind of like having a spiritual hangnail. Have you ever had a hangnail on your toe, and it keeps getting caught in the covers at night? I hate that. It's like, I'll finally have to get up and just try to take care of it. It's time to start doing things God's way.

Now maybe I should just ask for the fun of it: how many of you are putting something off? Don't give me one of these. And how many of you are lying and you have your hand down and it should be up? You know, let's go back to this confronting thing. Don't let people control you and take advantage of you. Confront them in love, but confront them and tell them, "God didn't create me to be manipulated and controlled and I'm not gonna let you do that anymore". And of course, they're gonna threaten you and you're gonna say, "Well, if the only way I can be in relationship with you is if you control me, then I guess we won't be in relationship". Amen.

And I know there's a whole bunch of people here that need to forgive somebody because I've never been in any church where it's been any different. And I will tell you from me personally, and I have learned this over the years, and I believe this with all my heart, "Holding unforgiveness is one of the absolute worst things that you can do spiritually. It shuts down your prayer life. It hurts you in every single way that you can be hurt spiritually. Hurts your fellowship with God. It doesn't fix your enemy. It doesn't heal you. It does no good at all. All it does is poison your spirit and hurt you".

Now faith... Hebrews 11:1 is an interesting scripture to me. This is in every translation except two and it says, "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see". That's the NIV. Do you ever wonder why the word "Now" is first? I got to wondering about that and I thought, "You know, you don't need that for the sentence. You can just start out faith is the confidence in what we hope for and the assurance of what we do not see". But every translation starts out "Now". And I think it's because faith has to be now. I can't wait till tomorrow to have faith for today.

Now, I can have faith today that tomorrow is gonna work out good or I can even have faith today that God's gonna help me with something that I've made a mistake in, in the past. But I can only have, faith is always right now. It's now. Do you ever wonder about that? "Why the word now is there"? I just think that it has to be that. It can't be anything else because it's not, it almost, like, makes the sentence not make any sense if that's not what it's there for. "Now faith is the evidence of things hoped for, the proof of things that we do not see".

And now this is only in the Amplified Bible, but I like it well enough to read it. In Hebrews chapter 4, verses 1 and 7 Paul is talking to them about "Entering the rest of God". Does anybody know how wonderful it is to be in the rest of God? Oh, my gosh. I worried and fretted and reasoned and carried on for so many years and wondered about what people thought of me when I preached, and you know all these different things. And it's part of your journey with God. But eventually you're either gonna learn to enter the rest of God, or you're gonna go crazy because you can only take so much of that stress and pressure of trying to take care of everything yourself.