Diligence

Reference Scripture: Proverbs 12:27 NIV 

“The lazy do not roast any game, but the diligent feed on the riches of the hunt.” 

As you are reading this article, take an inventory of where you are. Maybe you started the year with some goals that you were hoping to achieve, and you are actually getting things done; that is wonderful.  

Our reference scripture states the lazy do not roast any game, but the diligent feed on the riches of the hunt. 

Can you imagine getting up in the morning, you go out in the woods with your rifle to hunt. It turns out you were successful and then you go home, drop off the carcass and walk away. Well, if that’s all you did, the Bible calls you lazy! If there is never any follow through to what you started, you are lazy!  

Let us examine that a little further. What good was it for a hunter to go out, find the perfect spot behind some brushes, wait for a few minutes or hours and after waiting patiently, he all of a sudden spots the perfect animal and uses all his knowledge of how to use a rifle and shoots down the animal. After he does all of that, he either walks away or takes the carcass with him and drops it off home and walks away. According to our reference scripture, what good was it to go through all of that if he will not in the least roast the game and eat it, let alone maybe sell some meat to make some profit or sell the skin or make material out of it to sell?  

You may be thinking to yourself that you are not lazy but let’s examine a few scenarios: this is a bit extreme but think of someone who graduated from medical school but they end up staying home the rest of their life, never putting that degree to work; or you have blueprints to a beautiful building you want to construct but they are in a drawer somewhere collecting dust. Something more relatable to most of us would be, you started out excited about the new year, you had fun planning and envisioning how the year was going to go (as a matter of fact some people even have vision board parties), but somewhere along the line, you lost track of those dreams. What you set out to achieve this year, if there is a lack of results, could it be that you are lazy?  

The online dictionary states that lazy is an adjective that means not wanting to work, use effort, or do tasks. With that in mind, you can see why the hunter in this verse is described as being lazy. Roasting game takes effort and unless you are willing to go a step further, that is laziness.  

Lack of diligence or follow through to the end can be summed up as laziness. 

Let us examine 1 Tim 4:15, the NIV reads, “be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress.” The NLT says this, “give your complete attention to these matters. Throw yourself into your tasks so that everyone will see your progress.”  

For context, Paul was admonishing Timothy to give himself wholly to the things he had instructed him to do as a minister of the gospel.  

Child of God, if you are ever going to be successful in fulfilling your destiny, excitement alone is not going to get you there, neither is anointing. There is a reason Paul told Timothy to be diligent.  

Diligence is defined as the quality of working carefully, persistently, and with a great deal of effort.  

Timothy was already anointed, now he had to keep showing up every day, teaching the gospel, stirring up the gifts inside of him, not letting anyone look down on him because he was young, reading scripture and so much more in order for there to be progress that is not visible to only himself but all who are watching.  

The tools and tasks that God has given you, have you honestly given yourself wholly to them diligently or is there reservation on your part? Have you followed through on those things until their reasonable end has been attained?  

Phil 2:13 tells us God “orks in us both the desire and power to do of his pleasure, but in case you do not know, you are responsible for the execution. God is spirit, He needs your body to get things done. Many of us get excited about a Word from God and we may even have everything needed in the moment to accomplish the dream and even step out and start moving towards the dream, but only diligence will get you to the destination. Excitement only lasts a while. It is like getting excited about hunting, and you do the hunting only for the carcass to either be taken away by wild animals, or you just leave it there to rot. The only way you will see progress in your life is through diligence.  

One thing I wanted to examine is why a hunter would go out but never roast his game? 

One thing I would also encourage you to consider is sometimes laziness could be a manifestation of ignorance or it could be you are ignorant because you are lazy. Could it be that the hunter may not even know how to roast his game? This, in some ways also exposes another issue here: a lack of preparation. If you are going to hunt, at least educate yourself on what to do after hunting. Many times, we undertake activities and projects without thinking them through and in the end, we waste resources on uncompleted projects. If you are going to hunt and live the carcass laying around, either it will rot or an animal will steal it from you. Sometimes roasting game may require you to go into partnership with someone who knows what they are doing. Let us for a moment assume that this lazy hunter did not have the tools necessary to roast his game. In order to mitigate loss, at the very east he could have reached out to his neighbor and ask for help. Someone may think to themselves, if I use my neighbor's equipment to roast the game, I may have to give them some of my game or give them another form of payment. Let me ask you this; would you rather have the game roasted using a neighbor's equipment and end up with maybe half of the game you hunted or risk losing all of it because you don't know what to do next? 

Don't let laziness and its different manifestations be the reason you miss out on enjoying the riches of your hunt.