We are all called for a purpose. When we come to know the Lord Jesus Christ we come to the place where we have the capacity to know and realize that purpose. Note that I said, capacity.
The Apostle Peter teaches us about God that "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence,...(2 Peter 1:3). In other words, Christians are not only saved with the certainty of a secured life in eternity but, being indwelled by the Spirit, His word becomes all that we need to live godly. What the Lord has called us to He has graciously provided to us the ability and capacity to live it out. Therefore, when we fail to live out God's mission in and for our lives it is not that we lack ability. Instead, it is because we make deliberate the choice not to. That is the way of the sluggard.
The sluggard will never achieve their destined purpose for the Lord in life because, as Proverbs puts it,
The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly
supplied (Proverbs 13:4).
The term soul speaks to the essence of the man. It is who he is at the core of his view of life. Being a sluggard is like being imprisoned with the inability and unwillingness to escape. He is stuck but it is by his own will. Notice, also something very interesting about the sluggard: he craves but he will not execute and, therefore, gets nothing. Consider these truths about the sluggard:
He has ambition(s), desire(s), dreams and a vision for his life that he fully believes would be satisfying, rewarding, productive and honoring to the Lord.
He longs to love God and to be a champion for the Lord and His glory.
He wants to glorify God and will state that this is the calling of all who love Jesus.
He is hungry for the Word, and wants to plumb the depths and the riches of its truth to be filled with its delight. Not only does he desire it, but he will tell others that he desires it and that they should too.
He craves God, significance and purpose.
All of the above is true about the sluggard because God made him, and all of us, that way. Then for Christians, God re-created us with the ability to execute His will on earth, but the Christian sluggard just wont do it and, therefore, will never succeed. We know this because the second part of the Proverb tells us what brings success and who will achieve it: those who are diligent.
The diligent are those whose lives are characterized by perseverance. We see another layer about the sluggard, now: he will not go beyond comfort and, if he assess that gaining something will cost him more than he wants to give, he simply will make excuses for not making a move. Such laziness, we should know, always ends in a variety of disasterous ways. Consider two consequences of the sluggard from these Proverbs:
"How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a
little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
and want like an armed man" (Proverbs 6:9–11).
Poverty is the result of laziness. While it is true that Lord makes rich and poor it must not be thought, however, that all poverty is of God's doing. Some are poor because their habits are poor; they are poor in mentality and poor is work ethic. This is not merely financial poverty. It also includes poverty of spirit, relationships and purpose. It just may be that who you can be and or should be, has not been realized because you are living out the consequences of sluggardom.
Like the above Proverb 12 affirms and adds to it concluding,
"The hand of the diligent will rule, while the slothful will be put to forced labor" (Proverbs
12:24)
The sluggard, because of his slothful habits, will always live an existence that is below his ability and calling. He can be wealthy and poor at the same time since wealth can cause a man to forget his God and trust in his own wisdom. This is a habit of the sluggard. Wealthy people can and do live way below their true value. We must not lose sight of the reality that the Bible holds out success as wholistically as one's relating to the Lord, not their material or external wealth.
Sluggardom, therefore, is not living in and out the purpose the Lord has given us. What is worse is that he will rationalize this lesser existence as something of the sovereign plan of God. We should be careful, however, not to blame God - the One who gave us everything we need to be successful - for our impoverished existence that is the fruit of our laziness.
Therefore, the real test of whether I am a sluggard is not what appears to be true about me (the externals) but whether or not I am living out God's purpose, intention and design for my life. The sluggard will not live this way because finding or discerning God's purpose for their life demands a waiting, lingering, praying and persevering, all of which the sluggard is unnerved by.
So, is your life characterized by living out God's design for your life or not? If not, are you willing to strive for it or not? The answer to that question and the actions that follow are proof of whether you are in the slumming land of sluggardom or driven in the land of the diligent.