"Finish your outdoor work and get your fields ready; after that, build your house."
Proverbs 24:27
At first glance this may appear to be an admonition to be more industrious, produce a good crop, work hard before taking it easy and building your house. Does it make sense to you to work on your house and not on providing food? Is this a proverb of PRIORITIES? What comes first in your life, taking care of the House or the Harvest?
There is a lot in Proverbs about the Sluggard, or those who do not work and therefore fall into trouble of all kinds.
The Sluggard is described as being lazy, stupid, foolish, hungry, empty, and searching. All outcomes of having little or no sense of priority and importance in life.
Proverbs 6:6 -Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!
Proverbs 6:9 - How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep?
Proverbs 13:4 – The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.
Proverbs 19:24 -- The sluggard buries his hand in the dish; he will not even bring it back to his mouth!
Proverbs 20:4 -- A sluggard does not plow in season; so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing.
Also see: Proverbs 21:25, Proverbs 22:13, Proverbs 24:30, Proverbs 26:13, Proverbs 26:14, Proverbs 26:15
But like most proverbs there is more to the message than "them that don't work don't eat." There is always a spiritual component to what we do with our day.
Proverbs 20:4 -- A sluggard does not plow in season; so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing.
Unless we're committed to finding God by preparing the fields, in prayer, Worship, Bible Study and service, we will find little spiritual food when harvest time comes. Don't expect your home will be built for you if you aren't preparing the fields for food.
A disciple of Jesus Christ is given work to do. Good, Joyful, fulfilling work that is a blessing to both the worker and the Master.
Prepare – to get ready for some activity, gift or celebration.
Are you preparing your fields to receive Christ's blessing or are you simply planning on moving into a mansion?
Proverbs 26:16 -- The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who answer discreetly.
I can’t help but think as I read and reread your definition of “sluggard” and the Proverbs in which the term is used, if there isn’t a more important question that should be asked rather than whether “I” am “preparing my fields to receive Christ’s blessing.” Perhaps the concern should not be what am I doing for “me” but what am I doing to help someone else. Perhaps the question should be first, “Given the fact that we know, based on God’s Word, which is Truth, that there are bunches and bunches of ‘sluggards’ in our midst, what are we, as ‘nonsluggards-in-progress,’ doing to reach them?” Second, the question should be, “Do these ‘sluggards’ see themselves as ‘sluggards’ who are in need of ‘becoming’ and in need of constantly striving to be more Christ-like and, therefore, ‘less-of-a-sluggard’?” Because, until they see that there is a need, there will be no change. Only when “we choose to ‘become’ do we become the enemy of the status quo, [for] to ‘become’ is to change and to bring change,” according to Erwin McManus in “Soul Cravings.” And the third question is, “Do we, who are ‘preparing our fields,’ and are a ‘work in progress,’ have the ‘intestinal fortitude’ compliments of the Spirit and Christ (‘I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me’) to not only tell the ‘sluggard’ that he is a ‘sluggard’ but to stand by him and help him learn how not to be one by our being faithful to that which we have learned while ‘preparing our fields through prayer, worship, Bible study, and service’?” It’s one thing to tell a ‘sluggard’ that he is one; it’s another thing to show him how not to be one and, then, to encourage him during the transformational process. Do we know how to speak to the ‘sluggard’ in grace as would Jesus? Do we find it as a mission and purpose of our lives to give to others what we have been given (“…to those who have been given much, much is expected”) so undeservedly by God’s grace; or do we choose only to hoard and to receive?
I am blessed to listen to a pastor every week who not only reminds me that I am a “sluggard-in-progress,” at which I take no offense, because in “The Truth there is healing”; but who also shows me how and encourages me to become less “sluggardly.” More importantly, however, he encourages me to go beyond myself “because I [have come to] believe that God has a purpose for my life,” and that, in true stewardship, God not only wants but expects me to “pay forward” the contents of my fields for the sake of others in order to “make disciples and make a difference” for Him and for His honor and glory.
Thanks for what you have taught me today and for the thoughts that you have, through this blog entry, encouraged me to think; and thanks to my pastor whose heart is so full of love for God and the desire to “save soul upon soul for Him” that he never gives up on his congregation and never stops striving to enable us, because of and through a knowledge and understanding of God’s Word and God Himself, to “become” — to become more Christ-like so that among the “rooms My Father has prepared for you” will be one for each of us, as we spend our eternity with God in “His Kingdom come.”