It Will Be Done, Despite My Procrastination

Sometimes when I feel like God wants me to do something, I will think about it for a little while and slowly begin to undermine its importance. But I’ve learned that if God wants to organize something, he will most certainly see to it that what he wants will happen. Usually, this means giving me an extra not-so-subtle hint that what I thought was not the most important thing ever was indeed very important to him and that he still needed me to take part in his plan.

I have many examples in my life where this has happened before. For example, not long ago, I was thinking how great it would be if someone I knew could come into my school and be a chapel speaker sometime. This person was a very wise Christian and I thought that he might have a good message to share with the students at my school.

I never got around to asking him if he would like to come in sometime to speak, though. A few days passed. Then a few weeks. Then a month. I still hadn’t inquired. Then, one day while we were talking, he told me that he would love to come into my school sometime and speak.

“Okay, God.” I said immediately in my mind. “I guess that I was supposed to ask, wasn’t I?” After that, I committed to talking to the administration at my school and organizing a day that he could come in and share some message of wisdom, spiritual guidance, or part of his own testimony.

Another instance was while I was on a study abroad in Scotland. A speaking competition was announced at the school I went to. The guidelines stated that any students could participate if they wrote a five or six minute speech of any topic. Initially, I thought that would be a neat opportunity to share God’s word and proclaim the Good News. It seemed too ideal to be true: an audience that had come willingly to listen to whatever I chose to speak about. Everything seemed to align just right. But I never got around to asking for more details.

Just like my previous example, a few days went by. Then a week. Not quite a month, though. Before my procrastination could keep me for much longer, my English teacher, who had only met me one time (that is another story in and of itself), took me aside in the middle of a completely different class and asked me if I would be willing to speak at this competition. He believed that I had enough confidence to speak in front of a crowd and thought that I would have something unique to share being that I was from another country.

“Okay, God.” I said again. “I’ll do it.”

That night, I went home and wrote out my entire speech. I condensed the Gospel down to about five minutes in a way that I knew everyone in the audience would be able to understand, regardless of any (or no) previous exposure to Christianity. On the day of the speaking competition, I had several people come up to me afterwards asking me questions and thanking me for being bold about my faith.

Overall, the lesson learned here is that God will organize what he wants organized. My procrastination and laziness is not acceptable when it comes to God's kingdom. The next time that I feel the Holy Spirit probing me to do something, I will do it without delay.