Posted on 11/21/2021 10:26:51 PM PST by Pilgrim's Progress
“He that loveth pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips the king shall be his friend. The eyes of the LORD preserve knowledge, and he overthroweth the words of the transgressor. The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets” (Proverbs 22:11-13).
Slothfulness undermines an awful lot that we Christians struggle with these days. I can't help but wonder how much of the Laodicean spirit of lukewarmness, and just preoccupation with sin in the flesh in the world, is really just laziness, just slothfulness. The attitude of, “I don't want to fight this fight, so I'm just not going to fight it.” How many times have you woken up in the morning and didn't feel like starting the day in prayer, so you didn’t, right? Okay, you had time, or you could have made time. What stopped you?
You get up and brush your teeth and go to work even though you don't feel like it. Do you pray when you don't feel like it? Some people don't go to church when they don’t feel like it. Do you know what that is? That’s slothfulness. Anything will do.
“The way of the slothful man is as an hedge of thorns: but the way of the righteous is made plain” (Proverbs 15:19).
This verse says that the lazy man gets tangled up in thorn bushes and the Lord sets thorns in his path. It's a very uncomfortable thing. On an episode of the Survivor show, this guy was in Africa and he told his companions, “Hey, I want to show you something.” He walked up to this hedge looking thing out in the middle of nowhere and backs up against it and can't even pull himself off of it. He's got his shirt caught in it and has thousands and thousands of these little crooked thorns stuck all over him. It’s like once you get caught by them, they are like Velcro, and you can't get out without ripping your shirt or the skin off your back. Well, there is also slothful man's hedge of thorns. Once he gets into his bed, it is very hard for him to get back out of it.
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