Matthew 25:24-28

Then he who had received the one talent came and said, ‘Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours.’
“But his lord answered and said to him, ‘You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed. So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming, I would have received back my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents.

Phew!! This would be a good one, so let’s take a deep breath and dive in. As we start, let’s unpack 4 concepts:

Work
Time
Accountability
Productivity

1. Work is good and was created by God; Adam was commissioned to work even before the sin that led to the fall of man. The nature of work is such that it is not fixed, it evolves and changes with the demands of life, but it is required to yield something
Genesis 2:15
Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work the ground and care for it.

2. Time used well is great and it too was created by God and it is the way we measure our earthly lives. Time is a finite resource, it caps off at 24 hours a day and no one is able to manufacture more time. In dealing with time, we all must learn to appreciate and use what we are given. Though a constant, no one is able to guarantee the next second
Ecclesiastes 9:10
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

3. Accountability is the understanding that each of us owes an explanation of how we have used the resources that the Creator has put into our hands
John 9:4
As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. The night is coming, when no one can work.

4. Profitability is the lasting and eternal impact we get from proving our “accountability” by having applied ourselves in “time” to our “work”

Matthew 25:20-23

So he who had received five talents came and brought five other talents, saying, ‘Lord, you delivered to me five talents; look, I have gained five more talents besides them.’ His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’ He also who had received two talents came and said, ‘Lord, you delivered to me two talents; look, I have gained two more talents besides them.’ His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’

Procrastination tells two fundamental lies

1. LIE #1: you have absolute control over time and so it’s okay to allot to yourself a piece of the future while having no guarantee that you’ll ever see it.

If I may take it one step further (with no intention of offending), laying claim to something you cannot guarantee is a false sense of confidence in yourself and it is low key indicative of a failure to understand how “tiny” each of us in the grand scheme of things and how we fit into the concept of eternity. It is also a bold and arrogant disregard of our accountability to the God who sits in Eternity and governs over the affairs of men

2. LIE #2: you will get done later what you won’t get done now. Take life easy, there’s no hurry

Mark my choice of words “won’t” implies that you have the ability but lack the willingness, this is different from “can’t” which speaks more to lacking the ability and not the willingness. Taking one more step with no intention of offending, the absence of the willingness to work while having the ability is laziness, and laziness is not a hallmark of a disciple of Jesus Christ. Laziness tells the Lord, that you have no interest in being profitable

In the text at the start of our conversation, we catch ourselves listening in on the end of the parable of the talents. That parable teaches us the following:

Each one of us regardless of our backgrounds or situation is given 2 things in our lives
Installment (Work)
Interval (Time)

Each of us is required to produce 2 things with our lives
Increase (Accountability)
Influence (Profitability)

In burying his “work” for later, that third servant failed in “time” to show any accountability and lost out on any chance of profitability… such is the scorecard of anyone who procrastinates

I understand that at times, life can get busy and cluttered, and somethings things fall through the cracks, but what sets the non-procrastinators apart from the procrastinators, is an understanding that we have work to do with no control over time and a Master to whom we are all accountable