How to Fight Laziness

00:00:00.000 | We received an email from an anonymous man who writes, "Pastor John, I thank you

00:00:09.560 | for your ministry. I'm a regenerate Christian who formerly lived the

00:00:12.360 | homosexual lifestyle. God used your theology of suffering and brokenness to

00:00:16.400 | overcome my sexual desires for ungodly things, but now a new struggle has come

00:00:20.160 | upon me, the struggle of laziness. Do you have any advice on how to fight this?"

00:00:25.000 | Yeah, it might sound strange, but the first thing I would do is open the hood

00:00:30.640 | and check the engine. And what I mean by that is, does he have a thyroid problem?

00:00:37.840 | Is he sleep deprived? Is he eating right? I mean, really, a lot of things in the

00:00:44.280 | Christian life that are perceived as spiritual shortcomings are in fact

00:00:50.320 | physically related. I was so weary about ten years ago, and I couldn't explain why.

00:00:57.400 | I went to the doctor and he said, "Well, you know, I don't think there's any

00:01:01.760 | problem, but let's check your thyroid." Man, within 12 hours, I think it was early

00:01:07.480 | the next morning, he calls me back. He said, "You are profoundly hypothyroid. I

00:01:12.960 | don't know how you're functioning," he said. And so he stuck me on this

00:01:17.440 | Synthroid medicine, and things have been different. Now, if I had tried to

00:01:22.120 | spiritualize that, I would have missed it entirely. That here's a

00:01:26.400 | thyroid, my thyroid is dead, and there's no amount of reading my Bible that was

00:01:33.560 | going to change that. So that's the first thing I do. But he's really not asking.

00:01:37.240 | He's asking, "I think I've got a sin issue. Can you help me with it?" And my

00:01:42.040 | approach to that would be, number one, I would start at the beginning of

00:01:46.640 | the Bible and say, "First of all, get a good theology of work. Work is not a

00:01:52.880 | curse. Frustrating work is a curse. The Lord God put the man in the Garden of

00:02:00.960 | Eden to work it and keep it, and that's before the fall. So get a robust, good,

00:02:06.760 | positive theology of work. Realize that God put us on the planet to be

00:02:14.640 | makers, co-creators, co-workers with Him. We are His workmanship, created in Christ

00:02:22.680 | Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand. Whatever your hand finds to

00:02:28.680 | do, do it with all your might. Do it as to the Lord and not to man. So all those

00:02:34.040 | verses are meant to just feed into a robust theology of looking upon doing

00:02:41.520 | during the day, getting up, being productive, making something happen,

00:02:44.880 | creating something, cleaning a room, washing the car, fixing the brakes,

00:02:50.240 | writing a computer program, tending a sick person, making a good meal. All these

00:02:55.400 | things are blessed by God as something He wants His co-makers and co-workers to

00:03:02.880 | do. And after I got a good, robust theology built in of work, I think I'd

00:03:07.920 | point him to some warnings about being a slacker. You know, if anyone is not

00:03:11.880 | willing to work, let him not eat, Paul said in 2 Thessalonians 3. And then

00:03:19.240 | maybe the last thing I would say, you know, working hard is availing yourself

00:03:28.760 | of the grace of God in you. And I'd point him to one of my favorite verses, 1

00:03:34.000 | Corinthians 15.10, "By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was

00:03:40.880 | not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them." In other words,

00:03:45.680 | grace produced work in me, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with

00:03:52.440 | me. So I'd try to help him discover how to apply your will to a task in hard

00:04:03.680 | work in such a way that as you do it and after you do it, you are sensing and then

00:04:11.440 | knowing, "God is at work in me." Work out your salvation for, "God is at work in me."

00:04:17.240 | This is what I think gives the work life its greatest meaning. So that'd be

00:04:24.040 | my approach, and you know, we go one by one and try to discern what's the real

00:04:28.640 | need of the person, but those would be the biblical principles that I would

00:04:34.160 | dig into with him. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this

00:04:38.120 | podcast. Please email your questions to us at

00:04:40.240 | askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. At DesiringGod.org you'll find thousands of

00:04:43.600 | other free resources from John Piper. I'm your host Tony Ranke, thanks for

00:04:46.760 | listening.

How to Fight Laziness

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