The plan of the diligent lead surely to
abundance but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.” Proverbs 21:5(NIV)
At age 6, my sister and I used to play
grown-ups. We would invade my momma‘s wardrobe and wear her clothes, shoes and
even her bra (I‘m feeling shy).
I used to get a dress, pad it up on my chest and
wear her bra on it. I would then wear a top belonging to her (mom) and go stand
in front of the mirror. I would stand there admiring myself and trying to sound
like an adult. I dreamt of becoming a grown-up like mom. I was quite in a haste
to become an adult.
When I grew up, I realized there was nothing
about adulthood to hurry into. Adulthood is filled with responsibilities and
cold realities of the teacher called experience.
I‘m a grown woman now, with actual mammary
glands rather than a cloth –in momma‘s-bra. However, the story didn‘t end up so
smoothly for some girls who tried to hurry into adulthood too.
I heard of a girl whose mammary glands are
conspicuously unequal. This was because she was pulling them as a teenager. She
couldn‘t wait to look like a lady.
Like this girl, some people don‘t survive the
harsh effect of hastiness.
We want to grow rich over night, have twenty
million followers on twitter in one week, win a Grammy on a debut single and
build an estate before we turn thirty! The media puts so much pressure on us.
They make it look like if we aren‘t getting much facebook likes or raking in
millions on our first business attempts, then we aren‘t among the happening
people.
Crap!
#RollingMyEyes
Hastiness is a silent killer of the future.
Many things that you can hardly wait to get are
actually waiting in your future. It is better to wait and build yourself for
the future than to prematurely call it forth.
What's the rush about?
What is pressurizing you into believing that if
you don‘t get married before you turned 25 as a lady or 30 as a man, then you
are late?
Who or what defines late by the way? Did they
form you in the belly of your mother? Did they assist the creator in writing
out an impeccable plan for your destiny?
Who do you belong to anyway?
If you belong to the world, then permit them to
pressurize you into rushing anything.
If you belong to God – the one who formed and
owns the heavens and the earth then, let him take you into the great things
reserved for you (long before the world begun) in his time.
If you enter the glory of your future today, what glory would you
ride on when the future comes? Nothing is worth the rush!
There is a reason we need to allow ourselves
mature and get sufficient wisdom for things. Sometimes, we think that we are
ready and mature when we actually are not.
God is the author of time and He in his wisdom,
has scheduled various things at certain times in your life. Please don‘t try to
help yourself get them before time.
Those who attempted either lived with the brutal
scar of hastiness or died by its deadly blow.
People don't ordinarily become hasty. Some
things are responsible for it. The triggers below are responsible for a hasty
spirit.
THE TRIGGERS
1.
Comparison
We often don‘t know what weight of burden this
seemingly normal mental exercise leaves on our hearts. When you compare
yourself with others, you gradually drug your mind into a state of falsehood.
Your mind magnifies the achievement of the other person and belittles yours.
At this point, it becomes hard for you to see
that your destiny is unique and so are your processes.
There is a process mapped out for you. This
process is a well-thought path, founded on God‘s wisdom to give you an expected
end. See this
“When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with
themselves, they are not wise.”2 Corinthians 10:12(NIV)
This simply means you are being foolish when you
compare yourself with others.
Comparison leaves you feeling proud or inferior.
When it leaves you proud, you unconsciously place a lock on your untapped
potential. When it leaves you inferior, you are pushed by its daunting voice to
hasten up an achievement.
Never compare yourself with others.
2.
Time Consciousness
I definitely do not expect you to be laid back
and unconcerned
about how well your life is doing at each point
in time. However, I do not support the nursing of a false feeling that time is
against you. Truth be told, Sometimes when we felt that time was against us, it
was actually not time yet. When you get too conscious of your age, what year it
is and all that, you are prone to being hasty.
So if you feel like you are behind schedule, go
to God and ask for wisdom on how to measure up. Let Him know what you desire
and make up your mind to trust Him with your life. Trusting God means that you
will let Him do what
He thinks is best at His own time. Ever heard of
this scripture?
“He hath
made everything beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can
find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.” Ecclesiastes
3:11(NIV) Emphasis added
This scripture just shuts down my adrenaline of
hastiness each time I read it. It tells me that even if I sat all year, I will
never completely understand what God is making out of me. Now this is why you
and I need to trust in the creator‘s wisdom.
"What sorrow awaits those who argue with
their Creator? Does a clay pot argue with its maker? Does the clay dispute with
the one who shapes it, saying, 'Stop, you're doing it wrong?' Does the pot
exclaim, 'How clumsy can you be? Isaiah 45:9 (NLT)
Never forget that you are the clay and God is
the experienced and skilled potter. Let him do it in His time.
3.
Undue Pressure
Pressure is a mental and emotional compression
from an external source. The earlier triggers mentioned can result in this.
However, other people such as our parents, pastors, mentors, spouses or/and
children could put undue pressure on us.
When you feel like you have to please someone or
live up to their expectation/ standard, you become pressured into finding the
quickest way out. Do not let anyone pressurize you into making hasty decisions.
You would be the one to bear the brunt in the end and they will serve you with
a cold, ―You weren‘t Smart enough.
Sometimes I feel pressured too. When I notice
that I‘m getting under pressure‘s cold crushing fist, I withdraw into the arms
of my loving Christ.
For each time I went to the King, He had just
the right thing to say.
He wants to talk you out of all that pressure
and lovingly talk you into His unfailing design for your life in a way that
brings great peace.
Do not entertain pressure.
4.
Fear of Failure
This is responsible for most hasty decision that
people make. You probably fear that if you waited for God's timing, you would
end up poor, single, unknown or even helpless.
Listen, that‘s a huge lie. Satan‘s greatest
scheme is the conviction of your mind to believe a lie against God. He wants
you to think that God is partial, won‘t care about you, and won't do what you've asked for. If only you knew that God is willing and able to do for you beyond
all you can ever ask, think or imagine- Ephesians 3:20
Listen darling, what we fear is often a mirage.
The real thing is in your favor!
Rather than feed your fear of failure, feed your
faith for success!
5.
Inferiority
This is often a direct product of comparison.
Inferiority makes people chase offers they haven‘t verified because they long
for something or someone to validate them.
I have seen ladies marry men who appeared
wealthy at first only to discover that those men were living on loans. When the
loan comes crashing their men, they launched into a depth of poverty they never
dreamt about. They fell victim because they felt inferior around their friends
who married wealthy husbands.
You won't feel inferior to anyone or anybody if
you learnt to draw your worth from God's word. Stop waiting for the media to
endorse you. Stop waiting for the world's system to validate you. Let God‘s
word validate you. When you let God's word do, you would soon become the envy of the others.
You are worth more than you know.
THE BANE
6.
Poverty
Contrary to popular opinion, hastiness or being
smart as the world puts it, leads to poverty. We see people hastily invest into
a business and in the end, all they had is gone. Another group hears of money
doublers and because they can hardly wait to get rich, they sell their
priceless properties and invest in the magic of the money doublers. I‘m yet to
hear of anyone whom money double-ing made wealthy. These hasty actions take away
rather than give back.
“The plan of the diligent lead surely to
abundance but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.” Proverbs 21:5(NIV)
7.
Mistakes
Have you tried writing in haste? Did it give you
the best of your writing? I guess you mis-spelt some important words, right?
That‘s what happens when we try to write the story of our lives in haste. We
end up signing deals with conditions that are against us, getting married to
people who are a complete no-no, and a whole lot of things that we may never be
able to undo. The sad thing about life is that we do not have an eraser which
can undo some of the grave mistakes we make.
An eraser is there for a mistake made with a
pencil, a tipp-ex is there for a mistake made with an ink (though it leaves a
mark), what eraser is there for the mistakes made with your life?
“Enthusiasm without knowledge is no good; haste makes mistakes.”
Proverbs 19:2 (NLT)
8.
Dissatisfaction
Haste promises a false sense of relief and
satisfaction. However, as soon as we give into its pressure, we end up grossly
dissatisfied. It is then we realize that we had lost more and may never be able
to get it back.
Haste has left a lot of people feeling empty and
helpless. You don‘t want to live the rest of your life feeling so, do you?
9.
Regret
How I hate this feeling of sadness over
something that already happened.
Regret can eat up your mind, ruin your energy
and kill your zest for the future.
Why hurry into something that you might regret?
Let God lead you into your perfect future. Let
him have the reins.
THE ESCAPE PLOT
1.
Be patient. The cure for
hasty spirit is patience. Patience is got from shifting our eyes from
the cause of our anxiety to the faithfulness and reliability of
God.
“I lift
up my eyes to the hills- where does my help come from? My help
comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” Psalm 121:1/2 (NIV)
2.
Accept the truth that God knows
better than you do. He is wise and you can trust in his infinite wisdom
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean
not on your own
understanding.” Proverbs 3:5 (NIV)
2.
Know that God loves you and rely on His Love for you.
“And so we know and rely on the love God has for
us.” 1 John 4:16 (NIV)
Adapted From The Book 7 SIGNS YOU ARE SABOTAGING YOUR FUTURE BY Anne Atulaegwu (Copyright 2014)
Committed to your Fulfilment
Anne Atulaegwu
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