The Surprising Truth about Spiritual Laziness

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On the surface, spiritual laziness looks like not getting up early enough to pray and read your Bible, but it really goes much, much deeper than that. When I searched the Internet on this topic, the vast majority of articles and blog posts focused on the disciplines of quiet time, going to church, and serving others. And all of those things are critically important. But from my personal experience, those disciplines and commitments are almost impossible to stick with unless the root of spiritual laziness is dug up and destroyed. Not praying regularly, reading the Bible daily, and committing to regular fellowship with other believers are usually symptoms of something buried much deeper in our souls. It’s kind of like trying to losing weight. You won’t stick with a diet until your heart, mind, and soul are aligned and motivated to do so. You may persevere for a while based on sheer willpower and stubbornness, but it won’t become a lifestyle until the spiritual battle is won within the deepest parts of your being. 

So what is spiritual laziness if it’s not the failure to regularly implement the classic Christian activities and routines? To discover this answer, we can turn to the Biblical analogy of trees and fruit, which is used more than a hundred times throughout scripture. Jeremiah 17:7-8 says, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” In this verse, we discover that trust in God — a deep, abiding, unwavering, uncompromising trust — is the key to a fruitful life. That means that not trusting in God for anything and everything — i.e., worrying, trying to control outcomes, not submitting to God’s sovereignty — is at its core true spiritual laziness. Therefore, all of those wonderful and incredibly vital habits I mentioned earlier are the fruit of being spiritually active, but they are not the tree itself. The tree described in Jeremiah is fruitful because it’s rooted in the trust of the Lord, day and night, season after season, storm after storm. 

If you feel slapped in the face right now, please know that I am right there with you. If I were to reveal my list of weaknesses, laziness has never been in my top 10. If anything, I am at times too energetic and too driven. A former boss of mine once said to me, “Your level of energy and dedication to your work makes your co-workers nervous.” And she didn’t entirely mean it as a compliment, and now many years later I have come to understand why. I’ve also realized that what shows up in my work habits is just as spiritually-connected as what comes out in my sacred disciplines for the Lord. Outwardly I appear to have it all together. My actions indicate a preponderance of fruitful behaviors and activities, but they only mask a deep, soul-level weakness — an overwhelming need to perform, to do, to achieve — all because I have unrecognized or unacknowledged trust issues with God. This is why being busy with the tasks of proper spirituality or duties of religion has in the past left me feeling drained, empty, and disconnected from God. But until recently I never realized that laziness had anything to do with it. 

If this still doesn’t make sense to you, bear with me a moment more. The connection between laziness and mistrust is simply this: striving to trust God for everything takes great effort, put forth on a continual and consistent basis. And not just for a few weeks or months. Trust grows in layers throughout your lifetime. One decision or trial at a time. That means trusting Him even when we walk through long seasons of waiting, difficulties, or disappointments. When we don’t trust the Lord, it bubbles out into our lives in the form of busyness, trying to control situations or others, legalism, worrying, anxiety, escapism, the pursuit of accolades, or wealth, grumbling and complaining, and a whole host of other manifestations. Eugene Peterson, the editor of The Message version of the Bible puts it this way: “Sloth is most often evidenced in busyness … in frantic running around, trying to be everything to everyone, and then having no time to listen or pray, no time to become the person who is doing these things.” 

A recent mental health article in the New York Times illustrates Peterson's point beautifully. “Laziness: it isn’t a characteristic usually associated with the anxious. If anything, people tend to view the anxious as more active and motivated than normal, because they are more haunted by the specter of failure. And yet long experience has taught me that it is laziness ... that is the foremost enemy of the anxiety sufferer, for laziness prevents him from countering the very patterns of thought that make him anxious in the first place.” 

You may not be a worrier. Anxiety may be the last thing you resort to when times get tough. But if you struggle with anger or a need for control, then you also likely struggle with trusting God when difficult people or disturbing situations come into your life. While the article in the NY Times was written without any spiritual connotations or recommendations, it gets to the heart of the matter: every person has a choice to make when confronted with the daily decisions of life. We can make the effort to trust in God, let go of our own desires, and implement His divine recommendations for a healthy, fruitful life, or we can slide down the path of least mental resistance into our comfortable, but usually very detrimental, bad habits. This is why Paul says our faith is like running a race. He doesn’t say it’s like sitting in a meadow on a sunny day having a picnic. Our participation and consistent effort are required. Hebrews 12:1-2a says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder, and perfecter of our faith.”

One of the best parables of the Bible encourages us to risk everything we hold dear in order to walk closely with God. Our reputations, our lifestyles, our fears, and even our bodies are to be placed in His hands willingly. In Matthew 25:14-30 we read about the parable of the talents, which tells the story of a wealthy business owner who gives three employees each a sum of money and asks them to take care of it for him while he is away on a trip. Two of them immediately invested the money so that it would earn interest. The third one was fearful of what would happen if he made a mistake, so he simply buried the money for safekeeping. When the owner returned, this is what happened: “But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed?” And then the passage closes with this warning: “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” 

In commenting on this parable, Oswald Chambers said, “The person who is lazy naturally is always captious (i.e., sully or a whining). ‘I haven’t had a decent chance,’ and the one who is lazy spiritually is captious with God. Lazy people always strike out on an independent line.” Of course, our definition of independence is different today than it was back then (circa 1900). Today we typically use the word independence in a much more positive fashion than Chambers intended. His implication is that lazy believers chart their course separately from God’s recommended path. Therefore when it comes to spiritual matters, they can all too easily use the excuse of independence — or what they believe to be our unique situation — to justify laziness, rebellion, or fear.

Jesus, on the other hand, calls us to be utterly dependent on Him. As Chambers says in his writings, we should never forget that our ability to trust in God and to serve Him with boldness — despite the risks to ourselves — is not measured by what we are capable of or what we desire to do. Instead, our abilities should be grounded in the promises of God never to fail us, leave us, or ask us to do something that He cannot achieve through the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us. In fact, the greatest miracles of life come when we are at our weakest and trust God to perform His work within us for the benefit of others and His glory. 2 Corinthians 4:7-11 says, “We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.” So this verse implies that the weaker or more fearful you may be of what God has asked you to do, the greater the opportunity for Him to work miracles and display His glory.

Theologically, all of this may sound like solid truth to you, but if you’re still wondering what it all means for the day-to-day living and walking with Jesus, perhaps the following words will help you turn these spiritual implications into daily actions. As with most Biblical truth, there is great irony in God’s command to trust Him in Proverbs 3:5-6, which says simply: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.” This verse contains two actions for us to follow: trust and submit. We must participate in the process. To bear fruit like the tree, we must remain planted by the streams of living water. Yet to keep ourselves out of spiritual laziness and make the efforts required of this command, we must simultaneously learn to simply rest. Yes, you read that right. To overcome laziness, we have to learn to be still. When we build Sabbath margin into our daily lives — not just on Sunday — we will have the time to breathe, think clearly, and engage our complete being — mind, body, and soul — in the pursuit of Jesus. The tree grows because it is beside the river of life. We will only grow in Christ when we take the time to drink of His strength and learn of His wisdom. So while I said at the beginning of this message that prayer, Bible study, meditation, and worship are the fruits of trust, they also become the building blocks of greater and greater trust as we faithfully apply them. But we’ll never see them appear as long as we allow busyness to proliferate in our lives and numb us to the real laziness of our hearts.

When we allow laziness to dominate our decisions and motivations, we only end up serving a false god, and not the true King of Glory. Laziness, or not trusting God, like any other sin feels good for a season. Other than busyness, it often shows up in the forms of escapism, like mindless TV watching, endless social media surfing, or a myriad of physical indulgences and coping mechanisms, but when we look it square in the eye and call it for what it is, we realize it’s all about trusting the unseen God to do what He says He will do. Today, I would ask you, fellow traveler, where are you planted? Are you putting only a few roots down near the river of life, while allowing others to seek comfort in the tainted soils of self-reliance or personal comfort? If so, ask God to help you find them again, dig them up, and transplant them into His unending goodness and strength. It won’t happen overnight, but when you wake each morning, His mercies will be new and waiting to sustain you through the process.
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For Further Reflection and Daily Spiritual Journaling
The questions and readings below can be used for a single-day study or your daily quiet time throughout the week.
Day 1 - Describe in your own the words the difference between striving to perform for God (i.e. doing something out of duty or to achieve) and participating in God’s work in your life. Read Ephesians 2:8-9 and James 2:14-26. Why do you think you are sometimes motivated toward busyness or performance? What is God leading you to change? How? Write them out as a prayer to Him.
Day 2 - Read Lamentations 3:22-23. In what ways are you experiencing God’s mercies today or have in the past? How are they new or different to you now than they were yesterday? If you’re in a place of struggle right now, ask God to help you recognize and receive His mercies.
Day 3 - Read the parable of the talents in  Matthew 25:14-30. How are you similar to the good servants? In what ways are you like the fearful servant? Journal about why you think that is, and what the Holy Spirit is revealing in your heart.
Day 4 - Take some time to be still before the Lord today. Begin by reading Proverbs 3:5-6 and then meditating on it. Ask God to interrupt you at any moment with what He wants to whisper to your heart. For more about practicing stillness and what it means, check out this blog post.
Day 5 - Spend some time reflecting on your schedule and your commitments at work, home, church, in your community, and other volunteering roles. Read Luke 10:38-42. Go to God in prayer and ask Him to reveal areas where you are too busy. If you have time, read this short blog post “Busyness is Not a Badge of Honor.”

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