Don't Read This.

You’re not going to like this.

A couple of years ago we released an album called Pilgrims.

Pilgrims are people on a journey. They are taking steps every day. Some people tell me they’re on a journey, but it was a year ago since they took their last step. We accomplish everything by taking one step at a time, every day.

This is the part you won’t like...

Lazy people look for the big win, the breakthrough, the deal of a lifetime, the hit song, their big break. Sure, these things happen sometimes - but rarely. Don't count on them.

The pathway of the lazy is the fastest route to poverty. You might not be lazy all over, but most of us are lazy in one, or two areas.

Exercise doesn’t work if you do it once or twice a month. Walk the walk pilgrim. Every day.

Dieting doesn’t work if you don’t drink soda and eat pizza once or twice a month. Every day stay off the junk. Walk the walk pilgrim.

There used to be a moving walkway under the runway between two terminals in the Chicago airport. A woman's robotic voice kept repeating, ‘Keep walking, keep walking, keep walking’. I hear that woman’s voice every now and then in my head when I just want to not do what I know I need to do. There’s a lot of discouragements, distractions, temptations along the way. ‘Keep walking’.

Defeating laziness is not easy, it takes work. Work is kryptonite for laziness. The Book of Proverbs, the wisdom book has a lot to say about laziness. Proverbs tells us that your love affair with your bed reveals laziness. So get out of bed, then make your bed. Proverbs also tells us that lazy people are full of excuses.

Pro 22:13 The lazy man says, "There is a lion outside! I shall be slain in the streets!” 

There’s no lion, and if there were, what happened to unselfish bravery. Get up, get out and do something about it. Save someone else from the ‘lion’. Some people call this person a negative thinker. I think it’s deeper. Maybe the roots of negativity are in lazy soil. It’s not just about changing your mind. It’s about changing you. If you’ve always got a reason why it can’t be done, why it’s too dangerous, why it’s not going to work, why it’s too hard, check your reason saying this. Is it because you’re trying to get out of working hard?

Embrace work. Love work. The reward of work is not wages. The reward is the work itself. Learn to love work. Strangely I've always loved work. It's like a gift from God to love work, even if the job is crummy.  I’ve had some of the worst jobs imaginable. In 1976, I cleaned a meat factory a few hours every night with a high pressure hose and a cleaner agent that dissolved my skin. I was alone the entire time. I’d finish the night with blood, fat and meat all over me. It wasn’t that pleasant, but I didn’t hate it. I did the best job I could. I knew it was putting food on my family’s table and paying the rent. I collected rubbish and cleaned the toilets at the camping ground at Riversdale Beach in New Zealand as a young adult. Putting your arm down a blocked toilet drain makes you gag. And what you pull out is not pretty! But it was fun, ripping down the beach on the tractor with stinking rubbish tins on the back tray, tipping them into the piles of garbage at the tip. I was a rubbish collector when I was at university too, in the days when people had open fires and put ash in their bins. My face and clothes were black by the time I got home. But that’s what work is. One of the most satisfying feelings in life is coming home tired from a full day of work.

In running a church we’ve dealt with people getting off drugs, trying to get a new life. Therapy, counselling are good, but once they start getting up and going to work every day, accountable to someone else for their business, they build more character than the wage at the end of the week does. Walk the walk pilgrim.