What to Read When…You Struggle With Laziness

Ephesians 5:15-16 –So, then, be careful how you live. Do not be unwise but wise, making the best use of your time because the times are evil. 

Philippians 2:12-13 –And so, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, not only when I was with you but even more now that I am absent, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. 
  For it is God who is producing in you both the desire and the ability to do what pleases him. 

1 Thessalonians 4:1-12 –Now then, brothers, you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God, as in fact you are doing. We ask and encourage you in the Lord to do so even more. You know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For it is God’s will that you be sanctified: You must abstain from sexual immorality. 

Each of you must know how to control his own body in a holy and honorable manner, not with passion and lust like the gentiles who do not know God. Furthermore, you must never take advantage of or exploit a brother in this regard, because the Lord avenges all these things, just as we already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to be holy. Therefore, whoever rejects this instruction is not rejecting human authority but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit. 

  Now you do not need anyone to write to you about brotherly love, since you have been taught by God to love each other. In fact, you are showing love to all the brothers throughout Macedonia, but we urge you, brothers, to keep on doing this even more. 

  Also, make it your goal to live quietly, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we instructed you, so that you may win the respect of outsiders, and have need of nothing. 

2 Thessalonians 3:6-15 –In the name of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is living in idleness and not living according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know what you must do to imitate us. We never lived in idleness among you. We did not eat anyone’s food without paying for it. Instead, with toil and labor we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to any of you. It is not as though we did not have that right, but, we wanted to give you an example to follow. 

  While we were with you, we gave this order: “If anyone doesn’t want to work, he shouldn’t eat.” We hear that some of you are living in idleness. You are not busy working—you are busy interfering in other people’s lives! We order and encourage such people by the Lord Jesus, the Messiah, to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers, do not get tired of doing what is right. If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of him. Have nothing to do with him so that he will feel ashamed. Yet, don’t treat him like an enemy, but warn him like a brother.