The greatest enemy to our dreams is something called stagnation. A pastor came to our church a few months ago and said something quite profound. He said our nation was plagued by the spirit of stagnation! When I say “our nation” I mean it in its literal sense. I am talking about the nation I live in. I remember being so embarrassed by those words because he was speaking about us as a nation and I knew he was right!
What I wasn’t ready for was to find out I was affected as well. Stagnation had come into my home stealthily! I didn’t even know it at the time. Like a cancer it started eating away at my life. It was sucking the life from me and I didn’t even know it! Unannounced it came, silently it entered my life! One thing undone turned into two then three then four and so on! My mind didn’t register when something was left undone!
These are some of the things that needed to be done:
Meet with children’s band to discuss new plan of action for the New Year coming.
Set a date to have children’s seminar. Sit down and plan it.
Map out the song I am doing for Christmas service.
Get together with my friend to create a playlist for the kids.
Work on my book.
Read the books I have been given.
Start revising the material I was given for a course I did.
Change the light bulb.
Buy new dining room chairs.
Find someone who can repair the sofas in the lounge.
Crazy right…..!
But something happened this week, maybe it was the Holy Spirit bringing to remembrance the word I heard all those months back. I saw everything differently. I saw all the things in my life that were undone, the unread books, the damaged light bulb, and the unfinished projects!!! It drove me mad…..! Every time I saw something undone my blood would begin to boil. It was my fault, I was the reason! I had no one else to blame but myself!
If you didn’t know, Stagnant has a few other family members. There is Procrastinate and his brother Laziness! Arghhhh…..what a nasty family to be living with!
But no more!!!
There is one way to break the back of stagnation, one way that will silence it for good. Prayer is needed but it’s not the answer I am looking for. What I am looking for comes after prayer. The answer and the key to breaking stagnation is to DO!!
Get into a habit of working. That’s what I did. I got up and started working!! I felt good after that. I want that to be the norm! Stagnation is serious; it is a dream killer and must not be taken lightly! We need to pray and after that get up and do!!!
I liked this definition I found for stagnate:
(Verb) Deteriorate by lack of action.
Synonyms for stagnate:
Fester, hibernate, stall, decay, rust, stifle, vegetate, not moving!
There is no progress, no growth when stagnation is in your life. You are not effective when you are stagnant. It eats away at your potential like a leech. It kills you gradually. It really is the dream killer!
If this is where you are at in your life, will you then stand with me and make a decision to DO…..
No matter how hard it is, do something!
Pray then get up and act!
This dream killer is going down! Amen!!!
Rolain
kingspeech 
You go Rolain. Get that stagnate yuck drained! 🙂 Reblog this about mid-Feb. as a reminder for me. lol Good post.
Yep, it has to go!!! 😀
Mid-Feb….. !
Thanks Sue.
Yes, stagnation seems harmless at first but allowed to go too far it turns into laziness and killed dreams. Even at my young age when piles of work for college keep me up and running most of the time, there are still those moments when I find myself deeply tempted to procrastinate some task – insignificant or important – and I have to chastise myself for my laziness. It is so essential to remember that stagnation does not end at doing nothing; it decays us and leads to destruction.
As always, I’ve enjoyed reading your post today, Rolain. Thank you for sharing your personal anecdote about working and pushing yourself to accomplish great goals.
In Him,
Katrina
P.S. What is the book that you’ve been working on about? 🙂
Stagnation does not end at nothing, it decays us and leads to destruction!!! I love that because it’s true. Left to itself stagnation will destroy our dreams. It will destroy our effectiveness. We must fight it with all we have!
The book I am writing will be focused on being significant. God has not called us to be a statistic, He has called us to be significant. I will be exploring what that means.
Thank you for taking time to read my post Katrina! I appreciate your feedback always…😄
Great post!
Thank you!
Rolain
yes!!! i’v been there so mad at myself for the half way things…you can do it praying for the strength and focus are always at the top of my to-dos 🙂
It’s annoying when stagnation gets the best of you….!!
But this is a new day….it will be destroyed and we will be more effective. 😉
Rolain.
“You are not effective when you are stagnant. It eats away at your potential like a leech. It kills you gradually. It really is the dream killer.” A (sad) but big amen to this!
I totally feel like you, with the long list of things left to do, for myself personally, for ministry, for others around me… it seems that the bigger the list gets the higher my procrastination becomes. It’s so important to build good habits in our lives so that we stop putting off doing things that we should and in the process get a step closer in reaching our potential with God. I think distraction and laziness are tools from the enemy to get in the way of us fulfilling God’s will in our lives and the sooner we decide to do something about it the quicker we’ll stop wasting our lives away. Great post! I hope you enjoy your weekend Rolain!
May God help us shorten the to do list’s we have!!!! 😃I totally agree with you on building good habits to combat stagnation! Those are the habits that will guard us against laziness, being distracted, procrastination and so on!
The will of God will be accomplished in our lives and it will happen when we stand up against things like this!!
Thank you for your thoughts on this Anna.
Have a great weekend too……!
Amen, brother! ❤
The Dream-Killer is going DOWN!
It is going down and it’s going to hurt!!! 🙂
Thank you.
Rolain