The prominent desire not to do anything; to just sit and relax all the time, a sluggish feeling can be attributed to many things. Sometimes malnutrition or feeling sick cause sluggishness. Sluggish is a lost to respond, the lost of exertion it is synonym to torpid which is having lost motion or the power of exertion. The Psalmist recognized his state of being as that of a beast; sluggish (Ps. 73:22). When you observe the cattle of the field grazing in order for them to move to a grassier place they need cattle men or dogs to move them, and that is how the Psalmist was feeling. Yet, he understood that no matter how sluggish one might feel God will never leave you. There are reasons why we feel sluggish and one of the main reasons has to do with fear. Fear of what might happen if you move will cause sluggishness.
Proverbs 26:15
The slothful hides his hand in his dish; it grieves him to bring it again to his mouth.
Now, Salomon identifies a characteristic of sluggishness in Proverb 26 and it is that a sluggish person will hide their hands. Their hands are either in their pockets or down on their sides. You pull a sluggish by the hands and their hands just drops. Working with sluggish people is overwhelming and tiresome and most of us prefer to stay away. It delays the work at hand and it affects God’s purpose in our lives; it does not deter his purpose just delays it. Gideon with out knowing found himself dealing with a sluggish nation. God’s deliverance of his people was at hand and Gideon was the vessel he was going to use. Israel was surrounded by the Median army who size was described as many as the sand grains. So, after several encounters Gideon had with His Omniscience put together a huge army, but God was not comfortable with the size. And, so he commanded Gideon to take the army to the waters to drink. The army drank water, but the group divided themselves into two; the knee and the lap drinkers. The lap drinkers used their hands to bring the water to their mouths and the knee bowed to the waters; they hid their hands. God chose the lap drinkers which were three hundred to defeat the enemy because no sluggishness was found in them. The rest of the army because of fear displayed sluggishness and did not part take in God’s deliverance of his people.
Paul wrote to the church to never move or waiver from the work of the Lord (1Cor. 15:58) because doing work for the Lord is never in vain. Sluggishness is an enemy that slowly creeps on us and if left unattended it can become a disorder (1The.3:11); a spiritual stronghold. Combined with fear sluggishness comes up with many excuses not to attend the things at hand (pr. 73:22). Many of us see a lion standing in the way of ministering to our spouses, children or family members; they see the worst thing that could happen. We begin to put our safety first and faith last when it deals with taking a chance in the Lord. Sluggishness makes us see things that are not there; lies, and cause us to delay the blessing of the Lord in our lives. We need to become lap drinkers; not afraid to move our hands.