The ant is a small creature without human intelligence, yet it teaches us an important lesson in preparing for its future. Ants treat each coming winter as a natural disaster. If they are caught above ground during the freezing temperatures, they will die. An ant colony must store a surplus of food during the summer so its members can survive the winter below ground on their provisions. Ants live today as if it is tomorrow.
We could learn a lot from the ant. Scripture tells says so in Proverbs 6:6-8, “Go to the ant you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, they have no captain, no overseer, or ruler, yet they prepare their supplies in the summer and gather their food in the harvest.” The ants live today as if tomorrow depends on it. How much more would we benefit if we lived the same way?
If you want to secure a better tomorrow for yourself, you must act with prudence today. Prudence is thinking that what you do today will impact what you face tomorrow. Prudence is the first step toward learning to live your life free of the desire to consume all that you have. God wants us to be prudent because otherwise someone will use our greed and laziness against us. Ants work hard in the summer to store up for the times when they cannot work at all. They are smart enough to know if they don’t do this, they are likely to die. The devil doesn’t want us to have the wisdom of an ant. Instead, he wants us to be just smart enough to believe we can get our needs met from the people who are less wise and lazier than we are. He makes us believe we can be satisfied by taking from those who are unwilling to prepare for properly for themselves. The devil wants you to be a smarter lazy than the lazy people around you.
But God says it is smart for you to work hard with your own hands at things that do not include taking from the hands of others. God wants you to prepare yourself today for the life you want tomorrow. The ant doesn’t take from other ants. The ant takes from what doesn’t belong to any other thing. It is not prudence when we take advantage of the unwise for our personal gain. Rather, it is deception and laziness.
God also doesn’t want us to be sluggards in the way we live. This type of living is wasteful, unprepared living. It’s the type of living in which everything we face daily must happen perfectly for us to have what we want. Life is not perfect, and it is not going to play out perfectly for us unless we work at it. The ants prepare for a disaster before there is a disaster. They are not sluggards. There are no slackers in the ant colony.
Often, we create our own disasters because we do not prepare ourselves for the successes we want in life. If you learn to get to work on time or to do your homework, you may learn that you can find a job, keep a job you like, or finish school with the degree you want. Life gives back to the prepared all that they put into it, but life passes sluggards by because they are too lazy to prepare. Sluggards are not ready when their ride comes.
If you want to live in favor, wisdom and understanding, God wants you to be like an ant. He wants you to be accountable and responsible for how you live. The ants have no king, no overseer, and no ruler, yet each ant contributes its part to the preparation of the whole colony. Often, we do not have what we want because we have not shown ourselves to be responsible and accountable enough to have those things. When we learn to be accountable for how we live, wisdom and knowledge will come to us, and we will live more abundantly. God wants us to get caught up doing today what is needed to secure a great tomorrow. God wants us to rise up from our laziness, unfold our hands, step out of the poverty of our desires, and step into the prosperity of someone who lives today as if it is the last tomorrow they will see. If the ants can do it, then, with God’s help, so can we. Live a Delivered Life. Love you.
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