I am doing a great work and cannot come down. – Nehemiah 6:3, AMP

Russ Warner, CEO of ContentWatch, was quoted in a July 2012 Forbes.com article titled Employees Really Do Waste Time at Work. Warner cited a 2012 Salary.com survey on the matter of wasted work time, and this is what he had to say:

According to the survey, a majority of employees regularly spend time surfing the Internet on websites unrelated to work… Specifically, the survey revealed 64 percent of employees visit non-work related websites every day at work. Of that group, 39 percent spend one hour or less per week, 29 percent spend 2 hours per week, 21 percent waste five hours per week, and only 3 percent said they waste 10 hours or more doing unrelated activities… Not surprisingly, socializing on Facebook occupied 41 percent, while 37 percent use LinkedIn, and 25 percent are shopping at Amazon…The younger, more tech-savvy worker demographic appeared to be the biggest group of recreational Web surfers. Of employees between the ages of 18 and 35, approximately 73 percent reported spending time inappropriately at work on a daily basis.

As Warner went on to say, “Because ‘time is money,’ every hour wasted has a direct negative impact on the bottom line.” In other words, the work that is supposed to be done is delayed in being completed.  In some instances, it may not be completed at all. In either case, money is lost due to lost productivity.

In Nehemiah 6, the enemies of God’s work summoned Nehemiah not once, not twice, but four times to leave his work and join them for a discussion about Jerusalem’s future.  Each time they called upon him, Nehemiah responded the same way, “I am doing a great work and cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave to come down to you?” (Nehemiah 6:3, AMP) Nehemiah knew that his enemies meant to do him harm so that the work of God would cease, and we should know that our work for God is in just as much jeopardy if we come down from our great work to placate our enemies: Sloth, Boredom, and Apathy.

Whether the work in question is on the job-front, the home-front, or the church-front, God has entrusted us with work to do. The work will only get done when we put our heads down, stay-focused, and put forth the same response Nehemiah did when the distractions come:

I am doing a great work and cannot come down.

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