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What Is My Assignment From God?

hat is my assignment from God? This is a question that many resonate with because God has given each one of us a direct assignment. When many in the body of Christ think of their God-given assignment, they make the mistake to understand it on a broad level that feels unreachable.  As we will unpack today, an assignment is something that God uses to start us on the path of our destiny. 

After Jesus had risen from the dead, and spent 40 days walking with his disciples, He gave them disciples an amazing assignment.  

“Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.  When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.  Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:16-20)

The disciples were given a direct assignment from Jesus to go and to “make disciples of all nations.”  How were they to go about accomplishing this assignment?  By “teaching them to obey everything” Jesus had taught them.  This assignment is known today as the great commission.  Why did Jesus give them this assignment? 

It is in the Father’s heart for His children to partner with Him.  In the beginning, Adam co-labored with God in stewarding the garden of Eden (see Genesis 2:15 ).  This assignment was given so that Adam could discover God’s heart and love for the earth.  Today, in the same way, God gives His children unique assignments to carry out so that they can release the love of God on the earth. 

Jesus Modeled The Perfect Assignment 

When Jesus walked the earth, he modeled the perfect assignment.  As one reads the Gospels, they understand Jesus had a clear mission - to usher the kingdom of heaven into the earth.  This mission released various assignments from God to destroy the works of the devil.  1 John 3:8 makes this assignment clear.  “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” 

As Jesus modeled the perfect assignment, he invited others to share in this responsibility.  Many times, after healing the sick or performing a sign to inaugurate the kingdom of God, he would release the recipients with a direct assignment.  

“Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”  She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” (John 8:10-11)

When the woman who was caught in adultery was brought to Jesus, she discovered something she never expected.  In the aftermath of being forgiven and unjudged by the Son of God, he gave her a direct command, “Go and sin no more.”  

In order to release her into her God-given destiny, Jesus commanded her to walk away from her former life and to follow the direction of Jesus.  By her sinning no more and obeying the word of God, she would be released to walk in a manner that she had never once walked in before.  

Assignments Fulfill Our Purpose   

When we discover our assignments from God, we partner with Him into his divine plans for our lives.  The book of Jeremiah speaks to the intentions of God’s plans over us.  

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

God has a plan for our lives.  These divine plans are rooted in our welfare and give us a wonderful hope and a future.  Although this is an amazing promise in scripture, when many read this verse they forget that it is a conditional promise, according to the preceding verses. 

“Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:12-13)

After God reveals to us His divine plans, He gives us a direct assignment.  Those that embark upon His plans of welfare must take on the assignment to seek Him with all of their heart.  By obeying this command, one embarks upon the road of their own destiny.  

This passage of scripture makes it clear, the path of our purpose is found by saying yes to our God-given assignments.  Saying yes to God’s assignment allows His purpose to begin working in your life.  When Jesus called his first disciples, he gave them clear assignments to propel them into their future.  

“And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Matthew 4:19)

Jesus could of stop after his initial calling of “follow me”, but he didn’t.  Why?  Because Jesus wasn’t looking for followers alone, he was looking for co-labors in the kingdom of heaven.  Just as God gave Adam tasks to steward the garden, so Jesus gave his disciples tasks to steward the kingdom of God.  

Jesus didn’t ask the first disciples to just simply follow him, he gave them an assignment, “to become fishers of men.”  This assignment set them on the path of their destiny.  Years later, the disciples would produce the first fruits of the great commission by spreading the gospel around the modern world.  Imagine if Jesus would have never given them an assignment, could they have taken on their destiny? 

God gives us assignments to steward His divine purpose for our life.  Sometimes, His assignments make no sense to us at first (think of Noah), but we must obey them.  Obedience releases a grace of faith that unlocks our destiny and fulfills our assignment. 

Today, know this - God has called you and has a plan for your life.  The Lord has assigned an amazing purpose for you. It can only be unlocked through your response to His assignments and developed over the course of your own spiritual life. One thing is certain, His assignments are meant to fulfill the words of Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer , 

“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10)

Kyle Echols

The christian work ethic: unlocking the power of diligence, finding redemption: will god forgive me for watching bad things, is baptism a one-time event or can you get baptized twice, conditional love: exploring its meaning from a christian perspective, join our newsletter and get the latest posts to your inbox, heavenly insights: exploring what heaven looks like in the bible, exploring the age of jesus when he started preaching: key insights, unveiling the truth: age of jesus at baptism explained, sponsored song.

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What to Do When You’re Overwhelmed with Late Assignments

Katie Azevedo September 30, 2024 ADD/ADHD , grades , homework , time management

By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed.

Whether you miss class because you’re sick, have an excused absence, or just choose to sleep in, missing school almost always results in missing assignments. And missing assignments lead to late assignments.

Something else that causes late assignments? Not doing them on time. (I know, right?)

An occasional late assignment won’t cause much damage, but it becomes a problem when you ignore your missed assignments and let them accumulate until you’re so overwhelmed that you do nothing. It’s when you do nothing that the situation gets worse, the assignments become more late, the new assignments keep piling on, and before you know it you’re in a bad situation.

In this blog post, I share some strategies for what to do when you’re overwhelmed with late assignments. 

What to Do When You’re Overwhelmed with Late Assignments

I’ve designed the following strategies to not only help you recover late assignments but also to prevent you from falling even more behind with work that continues coming at you.

1. Keep Going to Class

When you’re overwhelmed by late work, it’s tempting to skip class. It’s even more tempting to skip class if your assignments are late because you missed class. (Ahh, the cycle!) 

But the worst thing for your grade and for your stress is to miss more class.

Remember, your whole goal here is to make progress on late assignments while not accumulating more late assignments.

A good way to ensure you’re not going to miss more assignments is by going to class.

Even if you’re tired, even if you’re stressed out, get to class. When you miss information delivered during class, you miss the information that’s essential to doing current and upcoming work. You might be tempted to tell yourself you’re going to use that time to work on late assignments, but that’s not the approach that works, and that never happens.

2. Make “The List”

Now that we’ve established you won’t skip any more classes, it’s time to make The List.

The only way to complete all our tasks is to know what those tasks are. Think about that: If you don’t know what you’re supposed to do, then what the heck are you going to do?

You know it’s not enough to keep your homework assignments in your head or even just in your learning management system (LMS). That does not work, and that especially does not work when you’re overwhelmed.

When my private clients are overwhelmed by late assignments, we go through the following steps together to create “The List.” Some of my students find this process stressful and we often need to take breaks when it gets intense. But then we get back into it. If this happens to you, take a break and come back to the process. If it’s too overwhelming to see a list of all your late work at once, then when you’re done making your master list, you can fold the paper over to expose only a few assignments at a time.

Here’s what you do to make “The List”:

• Get a piece of paper. Draw a line down the middle.
• Go into your LMS and click on each class, one at a time. Open every posting between now and the date of your first late assignment. For some students, that might be weeks in the past. Do it anyway. Write every late and current assignment from your LMS on the left side of your piece of paper. In the right column, write the due date.
• Once you’ve written down all late and current assignments from the LMS, it’s time to go into your email. Some teachers send emails with information about classwork to students who miss class; you need to check all emails from teachers to see if they contain important details about assignments. Add them to your list.
• Finally, email your teachers to ensure you didn’t miss anything. Here are my tips for emailing teachers (including a template you can copy). Or feel free to copy and paste the email template below (how to email your teacher about late assignments):

Dear Mr./Ms____, I understand that I have several late assignments and I’m working hard to create a plan to complete them and turn them in. I believe the following assignments are missing: name of assignment name of assignment name of assignment If your records indicate I’m missing anything else, please let me know. Thank you for your understanding and patience. Sincerely,  (your name)

3. Temporarily Put Other Activities on Hold

It’s time to face the reality that completing late work while also completing current work takes a good amount of time. If you’re a busy student, you might find this truth annoying.

But if you’re overwhelmed and you honestly do intend to complete your late assignments (that’s worth mentioning, as some students choose not to complete late work, taking the low grade that comes as a consequence), then you need to MAKE the time to do the work.

Maybe you need to temporarily cut back on work hours. Say no to babysitting. Get dismissed early from practice or rehearsal. Cut back on social events. This is all temporary, but it’s what we have to do when we’re overwhelmed by late assignments.

Note: You may need to reassess how many activities you’re involved in if you’re falling behind in your schoolwork at least once a month despite your best efforts.

4. Get or Give Deadlines

I know this tip sounds a little odd, but read on for the explanation.

You need to either GET deadlines from your teachers, or you need to GIVE yourself deadlines on your own.

Let’s start with GETTING deadlines. Every teacher has their own late work policy you have to follow. This is especially true in college. And it is your job to know what these policies are.

What does this mean? It means you might have different deadlines depending on whether your work is late due to an excused absence, an unexcused absence, or simply because you chose not to complete your work on time. 

When you’re making “The List” in step two, it’s important to communicate with teachers and get clear about their deadline expectations for submitting late work.

But in some scenarios, your teachers may not give you a specific deadline — so that’s something you have to manage on your own. This is where the GIVE part of the tip comes in.

I’ve seen this happen with students who are so monumentally behind with assignments; sometimes the teacher just says to “turn it in as soon as you can as long as it’s before grades close.”

If that’s the situation you’re in, then you need to make your own deadlines. Your work won’t get done if you don’t have deadlines.

So get out a calendar. Use my free w eekly planner . And try to put every assignment from “The List” into a specific spot on your calendar. If this is too overwhelming, you can do it just one week at a time. If you don’t have enough space on your calendar or in your day, see tip 3.

5. Use the 2:1 Ratio

I teach this strategy inside SchoolHabits University . I created this concept after 20 years of teaching. Over this time, I realized that the biggest problem my students had with catching up on late work was dealing with their current assignments at the same time. So I created the 2:1 ratio as a way to gradually tackle the backlog while staying on time with current assignments.

Here’s how it works.

• Complete two current assignments
• Complete one late assignment

Essentially, for every two current assignments you work on, you complete and submit something overdue

6. Prioritize Work Connected to Upcoming Tests

If you have one or two missing assignments, you don’t often need to prioritize them — just get them done. However, if you have three or more missing assignments, you might want to prioritize which ones you tackle first.

There are a few ways to look at this, and it depends on your work preferences and your specific situation. But you have some options for how to prioritize your late assignments:

• Time-based: Complete the assignments in the order that they were due; start with the oldest
• Deadline-based: Complete late assignments according to their deadlines
• Difficulty-based A : Complete the smaller, simpler assignments first to get some quick wins and build momentum; then move on to more complex tasks
• Difficulty-based B: Complete the larger assignments worth the most points first; then complete the smaller tasks

Regardless of which approach you take, I always suggest prioritizing the assignments that are related to upcoming tests and quizzes. 

For example, let’s say you have a calculus test in two days. You have a missing French project, a missing chemistry reading with questions, and a missing calculus worksheet. Which late assignment do you do first?

Answer: The calculus worksheet. Why? Because doing the worksheet will help prepare you for the upcoming test. (Homework and class work assignments are designed to prepare you for assessments.) So if you don’t do the calculus worksheet, you’ll be less prepared for your test. Then you’re going to have one more thing on your to-do list: re-take your calculus test.

How to Prevent Late Assignments in the Future

Regularly falling behind in your assignments is a sign of a larger issue. 

If you’re missing classes because of anxiety, depression or other health issue, please seek the advice of a physician. 

If you’re missing assignments because they’re hard and you don’t know how to do them, you’re either in the wrong class placement or you simply need more help understanding the material. You likely need to meet with your teacher, ask a friend for help, or seek outside tutoring. 

If you’re missing assignments because you don’t care about them and are unmotivated to do them, then read these tips for how to do boring things.  

Also, consider the reality that the only way assignments get done is if we do them. This is a fact of life. You can procrastinate and avoid them all you want, but if you don’t want the bad grade that comes with late work, you’ve got to put your feelings aside and take action anyway.

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Why it’s hard for students to “just turn in” missing assignments, and how to get them unstuck

Oct 17, 2024 | Blog

With the end of the semester on the horizon, many students may feel overwhelmed by low grades or feeling behind in some of their classes.

As a parent, it can be stressful to see that your student has overdue work, or get notifications from their teacher that they’re missing assignments. 

It’s even more frustrating when you’ve told them over and over again how important it is to “just turn it in”…but the work is still showing up as missing.

The reality is that no matter how simple it might seem to an outside observer, doing missing work is almost never as easy as “just getting it done.” If they haven’t done the work yet, there’s a good chance that something is getting in their way. 

If you can figure out what the problem is before jumping in to help them (or make them) do the work, you’ll dramatically increase your chances of success.

In our experience, there are usually 3 main reasons students resist submitting their missing work…even when it seems like “just turning it in” would be SO much easier!

Reason 1: They think it won’t make a difference

Once the due date for an assignment has passed, students often de-prioritize it and move on to focus on upcoming assignments instead. It’s tempting for students to justify this by thinking “there are lots of other assignments, missing one or two won’t matter.”

But what they often don’t realize is that because of the way most grading scales are weighted, even one or two zeros can have an enormous impact on their grade. Showing students the difference it makes to turn in just a few assignments can increase their motivation to get the work done. 

Here’s an example of the difference it can make to turn in just a few missing assignments before the end of the semester:

Overall grade with 3 missing assignments: 78.3%

Overall grade when assignments are turned in: 90.1%

It’s hard for students to calculate these averages in their head, so it can be really powerful for them to run the numbers and see firsthand exactly how much they have to gain from making up their missing assignments.

When we do calculations like this with our students, they are almost always surprised by how much this makeup work could improve their grades, and feel much more motivated to submit the assignments when they can see for themselves the difference it will make.

Reason 2: They think it’s too late

Another reason students often resist doing makeup work is that they think it’s too late to get credit for it. 

Even if they’ve done the math and know that submitting the work would make a difference in their grade, they still won’t want to turn it in if they think the teacher won’t accept it.

Especially for introverted or anxious students, it can be very intimidating to have conversations with their teachers. They might think they’ll get in trouble for asking to submit their work late, or worry that the teacher will say “no.”

The good news is that many teachers are flexible with their late work policies and allow students to turn in overdue assignments even when it is past the “official” deadline to submit them.

So if students can find the courage to ask for help, there is a good chance that their teachers will respond positively and allow them an opportunity to make up the work.

For students who are struggling to reach out to teachers, we often find it is helpful to roleplay these conversations in coaching sessions if they’re not sure what to say, or work with them to email their teachers if they’re not sure what to say.

Reason 3: They feel overwhelmed

Students who are behind on their work often have challenges keeping track of due dates, managing time, breaking down complex assignments, prioritizing work, staying focused, or following through with plans….which is why they fell behind in the first place. 

These challenges can become even more daunting when they are behind in their classes, and trying to complete makeup assignments on top of their normal workload.

This can feel so stressful that a lot of students avoid or put off doing makeup work even when they   know   how much it would improve their grade.

For these students to get their work submitted, it’s essential to help them find ways to…

• Break down the assignments so they have a realistic plan for getting the work done that they’re confident they can actually follow through with
• Lower the stress they feel while they are doing the work so they will be less tempted to avoid it
• Visualize the progress they are making so they can see that their efforts are making a difference

Providing support

When students have a lot of makeup work to complete, having some additional support to help them work through it can be invaluable. 

For some students, this may mean finding a tutor to help them with the content they didn’t understand when their teacher was first presenting the material. 

For other students, having a family member or friend nearby as a source of moral support to keep them company while they are working (and a motivating reward to look forward to as soon as the work is completed) can be enormously helpful.

Other students may benefit from working with an academic coach to help them get unstuck and started on their missing work. Sometimes, having someone else who is not a family member step in to help can reduce stress and conflict at home and make it easier for students to take the steps they need to get back on track in their classes. If you think this type of support would be helpful for your student, please feel free to reach out and we’ll be happy to help!