Man, the part of the chapter that I want to focus on is beginning in verse number nine
where the Bible reads,
Whom shall he teach knowledge, and whom shall he make to understand doctrine?
Them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts.
For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line,
here a little, and there a little.
And the title of my sermon this morning is Being Consistent.
Being Consistent.
And in this chapter, there's a lot of wrath and damnation because there were a lot of
bad things going on in the nation at that time.
And God is asking the question here, whom shall he teach knowledge?
He's basically saying we have to start over with a whole new generation of young people
that would grow up.
I mean, the ones who are sucking the breast right now, he's saying, are the ones that
could be taught here a little, there a little, precept upon precept, line upon line, so that
they could actually be a godly generation and actually be preachers that would teach
the Word of God.
And the message that's coming across here is that you don't become knowledgeable about
the Bible overnight.
You don't become a great Christian overnight.
It takes time and it takes just a consistent line upon line, precept upon precept, here
a little, there a little, in order to grow like that.
But it's like that in all areas of life.
Great works are done a little bit at a time.
Great works are done by people who just day in, day out, consistently do a little bit
here and a little bit there.
I can't point to any one church service in my life where I would say, you know, that
was the sermon that changed my life.
That was the church service where my whole life changed and everything turned around.
The only moment that you may have like that in your life is just your salvation, which
for me didn't happen at church, but I was saved in my own home.
Obviously salvation is a major turning point.
But after salvation, my Christian growth has been the way most people's Christian growth
has been, which is just a little here and a little there.
It's just been a consistent Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, learning a
little bit more, growing a little bit more, getting a little bit closer to the Lord.
And so it's not just one dramatic change, but it's a little bit at a time.
That's what the Bible is talking about.
Now flip over to Deuteronomy chapter 17 verse 18.
Deuteronomy chapter 17 verse 18.
And the Bible says here in Isaiah 28, for precept must be upon precept.
Precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little.
He's just saying, look, that's just the way it is.
The Bible has 1189 chapters in it.
You can't just take a crash course in the Bible and just learn it all overnight or just
read the Cliffs Notes or something.
You need to get it a little bit at a time.
But if you're consistent, if you consistently go to church once a week, then at least you've
got 52 hours of Bible preaching that you've listened to that year.
And if you go to church three times a week, you've got 156 hours of Bible teaching.
You can learn a lot in 156 hours of listening to the Word of God being preached.
You know, if you read your Bible every day for 15 minutes a day, that might not seem
like a lot, but 15 minutes a day adds up to a lot.
And in the course of a year, you'll have read your entire Bible cover to cover in just about
15 minutes a day.
And so just that little bit of reading every day, now you've read the whole Bible.
Do that five years in a row, you've read the whole Bible five times.
And let me tell you something, 99% of Christians out there have never even read the Bible one
time cover to cover.
And they've been in church for decades.
Even if they would have read it for two minutes a day, they'd be done by now if they'd been
consistent.
So that shows you the power of being consistent.
If you can just consistently read it 15 minutes a day, you're done in a year.
In 10 years, you've read it 10 times.
The average Christian has not even read it once.
In fact, I would venture to guess that 99% of Christians have not even read it once.
And then you wonder why they're easily deceived.
You wonder why churches are filled with people who don't know the Bible, they don't know
doctrine.
It's because they're not doing the reading.
We need to be consistent in our Bible reading.
Even if you're only reading a little bit and you're consistent, you'll do better than
the guy who just binge reads for two hours once every three months.
Now look down at your Bible in Deuteronomy 17 verse 18.
It says, And it shall be when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write
him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests of the Levites,
and it shall be with him.
And he shall read therein all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord
as God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them, that his heart
be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment to
the right hand or to the left, to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom,
he and his children in the midst of Israel.
Now that's a lot that daily Bible reading will do for you.
I mean, look how much the Bible says that reading the Bible is going to do for you.
What's it going to do for you?
Well, according to verse 19, it's going to teach you to fear the Lord.
It's going to teach you to keep all the words of his law and his statutes, to do them.
It says it's going to keep you humble, right?
It'll stop your heart from being lifted up in pride above your brethren.
It'll keep you from turning aside from God's commandments.
It's going to prolong your days.
It's going to prolong your ministry.
It's going to prolong your career.
It's going to prolong your children.
I mean, it's going to do great things for you, and he didn't even tell you how much
you have to read.
Right?
I mean, look, if you just read it every day, you're going to be blessed.
You're going to get something out of it.
Now, look, I'm for reading a lot, amen?
But you know what?
If you consistently read it every day, you will gain great benefits from just that consistent
reading of the Bible.
Go to Acts 19.
Acts 19.
And this principle of being consistent, this is how you get your Bible reading done.
This could go for Bible memorization, church attendance, prayer, soul winning, or you could
even apply these principles even just to your job, to other goals for your career, studying
a foreign language, just your diet, your exercise, you know, just being consistent goes a really
long way.
And the way to get great works done, the way to get huge tasks accomplished and to reach
high and lofty goals is by breaking them down into small pieces and just consistently chipping
away at it.
You know, a lot of people over the years have looked at this book, the Bible, and said,
you know, oh, man, that's just so long.
How could you read the whole thing cover to cover?
Here's how you read it cover to cover.
You break it down into 365 bite-sized chunks.
And then it's not such a big deal.
I mean, if I said to somebody, hey, can you read the entire Bible cover to cover this
year?
Some people might say, I don't know, that's a lot.
Hey, do you have 15 minutes a day to read the Bible?
Anybody would have to say yes to that.
So the thing that will make it possible, though, is consistency.
You got to get in the habit of consistently doing it every day.
So how do we get a great big job done, a huge task that seems impossible?
You get it done by breaking it into small pieces and consistently chipping away at it.
You know, I think about what we were just talking about with Brother Garrett a moment
ago about knocking all the doors on the Indian reservations.
That's a pretty huge task.
But when you start breaking it down, it becomes doable.
You break it down.
OK, there are 21 Indian reservations.
And then we've already finished more than half of them now.
We're well over halfway through.
And then when you start looking at each tribe, some of them are small, but some are huge.
The two biggest ones are the Navajo reservation and the Tohono O'odham reservation.
And when you look at those at first, it's kind of an overwhelming task.
But when you get out the maps and you start breaking it down and writing down the populations,
you get out a calendar, and you start making plans, and it can actually be done.
And it's not done in one dramatic move.
But it's just every single week there's a group of people from our church.
Sometimes it's eight or nine people.
Sometimes it's 25, 30 people.
Sometimes it's 100 people when we have a big push.
But the point is, if we consistently chip away at it, we'll get it done.
And you know what?
When we're done with the Indian reservations, we're not going to stop there.
We're going to do every little town, every mining town, every small little community.
And we were already working on that before we started the reservation, so we've already
cranked out a bunch of those.
And it seems like a gargantuan task to knock the doors of six and a half million people
in the state of Arizona.
But we're deep into that goal, and it is possible, and it can be done.
It's broken into small pieces.
Now look at an example from the Bible.
Acts chapter 19 verse 8, it says, and he went into the synagogue and spake boldly for the
space of three months, as the apostle Paul, disputing and persuading the things concerning
the kingdom of God.
But when divers were hardened and believed not, but spake evil of that way before the
multitude, he departed from them and separated the disciples, disputing daily in the school
of one, Tyrannus.
And this continued by the space of two years, watch this, so that all they which dwell in
Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.
Now this is not talking about the continent of Asia, this is talking about what we know
as Asia Minor, or the modern day nation of Turkey.
But if you look at a map, you'll see that Turkey is a pretty big place.
And so even though we're not talking about the whole continent of Asia here, we're talking
about a pretty big country.
And it was pretty well populated even back then, it's pretty well populated now.
And we know that of course in the book of Revelation, there are those seven churches
in Asia, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, those
are all places that are in modern day Turkey.
And in the space of two years, the Apostle Paul was able to accomplish this huge task
of evangelizing a whole nation, of evangelizing a whole area in two years, all that dwelled
in Asia Minor there, heard the gospel.
How did he do it?
Well the way that he did it was just by consistently, daily, reaching people with the gospel, daily
preaching the gospel.
Because it says at the end of verse 9 there that he disputed daily in the school of one
Tyrannus.
But you say, how are you going to reach all of Asia, one guy, preaching in one place?
Well that's not what happened, because it says that he separated the disciples right
before that.
Because he separated the disciples, so they basically split it up, okay, you guys are
going to go here, you're going to go here, you're going to hit this city, you're going
to hit this town, we're going to hit this area.
They broke it down, he delegated it out, and they just consistently worked on it for two
years, and in two years they accomplished this amazing task.
Now I can't even point to any example of this in modern times.
I can't point to, and maybe I'm wrong, but I can't even point to a historic precedent
of a church knocking the doors of every house in their state, of any state, of the 50 states.
I don't know if it's ever happened, hopefully it has, but I don't know.
But when we go back to the Bible we see where it definitely did happen, just through the
consistent work of people who had diligence and patience and kept at it.
Now I want to talk about those two words right now, because if you're going to be consistent
at something, and if you're going to accomplish a big goal over time, you're going to have
to have patience, and you're going to have to have diligence.
You're going to have to have the attention span to stay with that goal for two years,
or five years, or ten years, or whatever the case may be.
So you're going to have to have these two attributes, patience and diligence.
Go to James chapter 5, and while you're turning there I'm going to read for you the dictionary
definition of patience.
What does it mean to be patient?
Well the dictionary has this definition, quietly and steadily persevering or diligent, especially
in detail or exactness.
So this dictionary definition says you're just quietly and steadily persevering.
Isn't that sort of like just line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there
a little, you're just reading your Bible, chapter by chapter, a little bit here, a little
bit there, and you're just quietly, steadily persevering, chipping away at it, getting
it done.
That's what it means to be patient.
Or when it comes to a great soul winning campaign, or when it comes to any other goal
that you have in your life.
That's how you get it done.
How do you memorize chapters or books of the Bible?
Just one verse at a time.
Just line by line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little.
I've run into all kinds of ordinary people who tell me, hey I memorized the whole book
of Matthew.
That's a huge book.
I run into ordinary people all the time that talk about memorizing great sections of the
word of God.
It's not that they have some gift of a photographic memory or that there's some kind of a mutant
to be able to do such a thing.
It's actually just that they're diligent and patient.
That's all it is.
It's not talent.
It's not a miracle.
It's called patience.
They just steadily worked on it a little bit every day.
I mean just do the math.
You learn one Bible verse every day and keep retaining what you've learned.
At the end of the year, you've got 365 Bible verses done.
That's longer than the book of Hebrews.
Give it two more months, you'll have the whole book of Revelation.
So it's really doable to those who are consistent, to those who are patient, to those who are
diligent.
That's what it means to be patient.
Look what the Bible says about patience in James chapter 5 verse 7.
Be patient therefore brethren, under the coming of the Lord.
Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth and had long patience for
it until he received the early and latter rain.
Be ye also patient, establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
So here we are compared to the husbandman, the guy who's farming the vineyard.
And of course Christ talks about how he's like a man who went away into a far country
and he left behind the laborers, the farmers, the husbandmen, the workers to farm the land,
to till the land while he's gone.
And the Bible says look, we don't know when he's coming back but we are to patiently occupy
until he comes and just keep on plowing that field, keep on planting those seeds, keep
on reaping that harvest and be patient.
And what is patience?
It's waiting.
Waiting.
He said he waits for the precious fruit of the earth and hath long patience for it.
Now look, patience not only does it mean to just steadily plug away at something and get
it done, it also means being willing to wait for results.
You see a lot of things in the Christian life, they don't yield instant results.
They don't give an instant gratification.
So patience says I'm willing to invest in reading my Bible cover to cover even though
it's going to take me a year to get it done, even though it's going to take me six months
to get it done, even though it's going to take me a long time and I'm going to have
to be committed for a long time or whatever the goal may be.
What about diligence?
Go back to Proverbs chapter 10 and while you're turning there I'll read this from the dictionary.
This is what diligence is.
To be diligent, according to the dictionary, is to be constant in effort to accomplish
something.
Now listen to that, constant.
What does that word mean, constant?
If you're doing something constantly it means you're doing it all the time, right?
Something that's just constant, it means it's happening nonstop.
So if I'm doing something constantly, that'd be like if I do it every day, if I do it on
a daily basis.
That'd be like if I'm consistent with it from week to week, month to month.
I'm just constantly working on it.
So diligence is constant in effort to accomplish something, attentive and persistent in doing
anything.
So notice that under patience and diligence, attention to detail came up under both definitions.
Part of this is because the opposite of being patient and the opposite of being diligent
is being hasty and being hasty is when you're in a hurry to get something done so you let
the quality drop, the attention to detail goes out the window because you're not patient
or diligent, you just want to crank through it and get it done.
You're hasty, you're not doing a good job.
So the Bible is teaching us here when it talks about being patient that we need to be willing
to wait for the results.
The opposite of that is haste where we just sloppily get things done and then we reduce
the quality of what we're even trying to accomplish.
And then the next dictionary definition under diligent was done or pursued with persevering
attention, painstaking.
Now listen to what the Bible says about being diligent.
Proverbs 10 verse 4, he becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand.
But the hand of the diligent maketh rich.
Chapter 12 verse 24 of Proverbs, the hand of the diligent shall bear rule, but the slothful
shall be under tribute.
So what's the Bible saying?
He said in 10.4 that you're going to become poor if you deal with a slack hand, if you're
a slacker, if you're not consistently working hard at things, you're going to become poor.
But the hand of the diligent maketh rich.
You're not even just producing wealth for yourself but for the people that you work
for and the people around you.
And then he says the hand of the diligent bear rule.
What does he mean by that?
He's saying that's who's going to become the supervisor.
That's who's going to get the promotion, the guy who is consistently there, attention to
detail, painstaking, working hard, not hasty, not lazy.
Chapter 12 verse 27, the slothful man roasted not that which he took in hunting, but the
substance of a diligent man is precious.
Look at chapter 13 verse 4.
The soul of the sluggard desireth and hath nothing, but the soul of the diligent shall
be made fat.
What's he saying?
You're going to accomplish things through diligence.
If you put your nose to the grindstone and you work hard day after day and you're consistent,
you will get things done.
You will accomplish your goals.
Proverbs 21 5, the thoughts of the diligent tend only to plenteousness.
Proverbs 21 5, but of everyone that is hasty, only to want.
So in that verse, what's the opposite of being diligent?
Hasty.
And you've known people like this on the job where they just do everything in a hurry.
And they're just sloppy and they get it done.
And yeah, maybe they're the first one done because they did a sloppy job, because they
cut corners, because they took shortcuts.
And you know, maybe in the short term that works for them.
But in the long run though, it's the diligent who's going to win.
It's the diligent who's going to succeed.
Slow and steady does it.
And it's the guy who is constant and consistent that gets the most done in the end than the
person who's just hasty.
And sometimes on a job you can get away with being hasty for a little while and it takes
a while before people figure out what you've cut corners on and what you weren't doing.
And eventually that all comes out.
Look at chapter 22 verse 29.
It says, see as thou a man diligent in his business.
He shall stand before kings.
He shall not stand before mean men.
Mean there means average.
Like when we talk about the mean, the median and the mode in math class, mean man is just
saying like he's not just going to stand before just a bunch of nobodies.
I mean this guy is going to stand before kings.
Now if you remember, the definitions of patience and diligence from the dictionary talked about
quietly and steadily persevering.
So when you're quietly and steadily persevering, you don't necessarily feel like you're the
superstar and you might not necessarily be in the limelight, but you know what, if you're
consistent with that, that will bring you before kings.
That will bring you great places.
That will bring you to great accomplishments over time when you patiently do your time,
pay your dues and work hard.
So let's make this a practical application.
So we've seen some biblical principles here of being willing to wait for things, being
diligent, don't be hasty, line upon line, here a little, there a little, daily reading
the Bible.
Paul and his disciples daily evangelized and they were able to do this amazing work where
they evangelized an entire gigantic region just through being consistent.
So let's apply this practically to our lives.
What are some things that we want to be consistent with, right?
Because the sermon is about being consistent.
Well obviously we already talked about you want to be consistent with Bible reading.
We also mentioned soul winning.
Even just going out soul winning once a week, I mean that's going to add up.
You're going to get a lot of people saved if you just consistently go once a week.
Even if you're not a big superstar, even if you're not going on the missions trips, even
if you're not going on the Indian reservation trips, but you're just consistently showing
up to your soul winning time week after week, year after year, you will accomplish a lot
for the Lord in your lifetime just through that consistency.
But if you just go soul winning when you feel like it, you know weeks, months could go by
and then it's like where did the time go?
You got to be consistent.
How about prayer?
You know that's something we want to be consistent with, right?
Every single day going before the Lord in prayer, letting our requests be made known
unto God on a daily basis.
What about just with your job?
You know just being consistent.
Growing up every day, working hard, and maybe there's some goal at your job where you want
to excel and go beyond where you're at right now.
You know what?
You got to work at that.
Somebody asked me the other day, they said, how did you excel at your job back when you
were doing fire alarms and you got into management and stuff like that?
I told him, I said, well, I said it wasn't really that hard of a field to excel in because
it was just, it was kind of a niche field.
There weren't really a lot of people in it.
A lot of people didn't really know what they were doing.
So it wasn't that I was really doing anything that special.
It just wasn't really that hard to excel in that field because he was comparing it to
electrical and you know, electrical is more competitive because there's a lot of electricians
so it's going to be a little harder to climb to the top of that ladder.
So I was explaining that, you know, it's a little easier to climb to the top when you're
in these kind of niche fields.
But I told him, I said, you know, I used to take the manuals home with me at night and
I would spend a little time every night reading the manual.
You know, sometimes I would set up a fire alarm panel in my living room and just fool
around with it and just program it, you know, just to learn and just to get better.
I remember one time I signed up for a class at the community college for fire sprinkler
groups.
Even though I was a fire alarm technician, I was like, well, this class is probably going
to tie in a little bit with what I do.
So then I just took like a semester night class, once a week, I'd go down there for
two hours.
Everybody else in the class was trained to be a firefighter.
You know, that was the only reason why you would be in this class and everybody's looking
at me like, why are you, what, why are you here?
You're not a firefighter?
You don't want to be a firefighter?
You know what?
But I went there and I learned about fire sprinkler systems in that class and that helped
me for the whole rest of my career because it was like I was kind of the guy who knew
about the fire sprinklers, how, you know, so because there's crossover between fire
alarm and fire sprinkler.
So I was always kind of looking for ways to get ahead.
I remember going to the library and just getting a book about how telephone systems work because
at our alarm job we were constantly tying into the phone system and there was a lot
of confusion of like, you know, is this the phone guy's job, is this the fire alarm guy's
job and there'd be confusing times.
So it was just kind of good to know the phone systems.
And so the point is that, you know, if you want to get ahead, you kind of have to have
a plan to get ahead or put forth some kind of an effort to get ahead or kind of come
up with some angle to get ahead of something that you can learn and something that you
can do.
And it wasn't any dramatic thing or anything like that.
It's just, you know, just slowly read a book and, you know, you get that book from the
library that teaches you about your job.
And look, whatever your job is, I guarantee you there's probably a book at the library
about your job that if you read it, you'd probably be able to do your job better, whether
your job is a computer programming job or whether it's a HVAC job, an electrical job,
a plumbing job.
And you know what?
If you just took that 300-page book and just read a few pages every day and just spent
10 minutes a day, like read your Bible for 15 minutes and then read your, you know, electrician
Bible for 15 minutes a day, you know, you're going to learn a lot.
Now, a lot of people have this attitude though of like, oh, if I'm not getting paid to do
that, if they want me to learn more, they're going to have to pay for me to get training.
But here's the thing though.
You want to succeed or not?
You want to win or not?
You want to get a promotion or not?
So you can sit there and the guy who has this attitude of I'm not going to start working
a second before I'm clocked in and I'm not going to work a second after I'm clocked in
and when I'm off, I'm off, I'm not going to do any outside reading, you know, you're only
just shooting yourself in the foot there.
Because if you could actually get some skills that you can take to your job, and look, today
knowledge is everywhere.
Oh man, you can, I mean, you can go on YouTube and there's a tutorial for pretty much any
software you can imagine.
So if your job involves computers and there's a certain software, you know what, you could
literally just do a little tutorial on YouTube and just decide, hey, I'm just going to do
10, 15 minutes a day of a tutorial on YouTube about this software that my job uses.
And you know what, I'll bet you in a few weeks, you'll probably be like the expert on that
software if other people aren't doing it, if other people aren't taking the tutorials.
You know, so there's ways that you can get ahead at your job.
But it's going to take a goal and effort and consistent painstaking effort on a daily basis.
Whatever it is, let's say learning a foreign language, you know, learning a foreign language
is something that a lot of people in our church are interested in because we want to go soul
winning and reach the Spanish speakers with the gospel.
And you know, you just get tired of just hitting those doors where it's like no ingles and
then you just have to go to the next door and it's frustrating because you know, you
want to be able to preach the gospel to these people.
And it didn't take me long when I, when I moved to Arizona 12 years ago to realize I
need to learn Spanish because at that point my Spanish was not at the level where I could
give someone the gospel.
And so how do you learn a foreign language?
Well, you know how?
Just by consistently working on it a little bit every day.
Because look, learning a foreign language, and a lot of people don't realize how hard
it is to learn a foreign language, it is super hard to learn a foreign language.
A lot of people just think that they can just put forth a minimal effort, five minutes a
day for a couple months and then they're going to learn a foreign language.
Look, learning foreign language is a lot of work.
And some people are like, oh, I just don't have the knack for it.
That could be true, but what's more likely is that you haven't realized how much work
you have to put in.
And the people who have accomplished it, they actually put in tons of work consistently
every day.
Now, one of the ways that I recommend you learning a language is through Duolingo.
You know, I realize, who's on Duolingo?
I really like Duolingo because it's free is one of the reasons why I really like it.
And it's on your phone.
And here's the thing about Duolingo, there's this thing where it's your streak on Duolingo.
Who knows what I'm talking about?
And what the streak is, it's just if you work on it every day, then it tells you what kind
of a streak you're on.
Like you have consistently done Duolingo for 30 days or 35 days or 40 days.
Now, listen, I just blew my streak on Duolingo a couple days ago, okay, because I was traveling
to Florida to preach and everything and I was traveling, I was busy, I was out of my
routine and I didn't have that long of a streak going anyway, but I blew my Duolingo
streak.
But one time I had a pretty long streak going, I forget what it was, but it was like a few
months at least.
It was two or three months streak and I broke that streak on Duolingo, okay.
But the point is that Duolingo has that there to motivate you to just be consistent and
work on it every single day.
Now, one of the biggest questions about this is, well, what do I do when I fail?
What do I do when I break my streak?
What do I do when I screw up?
And whether this is for Bible reading, church attendance, prayer, soul winning, some kind
of a job-related goal or whatever, you know, this is where people get derailed because
it's pretty easy to hear a sermon that gets you all pumped up about reading your Bible
or gets you all pumped up about soul winning or gets you all pumped up about praying and
going to church.
And to do that for about a month or two and then you fall off the wagon, right?
And the whole point of this sermon is about being consistent, meaning you got to stay
with things for more than just a few weeks or a few months, you got to stay with them
for years, right?
Well, go to Proverbs, chapter number 24, and this is probably the most important point
of the sermon because this is the point where you're either made or broken, is what do you
do when you screw up?
You know, what do you do when you break your consistency?
Because let's face it, we're all going to have stresses or events in our life or unexpected
trips or vacations where we screw up whatever we're trying to be consistent with, right?
You know, it's easy for me to get up and say, hey, you just be consistent.
You read your Bible every single day for 15 minutes, you're going to get it done.
But here's the fact of the matter, there are going to be days when you don't read
your Bible.
It's just going to happen.
Now, you say, well, yeah, but God said we got to read it every day, right?
God said we got to read it every day, but we don't always read it every day because
we're human, okay?
We as human beings are going to fail at times.
So the most important thing is what we do when we mess up because the difference between
the people who succeed and the people who fail is what they do when they screw up.
Now, yeah, there's a rare person out there that's just able to just be super consistent
with no exception.
That's a very rare person indeed.
Now there are people like that.
I saw a guy on Duolingo that had like a 2,000 day streak.
I mean, this guy had a Duolingo streak of like six and a half years or something.
Now I think he might have bought that streak freeze a couple times though, you know what
I'm talking about?
He might have been using some of his jewels to buy a streak freeze on Duolingo, but here's
the thing.
You know, when it comes to reading your Bible, there's no streak freeze.
You know, when it comes to going to church, there's no streak freeze.
So even if he used the streak freeze, that means he didn't go more than two days in a
row without doing Duolingo for like six or seven years, but you know what?
That's a super rare guy.
Your average person on there, maybe they have a 15 day streak going, 25 days, 30 days, 40
days, whatever, but life is going to get us off track.
So the question is, what do you do when that happens?
Okay, well let's look at the Bible and then I'm going to give you some practical advice
on this.
Proverbs 24 16 says, for a just man never falls.
He never makes a mistake.
Is that what it says?
He never, he's got a 10,000 day streak on soul winning going.
It says, a just man fall at seven times and rises up again, but the wicked shall fall
into mischief.
So the Bible is saying that a righteous man, a just man, he falls seven times, but the
difference is that he rises up again.
He doesn't just fall permanently.
He doesn't fall into mischief.
He falls and he gets back up again and again and again.
Now how do we do this?
What is it that's going to separate those who succeed from those who fail?
Well, here's the thing about it.
When it comes to your Bible reading or any of these other goals, when you fail, okay,
don't try to just catch it all up necessarily because that could be discouraging.
I remember the first time I tried to read the Bible cover to cover, I failed.
I was nine or 10 years old and I decided I was going to read the whole Bible over the
summer and I set my goal that I would be done reading the entire Bible the day before school
started.
So I figured out, okay, this is when school started.
It's summertime.
I've got extra time, 11 hours of video games is enough.
I can spend one hour a day, you know what I mean?
I can spend one hour a day reading my Bible.
This is what I'm thinking when I'm nine or 10 years old.
I've got one hour.
So I decided, you know, if I read my Bible one hour every day this summer, I'm going
to get the whole Bible done by the time school starts.
So that was my goal, right?
So I figured out I'm going to have to read like 15 chapters a day and it's going to take
like about an hour, okay?
So I had it all laid out.
I made all these charts about, I had it all figured out, I was ready to roll with it and
I got three days behind.
You know, I was doing good, doing good, cranked through Genesis, cranked through Exodus, somewhere
around Leviticus, the beginning of Numbers, you know, I just, I got busy, things happened
and I got three days behind.
So then I'm looking at what I'm supposed to read today and it's like the whole book of
Numbers and like nine other chapters.
Like I'm supposed to read like 45 chapters.
And I looked at that and I'm just like, I can't get, this is not going to happen.
And I just, I literally just quit, just completely quit, didn't do any more reading except just
a little tiny Bible reading every day.
But I quit that goal of completing.
Now here's what would have made a lot more sense looking back with a little more wisdom,
you know, at age 36 instead of age 9 is to think to myself, why didn't I just say, well,
you know what, I'm just going to adjust my goal and I'm just going to finish three days
later than what I thought I was going to finish.
I mean, think of, wouldn't it have been better instead of trying to read 60 chapters in one
day or 45 chapters in one day, that's just going to discourage you.
That's just going to get you down.
So what would have made more sense would be if I could have got to school starting and
let's say I get to school starting and let's say I've screwed up like that several times.
What if I got to school starting and I've got, you know, a thousand chapters down and
189 to go?
That would have been a better outcome and then I could have just maybe slowed down and
finished those last 189 chapters over the first few months of school.
But you know when I finished reading the Bible cover to cover for the first time, I was 17
years old.
I could have had it done when I was 10 years old.
Instead it took me till I was 17.
Why?
Because I had this dumb mentality that said, well, I got to get it done by this day or
bust.
You see what I mean?
And instead I ended up taking seven years to do what should have just taken an extra
couple months.
I could have just slowed it down to a more reasonable pace.
So what am I saying here?
I'm saying, look, if you get that read through your Bible in a year plan and you start out
on January 1st and you read the four chapters, because that's four chapters a day is what
that is, to read it in a year.
And let's say you do good on that for the first few months and then let's say life gets
crazy and let's say you get five days behind, right?
Don't be like, oh man, I got to read 24 chapters now to catch up because you know what?
That's just going to derail you.
Here's what you do.
Pick up where you left off and guess what?
Now you're going to get done on January 6th of next year instead of getting done on the
31st.
And does that really make that big of a difference in the scheme of things?
No.
Just pick up where you left off.
Just jump back in and pick up where you left off or you say, well, I don't like that.
I got to get it done by the end of the year.
Then do this.
Why don't you just pick one day each week where you double up and then six weeks later
you'll be back on track in six weeks of just, hey, every Tuesday I got to read double instead
of being like, I got to read 28 chapters today or I'm doomed and it's all in Deuteronomy
in numbers.
I mean, that's going to be rough, right?
And it's like this in other areas of life.
Think about how people are with their diet.
People are real good on their diet and then they get invited out to dinner or they go
on a trip somewhere and everybody's just feeding them desserts and just plying them
with candy and chocolate and ice cream and they just completely blow it, right?
A lot of people will just say, all right, game over, and then just start eating whatever
they want for the next few months.
That's not diligence.
That's not patience.
And look, if somebody has like 50 pounds to lose or 100 pounds of weight to lose, that's
going to take a long time.
And if you're not consistent, diligent, and patient, you're going to fail at that.
So what do you do?
You know what?
You adjust your goal.
So hey, instead of being done reading my Bible on December 31st, I'll be done on January
15th.
Who cares?
I'm still reading my Bible.
I'm still learning.
It's fine.
And hey, I was supposed to lose these 50 pounds by X, the date.
Well, you know what?
That's going to take me an extra couple months.
But that's better than seven years later.
You're still 100 pounds overweight because you basically just threw in the towel.
And this is the mentality that people have a lot of times where they just quit because
they're like, oh, well, you know, I ate so much that now I'm going to have to like eat
nothing for the next three days in order to balance out what I just ate.
You know what I mean?
If you do three days of no food, you know, see that just discourages you.
Instead it's better to just adjust your goal, pick up where you left off.
And look, I'll confess my faults to you.
Over the last three days, not only, you know, did I fail at my Duolingo and I lost my streak,
you know, I got behind on my Bible reading.
Now I did read my Bible a little bit every day, but I fell behind.
And I have this chart where I track my Bible reading, okay?
And you know, I have a chart where I track, here's what I'm reading in the Old Testament,
New Testament.
I have charts for, you know, Bible memory, my foreign language goals and stuff like that.
And I'll tell you exactly what I'm going to do with my foreign language goals and my Bible
reading goals that fell behind over the last three days of travel.
I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
It's in a spreadsheet.
I'm just going to grab the whole thing and hit command X to cut it.
And then I'm just going to paste it like three days down.
And then I'm back on track.
You know what I'm saying?
That's cheating?
So basically like I had a goal, you know, hey, I'm going to finish the New Testament
this time and the Old Testament this time.
Instead of finishing it on this date, it all just moved like three days later.
And you know what?
When I wake up tomorrow morning and I look at where I'm at, when I look at my goals,
I'm not going to be discouraged at all because I'm right on track.
I'm right where I need to be.
I'm right on time.
You say, well, you know, that's cheating.
But the thing about that is, though, is that I'm going to be excited about my reading and
my studies tomorrow because it's discouraging to be behind all the time.
When you always feel like you're behind and you're failing and you're screwing up, then
it's hard to be motivated.
But when you feel like, yeah, I'm doing this, I'm getting it done.
Get excited about the new deadline.
Don't just throw in the towel.
Look, fall seven times and get up again and do it again.
Don't just fall into despondency.
Don't just sink into despair like, oh, I screwed up.
And you know what?
People that are too hard on themselves like that, they end up failing.
Go to Lamentations Chapter 3, if you would.
Don't get down on yourself too hard.
I mean, look, yeah, if you mess up, you should feel bad about it.
Confess it as a sin to God.
Confess it to the Lord.
Forsake it.
Repent.
Do it right.
But you know what?
You can't just keep beating yourself up about it.
You dust it off, and you get up, and you move forward.
And that's part of what confession to the Lord is for, so that you confess, hey, God,
I'm sorry, I screwed up.
And then you fix it.
And then you just quit thinking about it.
Quit worrying about it.
And get on a new plan.
Get on a new program.
Get on a new goal.
You say, oh, you know, I was soul winning every week, and then I missed it last week,
so I think I'll just miss it for the next month.
No, no, no.
Just jump back in.
Get back in.
Jump back into church.
Jump back into Bible reading.
And just pick it up where you left off.
Don't get stressed out.
You know, you're supposed to run a certain amount of miles or something for an exercise
program.
You know, let's say you get a few days behind.
You can't just be like, well, I'm a few days behind, I've got to run like 30 miles today
or something.
You know, it's just not going to work.
Just pick it up where you left off.
Just jump back in.
And you know, make a new goal.
Test your goals.
Look at Lamentations chapter number 20, chapter 3, verse 22.
It says in Lamentations 3, 22, it is of the Lord's mercies that were not consumed.
Because his compassions fail not.
Watch this.
They're new every morning.
Great is thy faithfulness.
So the Bible tells us here that the Lord's mercies are new every morning.
The Lord's compassions are new every morning.
Great is his faithfulness.
You know, every single morning you can start over and do it right that day, even if you
screwed up the day before.
You can pick up where you left off.
And that's the attitude we should have, understanding that if God forgives us for screwing up, we
should be able to forgive ourselves.
Once we've confessed it and take it to the cross and leave it there and move on with
life instead of just beating yourself up about it.
Because when you start beating yourself up about it, then you just have a pity party.
And then you end up doing even worse.
You know, how many failed diets have resulted in a pity party that ended in a tub of ice
cream?
To comfort the pity, I screwed up, you know.
You know what I mean?
It's instead of just saying, you know what, yeah, I ate too much, okay.
So it's gonna take me an extra four days to get to the goal.
So what?
Who cares?
Just keep going.
So just some practical points is that if you screw up, just pick up where you left off,
adjust the goal, don't try to catch up everything that you dropped the ball on, necessarily.
And then also, another good point is to log your progress.
Keep track of what you do.
That's part of attention to detail.
You know, have some kind of a calendar or something or some kind of a chart where you
log what you do because that'll keep you motivated.
And that's how you can chart little bits of progress of reading your Bible, for example.
You know, you gotta keep track of it.
And then lastly, this, and this will take us back where we started.
You don't have to turn back there.
But doing a partial of whatever your goal is is better than doing nothing.
Doing a partial is better than doing nothing.
What do I mean by that?
What did the Bible say in Isaiah 28?
It said, hear a little, there a little.
Line upon line, precept upon precept.
Why?
Because it adds up.
That's what that verse is teaching.
He's saying, you'll learn the whole Bible, line upon line, and precept upon precept,
in small doses.
So let's say your goal is to read the Bible four chapters a day, right?
Because you got your chart, you got your plan, you're gonna read through the Bible in a year,
four chapters a day.
Well, let's say you get to bedtime.
You're falling asleep, it's late, it's past your bedtime, and you go, oh, I didn't read
my Bible today.
Well, you know what?
You're better off just reading one chapter.
If your goal is four, read one.
Why?
Because that adds up.
You do that four times, and you got a day under your belt of your goal.
Okay.
So don't just quit completely.
In fact, I've heard a lot of professional athletes say that if they don't feel like
working out, they'll basically just tell themselves, I'm just gonna do it for 10 minutes
and see how I feel.
And usually after 10 minutes, they'll continue.
They want to just keep going, because they kind of get into it.
Same thing with your Bible.
Why don't you just tell yourself, you know what, I'm gonna read a half a chapter, and
that's it?
You might just get into the story.
Right?
I mean, sometimes when you're reading your Bible, you get to the end of what you were
supposed to read that day, but you're into the story.
You want to keep going.
You want to keep reading, right?
And you know what?
I found this to be true too, not to have an all or nothing attitude.
Let's say I had a workout that I was gonna do that's supposed to take an hour, and I
look at the clock, and it's like, I'm only gonna have a half hour.
A lot of times I'll just say, well, I'm not even gonna work out then, because I don't
even have time to do the workout that I was supposed to do.
But you know what would be a lot smarter is just to put in a half hour.
It's a lot better than just sitting on your rear end and doing nothing during that half
hour.
At least get part of it done.
Partial is better than nothing, because a little bit adds up.
And so we, as Christians, if we're gonna accomplish anything great for the Lord, we've gotta learn
to be consistent.
You'll never read the Bible cover to cover until you can learn to be diligent and patient
and chip away at things consistently.
You're never gonna learn to be a great soul winner.
You're not gonna learn the Bible.
You're not gonna be a great prayer warrior.
You're not gonna excel at your job or anything unless you can learn to be consistent and
chip away at things over time, slowly finish the job.
And then the important point that I tagged on at the end is, hey, what do you do when
you screw up, because you inevitably will.
It's like John said in 1 John, my little children, these things write unto you that you sin not,
but if any man sin, why?
Because you're going to.
But if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous needs
the propitiation for our sins, not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
So get serious about being consistent in these areas of your life that need work.
Be consistent in your church attendance, your Bible reading, your soul winning, your diet,
your exercise, whatever it is, your job performance, learning more skills for your job, whatever
it is in your life that needs work, you know, decide that you're going to be consistent,
you're going to get some goals, you're going to make some plans, you're going to write
it down, you're going to get a chart, and you're going to get on a program and then
just go into it knowing, you know what, I'm going to mess up at some point.
And when I do, here's how I'm going to respond to that.
Here's the grace period.
Here's where I'm going to dust myself off and get back on track.
And if you do that, you'll be able to achieve great things for the Lord.
And our church, we, you know, you know that our church doesn't have big giant Sundays.
We've met, you know, you know, a lot of church have like a big giant Sunday.
You know what I'm talking about?
They call them like a big day.
And they'll have like, let's say a church that usually runs like 200, they'll have a
big day and run 350 because everybody pulls out all the stops and works hard and invites
everybody.
We don't have big days like that.
You know, if you look at our record-breaking attendances, they're not really that different
than our usual attendances.
Why?
Because we're just consistently just plugging away.
And you say, wow, you're doing this big mega marathon.
You know, but our part of the mega marathon here in Phoenix, it's not really going to
be different.
It's not really going to be that much different than our normal weeks of soul winning.
I mean, every week's a mega marathon around here.
The thing about the mega marathon is that we're trying to get other people all over
the world to do the same thing in their area and in their States.
But I mean, for us in Phoenix, it's not going to be that different.
It'll be a little bit of a push for us.
It'll be a little bit of a big day for us.
And I'm hoping that everybody jumps in, but it's not going to be just like, whoa, why?
Because the way that our church has achieved what we have is been more just a kind of
a plugging away daily plugging away weekly thing.
Not like we're having our big annual revival and we're going to get so many people say,
no, it's just a couple of people saved on Monday, a few people saved on Tuesday, a few
people saved on Wednesday, a few people saved on Thursday.
But when you add it all together, it's tens of thousands of salvation here a little and
there a little let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for the word that you've given us here in the Bible, Lord,
about here a little, there a little, and precept upon precept.
Help us to apply that to our lives, Lord, and help us that when we do fall, that we
would just rise up again, Lord, and realize that your mercies are new every morning.
And if we fall on the wagon, if we fall off the wagon about some sin in our life, let's
say, you know, we were supposed to quit drinking and then somebody drinks alcohol, Lord, I
just pray that they would just get back on the wagon, just pick up where they left off.
And when it comes to all these areas of our life, Lord, I pray that we would just be diligent
and patient, work on being consistent in Jesus' name we pray, amen.