Consistent

“Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” - Luke 9:23-26 NIV

Back in the day when I would have called myself a competitive student athlete, the thing that I had the desire to strive for more than anything was consistency.

I wanted to be a consistent player and do the things in practice and in my personal training that would make me a more consistent contributor in the game. To consistently have the kind of statistics that would best help my team, I needed consistent effort, consistent preparation and had to strive for consistent improvement.

Sometime in the days between Christmas and New Years, I like to take at least a day for myself to evaluate the past year, and to pray through and set goals for the New Year. It’s something that I have tried to do for the past 30 years or so during that week. Through that, it’s been neat to look back on my notes and scribbles over the years and see what God has laid on my heart and my mind.

This year, the message of the day was, you guessed it, “consistency.”

During that day and throughout that week, it became clear that He was calling me to be more consistent in life.

Calling me to be more consistent…

... as a follower of Christ
... as a leader at home and at work and all places in between
... as a husband
... as a father
... in my role as godly father and husband at home
... in helping my family (and friends) go deeper in their faith walk
... in me going deeper in my own faith walk
... in personal fitness and exercise
... even in consistent night’s sleep
... consistent bedtimes
... consistent responses
... consistently fighting off sin and evil
... consistently putting on the full armor of God
... consistently taking up my cross (daily) and following Jesus
... which means consistent prayer, consistently reading and memorizing His word, and consistent devotion and accountability.

Striving to be consistent takes consistent effort and dedication.

As we face the New Year personally and professionally, let’s consistently pray for one another that we will be all that Jesus has called us to be and to become.

Be becoming... Consistently.

Keep the Faith... Carpe Diem

“See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.” - Hebrews 3:12-14 NIV