Building Consistency
by Pastor Jim May
If there is one thing that will help each of us to become the man or woman of God that God wants us to be, its “consistency”. I am convinced that the biggest reason that many people never grow into a place of spiritual maturity where they can be really used by God is that they are inconsistent in their walk with the Lord.
Last night, as I was reading the Bible, searching for a message from the Lord for this church, I was prompted by the Holy Ghost to look up the word “Daily” in a concordance. It was as though God was saying that we needed to learn how to live for Him in a more consistent manner. All to often I see the people of God, including myself, who get inconsistent with their walk before the Lord. It’s an easy thing to do to become inconsistent. Life’s pressures and the events of everyday living can so easily draw us away from where our focus should be. Life has a way of filling every minute of your day beginning from the time you awake in the morning.
Have you ever had to argue with yourself as to whether you would open your eyes or not in the morning? I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I have had to force this old body of flesh out of the bed at times, in fact, most of the time. There is just something un-natural about having to get up before the chickens every morning. Didn’t God create us just a little higher than the chickens? If He did, then why do they get to sleep later and go to bed earlier than we do? Sometimes I envy those chickens until I remember where they are destined to become someone’s dinner.
There are times when my alarm goes off in the morning that I just want to turn it off and forget the whole thing, at least for a few more hours. But I have that marvelous little invention that I love so much. It has added so much more peace and rest to my life and almost makes the alarm clock bearable. That little invention is the “Snooze Button”!
That alarm goes off and I reach over to hit that little snooze button, then the argument begins. I start arguing with my eyes. “All right, which of you is going to be first to open this morning.” Not me”, says the left eye. “Not me either, says the right eye. “I was the first one open yesterday, it’s lefty’s turn today.” “So what, didn’t you hear the doctor say that I was the weaker eye yesterday? No sir, I’m not going first.”
Then the arms and legs get into the mix. The left arm says, “I’m still asleep. I’ve sleep so hard that I feel numb and can’t move. Mr. Right over there is going to have to turn us over and push us up today.” Then Mr. Right Arm says, “Oh no you don’t. You are always complaining about me being the strongest and getting all the attention so let’s see just how good you really are. You just wake up and do your job.”
Then the legs kick in. They start complaining about being twisted up in the covers and can’t move and how that they are always the first ones out of the bed every time and they get tired of having to carry the whole load. “Why don’t you arms trade places with us for a while, then maybe you would both shut up this constant bickering over who is strongest or who has the most control and dexterity.”
I want to tell you that before it’s over, Mr. Brain has to seize control over the whole thing and start forcing every one of them, the eyes, the arms and the legs, to get moving before the war begins.
I’ll bet you never thought about the fact that you have that kind of war going on inside of you every day did you? The disciple James had that same problem I think because he said in James 4:1, "From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?" The lust for sleep and rest cause the war and fighting in our bodies every morning, at least for most of us.
That war can go on for a long time until finally Mr. Bladder speaks up and says, “Well you guys can stay here and argue but I’m getting up and that’s that.”
Now, if we begin our morning in some similar fashion as this, the members of our body fighting against one another and we have to begin our day by conquering and forcing our own body to obey the mind then it isn’t hard to understand why we are always so inconsistent with serving the Lord. The spirit is willing but the flesh is so weak!
That’s why Paul wrote in1 Corinthians 9:27, "But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." Paul knew the battle that we all fight for consistency. I won’t read the scriptures but at one point he even said that he had such a battle with inconsistency that he knew the only way to overcome it was through the power of the Lord in his life. He couldn’t win that battle alone.
James 1:8 says that, "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways." But then he also said in James 4:8, "Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you...” So if you want to have anything close to consistency in your walk with the Lord, and if you don’t want to be unstable as you live for God, then we have to get as close to Jesus as we can.
It’s not hard to see that instability is a major problem in just about everyone you meet. Sometimes I feel that are just a handful of “stable people”, like me, left in the world. Everyone else is just a little wacko! Don’t you think that’s true?
So then, if we need to draw close to the Lord, to keep from being unstable in all our ways, then perhaps we need to learn some things that bring consistency and closeness to the Lord. Let me give you some very practical step, based upon the Word of God, that will build consistency and bring you closer to Jesus. If you do this, then I may soon be taking your name off of the “Wacko List” and adding you to the “Normal List” next to mine.
1) The very first thing that will build consistency and closeness to Jesus is to get your daily required amount of Manna, just like Israel had to do in the wilderness.
Do you remember what happened there? Israel was in the desert and they began to murmur and complain about their lack of food and that they were tired of eating the same thing everyday. They began to look back at Egypt and desire to go back so they could get some good Egyptian bean soup. So God sent them manna from Heaven. Every day they had to go get what they needed for that day only, except on the 6th day when they had to gather enough for the Sabbath also. Whatever they didn’t eat by the appointed time would become full of worms and begin to smell.
Exodus 16:4, "Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no."
Did you catch what God said in that verse? He said that we are to gather bread at the same rate every day. It sounds like we need to have a consistency in our lives doesn’t it? And why did God command us to be consistent in gathering our daily portion of the Bread from Heaven? Our consistency in gathering the Bread proves to God that we really love Him and that we really do want to serve Him, and that we are serious in our commitment to Him.
God still pours out our daily portion of bread from Heaven. David said so in Psalms 68:19, "Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation.” Then Jesus said the same thing in Luke 11:3 when He was teaching us how to pray when He said, "Give us day by day our daily bread."
How do we gather that daily Bread? We have to go about our lives, looking at everything around us, to see where God is in all of it! There are always things going on that will remind us of Jesus if we will just look for Him in it. If we will learn to meditate on the Word, read the Bible everyday, and meditate upon the Lord all the time as we go about living, we will find pieces of manna everywhere that we can pick; little nuggets of blessings and provisions for our lives.
Jesus said that He would be with us always so we need to look for Him always. Is the Lord riding with you in the car? If you will stop blowing the horn and talking to the driver in front of you and start talking to Jesus, He will answer you and let you know that He is there. Stop complaining about the job and look for Jesus on that job. Is He there too? Is He guiding your steps, speaking to your heart, speaking through your lips into the heart of that fellow worker who stands around you? Are there blessings for you, and blessings for other people that you can just pick up everywhere you go?
Don’t miss out on your portion of manna. The Israelites had to go out and find it, gather it and claim it as their own and there was never enough to keep them for longer than 1 or 2 days. That’s the way your blessings will come too. That’s how much you have of the Lord right now: just enough to get you to tomorrow so you can get more of Him in your life. Too many people are living off of yesterday’s manna. They don’t have anything fresh, just old, rotten, smelly attitudes of what used to be a life that was sold out to God. Now they are just slowly dying because they aren’t getting their daily portion of Christ in their lives.
You have to have consistency in gathering your manna or you will starve to death spiritually!
2) You have to learn to pray and renew your vows of love and commitment to Jesus every day!
Psalms 61:8, "So will I sing praise unto thy name for ever, that I may daily perform my vows."
Psalms 88:9, "Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction: LORD, I have called daily upon thee, I have stretched out my hands unto thee."
There is a commercial on TV right now where some well-known personality is shown with a white mustache on their top lip. The question is then given, “Got Milk?” The message is, “If you drink your milk every day you will have strong bones and teeth.” I always thought that I could get enough milk just by eating ice cream and cake. After all both of them have milk in them don’t they? Perhaps that’s reason that so many of us have teeth that shine like the stars, especially when the moonlight gleams off of them as they sit in a jar of water on the counter.
Just as consistency in drinking your mild will build strong bones in your body, consistency in your prayer life will build your spiritual bones as well. Some of us have the same attitude toward prayer as I had toward milk. We think that prayer at mealtime, if we do that; prayer at bedtime, if we do that; and the prayer that we do in our church services, if we pray along with the preacher; are all the prayer we need. Let me tell you that if that’s all the prayer you are getting, then get ready for your spirit to fall out and sit on a shelf. It may look good and gleam in the light of the church building but everyone will also know that your spirituality is a fake.
Like David, we need to daily perform our vows. We need to have a daily time and place to pray and then don’t allow anything to stop us from having a consistency in our prayer life. You pick the time of day, the place and the posture in prayer. Maybe it’s on the way to work every morning, or on your way home in the evening. Maybe it’s in the wee hours of the morning or the late hours of the night, or at noon during your lunch-break. Whenever it is, it should be consistent or you will soon find that you are experiencing decays in your spirit.
Consistency in prayer will bring you closer to Jesus and help you to walk in victory. It will give you a lot more consistency in your life for Christ.
Oh that we could develop the same mindset that is talked about in Isaiah 58:2, "Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God."
3) Another thing that will help build consistency in our living for God is that we should be ever watchful as we are waiting for the second coming of Christ!
Proverbs 8:34, "Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors."
I can remember as a youth, before I understood much of what was being said about the events of the last days, when I would look up and see that moon that looked red, and wonder if now was the time for His coming.
I would look on the horizon and see the sun either going down, or coming up, and wonder if that could be the “brightness of His coming” spoken of in 2 Thessalonians 2:8 when it says, "And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:” I would see the clouds as they would sometimes swirl about in the sky and seem to part and I would be reminded of Revelation 6:14, "And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places."
The cares of life and responsibilities of being an adult have often held my attention away from those things and I have “learned to be a lot smarter” than I was in those days as a youth. I know more of the Word of God and understand it better, and so I don’t look at those things in the same frame of mind anymore. Sometimes I wonder if I really am any smarter at all! Too many of us tend to forget that Jesus is coming back at any moment.
If we would learn to be every expecting His return to take His Bride away; if we would look at every event around us as though this could be the last time we see it; if we could look at our lost loved ones and realize that this could be the very last time we will ever see them; and if we could always remember that the next breath we take may be taken in Heaven, I believe we could have more consistency.
We need to be found waiting, watching and expecting Jesus to return at any moment. That will force us to have some consistency in living for the Lord.
4) If we want to build consistency, something else that must happen is that we must bear our assigned Cross for the Lord every day.
Luke 9:23, "And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me."
What does it mean to “take up his cross daily and follow me”? Too many people believe that everything in their life is a cross that they have to bear. I hear people say, “Well, my kids are a cross that I have to bear”, or “My job is just a cross that I have to bear”, “or my physical illness is a heavy cross to bear”. My friend you can have a lot of “crosses to bear” but there is only one cross that will bring your life into a consistency in living for the Lord. That cross is the “burden” that Jesus will place upon your heart and life to do a work for Him!
I want to remind you that there were three crosses on Calvary! The first cross did the bearer no good at all. It was just a heavy load that eventually brought him death. The second cross was born out of duty as it was forced upon the thief to carry. It was a heavy load and hard to bear and in the end it brought him death too. The difference was that he ignored the pain of that cross and decided to follow Jesus anyway. The third cross was not carried out of duty, but it was carried willingly, out of a heart of love, because Jesus knew that He wanted to become the Savior of the world and the cross that he bore was a necessary part of his plan of salvation for mankind.
We have to learn to bear the cross in our service to the Lord as a burden of love and a sincere desire to please our Lord! If you are bearing your cross, your work for the kingdom of God, as an unwanted and undesired load, then it won’t do you any good at all. Your cross is nothing more than the instrument of your eventual death spiritually. Do you really believe that Jesus is going to reward any of us for our service done in the church if we do it begrudgingly? God looks upon the heart and He knows our motives, and it that motive for our work for Him is not love for God and for our fellowman, then our motive cancels our reward!
If you have been bearing your “cross” of work for the Lord with that kind of attitude, then you can do like the thief on the second cross and turn your work into a blessing by simply allowing Jesus to change your heart and give you a new life in Him.
You can do the same thing if you have not even carried a cross in working for the Lord but you have been carrying the burdens of live with you like a cross without knowing who Jesus is.
Today, you are on your cross, the cross of sin and death as you live for yourself and for the devil, but you can look over at the Cross of Christ and ask forgiveness for sin, ask Jesus to come into your heart and change you, give you eternal life, and your answer will be the same that the second thief heard when Jesus said, “…this day you shall be with me in Paradise”.
The cross that we must take up daily and bear for the Lord is that work that He has called us to do. We must do it willingly, out of a heart of love, with a cheerful heart and we must be willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. That will help us to build a real consistency in serving the Lord.
We need to have the same attitude toward bearing our cross for Christ as the early church did in Acts 2:46, "And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart…"
In the midst of persecution, from the Roman Empire and from within their own nation; in the midst of hardship, troubles and trials; and even though they didn’t have all of the Word of God in the form that we have now, the early church served the Lord and took what came their way with gladness because they were so privileged to serve the Lord. They had a unity among them and a singleness of heart to serve the Lord and one another at all costs. That’s what we need to have a consistent life in Christ!
5) The final point that I want to bring out in building a consistent life for Christ is that we must stand by one another, help one another, pray for one another and support one another in every way possible on a daily basis.
Hebrews 3:13, "But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
In the early 1600’s there was a philosopher by the name of John Donne who said, “"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent."
John Donne realized, as we all must, that we cannot make it alone. We need one another. The skills and abilities that I lack are made up by yours and vice versa. Alone I could not build a church, but with your help and with God’s help we can. I could not repair many things that go wrong with my car, but with the help of a mechanic it will get done. I’m not much of a farmer but with the help of those that can grow anything, I get to eat every day. I don’t have the power, the energy, the knowledge or the calling to do everything that needs to be done in the church, but all of us working together can “getter done”, like they say.
Let’s exhort one another – that means encourage, build up, strengthen, help, lift up one another daily. Your brother and sister are having just as many struggles and disappointments, they are just as busy and tired and maybe even more than you are, so don’t get upset with them if they don’t meet your expectations. Pray for them instead! Encourage them instead! Love them no matter what and treat them with love and respect! That will go a long way toward building consistency in our church and in our individual walk with the Lord.
Do you desire more consistency in your life for the Lord? Does our church need more consistency in our work for the Kingdom of God? Yes we do, on both counts!
Take these matters to heart and meditate on them. Most of all; do them! Develop your life to be a more consistent life for Jesus.
If you don’t know him as your Lord and Savior, you can right now. If you will just look to the Cross of Christ, look at the Lord and accept his sacrifice on that cross for your sin, repent of the life of sin you have lived for so long, and then ask Jesus to come into your heart, and He will hear your cry and come to live in your heart too.
Matthew 11:28-30, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
Jesus will take the cross that you are bearing, that load that seems to weigh you down so heavily. He will carry that burden for you, and in its place He will give you a new cross to bear. He will give you a work to do for Him, but it will be a very light load compared to the weight of sin. In fact, you will even enjoy carrying it if you keep close to Jesus and do the things that build a consistent life in Christ!
Consistency is a must in our living for the Lord. AMEN
