Consistency

WELCOME
Pastor Chris Paavola:
Hey everybody. Good morning. Morning. You guys look great. It’s good to be with you. It’s better when you’re here. Turn to the person next to you and say, it’s better when you’re here. Better here. It is. It’s true. 100%. 100%. It is. It’s better when you’re guys are here. We are getting very close to the ending of our series under construction, where we are just embracing the chaos of construction and using it as a metaphor to describe this process of becoming like Jesus. And we’ve been talking about it each week. Now, our parking lot looks like a motorcross track every week. It’s a little bit different. But yeah, thank you guys for your patience through all that construction, by the way. But yeah, every week we’ve been talking about what it means to become like Jesus. In week one, we talked about how there’s a blueprint, right?
That when we read the gospels, there is a clear picture of Jesus, his personality, what he values, what he says, what he does, and we can mimic that. And that’s kind of the blueprint set aside for us. And every construction process begins with some kind of blueprint, and we have one. And then week two, we talked about how this is, every construction also includes demolition. That this is not just adding onto our current life, that it involves breaking some things and there’s parts of us that we need to chisel out in order to become like Jesus. And then in week three, we talked about setbacks, that we want to be like Jesus, but we keep on stumbling. We keep on making mistakes. And we talked about why that is. And then we talked about like, okay, let’s raise the friction of the things we don’t want to do and let’s reduce the friction to the things we do want to do.
And we talked about that from a habit’s perspective. And today we’re kind of continuing the habits conversation and advancing it a little bit further with this idea that every construction requires consistency. When you have a setback, it doesn’t mean stop, it just means you’ve got to consistently work at it.

CONSISTENCY
And you can’t build a building in a fit of passion that it involves showing up nine to five Monday through Friday, sometimes time and a half on the weekends if you’re behind on schedule. But it involves again and again showing up to get things done. And it’s true in the faith that it requires this consistency. And man, there’s a lot to be said about habits and consistency that I think we can apply to the faith. In the words of Bruce Lee, by the way, I don’t quote Bruce Lee often, but when I do, I put his picture on the screen.
He was just a bad dude. But yeah, Bruce Lee, consistency beats intensity every time. You don’t get to be Bruce Lee, unless every day you wake up and you are Bruce Lee. He trains every day to be a master. And consistency beats intensity in the book Atomic Habits that I referenced last week, if you get just 1% better every day for an entire year, at the end of the year, you’ll be 37 times better, 37 times just by growing 1% in the same way, if you decide you’re going to get better 10% of 30 days once a month, at the end of the year, you’ll only be three and a half times better. Consistency beats intensity again and again. And when we think about consistency in terms of how we can grow this habit of consistency, last week we talked about raising and reducing friction.
CONSISTENCY TIPS
There are also things we can do to become more consistent in the habits we want to adopt.

• Make it small
So, for instance, keep it small, right? Let’s say you want to read a book, 12 books in a year. You want to read a book once a month, okay? Well, don’t sit down and try to read a hundred pages every day. Keep it small. Read one page every day, just a page. Most days you’ll read more than one, but just read a page, keep it small, and you’ll increase the likelihood of success.

• Make it convenient
You can also make it convenient. So this is kind of that environment thing we were talking about last week. We are as people, we are hardwired for the path of least resistance. We are, it’s like the hunter gatherer in us that wants to conserve energy. And so we will do everything we can to find the path of least resistance and find the convenient way to do something. Convenience is a marketing term.
We have convenience stores. We gladly pay convenience fees. You don’t need a dishwasher, you don’t need one. My grandma didn’t think she needed one either, but you don’t need a dishwasher, but you have one because it’s convenient. You don’t need a Keurig, but you have one because it’s convenient. And so when it comes to consistency, you can make things much more convenient. If you want to run more, buy the shoes and put the shoes out the night before, make it convenient that you have to walk by it. Put the journal like we talked about this on top of the remote controls, make it convenient, make it likely in your physical environment or arrange it that you’re going to do these things that you want to do consistently.

• Measure consistency, not results
And then last convenience tip from this book, atomic habits measure consistency, not results. So when you’re going to the gym because you want to get in shape, what ends up happening, if we measure results, we tend to become inconsistent.
But if we measure consistency, we tend to get results. So if you go to the gym and you work out, you come home and you look in the mirror, is it doing anything right? And you check, what are you doing? You’re measuring the results after one time and you’re likely to become discouraged because you won’t see the results. It’s 1% difference every day. You won’t see the results day after day or week after week, but you look back on a year and you’re 37 times different at the end of the year if you’re consistent. So measure the consistency and he talks about habit tracking and measure your consistency in doing something. And then ta-da, you get the results. And you look at these consistency tips. And it not only applies to the good habits and the bad habits we want to do, but it also applies to being like Christ.

FAITHFULNESS

The word that scripture uses is this word faithfulness. So consistency is not in the Bible very much, but the word faithfulness is, and that’s interesting, right? What is faithful in a marriage? Someone who’s unfaithful as someone who cheats on you.
Or if a movie is being made out of a book, if it’s faithful to the book, it doesn’t add onto the plot or omit parts of the plot. Okay? So, what does faithfulness have to do with being like Christ, this consistency of being like Christ?

PARABLE OF THE FAITHFUL SERVANT
It just so happens in Luke’s gospel, it records this moment where Jesus actually defines consistency or faithfulness. And so there’s a crowd of thousands of people. Actually, Luke’s starts out this chapter 12 saying that the crowd was crushing each other to get to Jesus. So, it’s a very rambunctious crowd, and there’s this feeling of celebrity in the air and in response, kind of pushing back against this celebrity status that he’s gaining, Jesus raises the bar of what it means to be a disciple, to be his follower, and includes this definition of faithfulness in a parable.

35 “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, 36 like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. 38 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. 40 You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” 41 Peter asked, “Lord, are you telling this parable to us, or to everyone?” 42 The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise servant?
Luke 12
And he says, “be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning like servants, waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet so that when he comes and knocks, they can immediately open the door for him”.
And then in verse 38, he says, “it will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready. Even if he comes in the middle of the night or towards daybreak.” Must’ve been a heck of a party. Verse 40, “you also must be ready because the son of man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” You’re my servants. And then Peter, he’s listening to this and he’s like, are you talking to us? Are you talking to everyone? I think that’s kind of funny. I think we read it in the same way. Are you talking to the disciples, the people in the crowd? Are you talking to us? And then Jesus is like, yes, you dummy. And one of the best things you can do, by the way in reading the stories of Jesus to grow in it, is to take the questions Jesus asks. He teaches through questions, take the questions and apply them to yourself. So here’s his answer. Are you telling this to us or to everyone here and not us? Who does this apply to? And Jesus is like, yes. “Who then is the faithful and wise servant?” Who is it. This is not a rhetorical question. He’s asking, who is the faithful servant
In the parable? Who is it the one who’s ready, right? It’s late at night and they don’t have their pajamas on. They’re still wearing their servant’s clothing. They’re standing at the door like a faithful watchdog, keeping watch, ready for him to return. And this cry is throughout the New Testament,
Watch Be ready. There’s a consistency that’s called for, it’s faithfulness. And suddenly in this definition or this description of a faithful servant, we see how there’s a nuanced difference between consistency and faithfulness. Consistency is just a measurable stat. You can just be consistent for anything, right? And it could be just for you. It could be in relation to other people, but it’s just you could be consistently bad at something, you’re consistent.
But faithfulness, faithfulness is always about relationship to another. It’s a pledge to them, a promise
To them. Here the servant has pledged their loyalty to the master. I promise I will be ready for you when you return to wash your feet and to set food at the table for you when you come home from a long journey. Master, I promise. And then that kind of is interesting. So in a marriage, when we’re faithful to our spouse, we have pledged our fidelity to them. We’ve pledged our loyalty to them forsaking all others. That’s why we use the word faithful. Now we can look at these consistency tips that are about habits, and we can start to think about faithfulness tips.
And yes, God has called us to be faithful and like a lifestyle. Pick up your cross and follow me every day. That’s what Jesus says. Let your conversation always be seasoned with salt, always lifting up and encouraging others. Reject all sin and it’s a lifestyle, but it, God calls us two faithful habits. He asks things of us on a recurring basis, not just like constantly, but this consistency come back again and again to these habits. And I break them down when I look at scripture that these habits that the master asks of his servants to do consistently, faithfully recurring again and again, there’s two kinds. There’s habits of receiving and there’s habits of giving. And both of these are daily and weekly for habits of receiving. We have daily scripture, and throughout the Bible it calls us to meditate day and nights on the words of the law to hide it in our heart, to read it again and again, day by day it’s called our daily bread.
And then there’s a weekly habit of receiving in worship. We gather together to receive God’s gifts, his forgiveness, his promises, his word, that’s his gift. And you’ve come here, he asked you to make this a habit. And we see this pattern throughout scripture on the first day of the week. Come together. We see this in Christ who we’re trying to be Christ like weekly. He went to the synagogue. And then the words of Hebrew 10 25. Do not neglect meeting together as some are in the habits of doing, but all the more as we see the day of the Lord’s return approaching. So you have this daily habit of scripture and this weekly habit of worship that God has asked you to do, and a faithful servant is the one who does them.
He’s watching and ready. And then there’s habits of giving that God has called us to do daily prayer. And we see this demonstrated again in the life of Jesus. He wakes up very early in the morning and calls on the name of his heavenly Father. Daily we’re commanded to do the same. And then there’s a weekly aspect of this too. And by the way, in prayer, the reason I call it giving is we give him our praise. We give him our anxieties, we give him our sins in prayer. And then there’s a weekly giving as well. It’s called the tithe. It’s a 10th of all of your income giving. 2% of your income is a tooth, not a 10th. It’s not a tithe if it’s 2%, right? And notice how there’s this idea of keep it small, keep a convenience and measure consistency, not results.
If you came in and God was like, I want you to give 10% of your annual income if you made a hundred thousand dollars, writing a $10,000 check seems impossible because it kind of is. But he puts it and makes it in these bite-sized portions. And it says in one Corinthians 16, there on the first day of the week, set aside a portion of what you have received. Give this 10th, just a 10th of what you’ve received that week, not that year. And he’s trying to make a bite size and convenience and doable and realistic. And that’s why I love recurring giving. When our giving platform is, you can set a small amount and you don’t feel it as much. He’s trying to encourage this faithfulness to giving. And we can measure consistency rather than results. You can do like a habit tracker, just like you would do for whether you eat a salad or whether you exercise or whether you read a book.
You can do a habit tracker to your own faithfulness. It would look something like this.

TRACKING OUR FAITHFULNESS
So. you have a faithfulness tracker, who’s the wise servant? You have your habits of receiving and habits of giving, and then you could put out the seven different days and you can list them there. And then you could write underneath in particular, what are the habits you’re trying to do? So habits of receiving, I’m going to scripture, scripture, scripture, scripture. Six days a week, and then the seventh days, worship, giving, prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer, tithing. And you could have these written out. For instance, you could just say, I’m going to read a chapter a day, right? So Ephesians is a book that’s six chapters. It’s kind of easy to break down into six different days. And you read it, and it’s the chapter, chapter one of Ephesians. It sounds big to say chapter.
It takes two and a half minutes to read it. I pasted the words of Ephesians one into a calculator thing, generator online. I was like, this would take you two minutes and 19 seconds. I’m like, yeah, okay, there you go. So in less time than it takes to heat up a burrito, you could read, you could read Ephesians 1, 2, 3, 4, and do it every day. Don’t sit down and read the book of Ephesians. Read it just bit by bit. It’s your daily bread, and you could track it. Who then is the faithful and wise servant? It’s the one who does these Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It’s the one who is watching and ready for the Lord’s return.
I was like, okay, I made this and I was expecting, I was going to ask you guys to sketch it out in the little message notes in the back of your bulletin. But then I tried to do it in the bulletin. I’m like, oh, it’s not enough room. And it started getting messy. So I decided to go ahead and print it. And Jackie, everyone can get one of these, whether you use it or not, I can at least put it in your hands. Okay? So Teddy, yeah, you want to help hand these out? Just give one to everybody. It looks like this’s a faithfulness tracker, and it has habits of receiving, habits of giving. It’s just one week. I’m not asking you to do this for the rest of your life. Just try it, see what happens. And Monday’s, Tuesday, Wednesday third or Friday to Saturday, Sunday, read a chapter and then pray about that chapter. So I read something in Ephesians, and now I’m going to pray about that thing in Ephesians. I read this thing in Ephesians chapter two. Now I’m going to pray about this thing in Ephesians chapter two, and then next Sunday we’ll gather together and worship, and I would love to see you again. It’s better when you’re here. Check. You’re already look at it. You’re already have. You could put the check there if you want, but you’re already doing good guys. And then give. Who then among us is the faithful and wise servant. Now, this is really guilty. This is, I mean, guilty, very much so. This is the law. This is commanding you to do something. And I want to end you with the gospel.

GOD IS FAITHFULL
What God does. Any conversation on faithfulness would be remiss if it ends with our faithfulness and go do it. I need to remind you of God’s faithfulness. Go back, brother. I don’t know where you’re going. Go back to it. Yeah. So God, one of the terms that is used to describe him is the word faithful. He is the faithful one, because no one else is faithful. He’s one of one. He’s the faithful one. He is faithful to all his promises, as it says in Psalm 1 45, 13, he’s unfailing and all of his promises. Remember, faithfulness is about the relationship with another, and he’s promised these things for you and to do these things for you. And he is unfailing every one of his promises. Don’t miss this. Select, for instance, promise. Go ahead. Next slide. Promise of presence or promise of protection. He says, I will be with you always. I will protect you from the evil one. And guess what? Every day, check, check, check. He’s unfailing. Never takes a day off. He’s faithful or his promise to guide you when you’re confused and you need help, his promise to give you strength. When you’re weak and you’re beyond your ability, check, check. It’s like the slow drip eroding a mountain faithful or has promised to forgive you. We often will say the words of 1 John 1:9 “If we say we have no sins, we deceive ourself. The truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness”, you’re unfaithful. But he forgives you anyway again and again. Check, check
Or his promise to give you eternal life. It’s not just, oh, bye and bye someday I’ll die and go to heaven. No, no, no. Eternal life is welling up within you right now. You’re teaming with it, pulsing with it. It’s overflowing. His spirit is in you right now. You are breathing in eternal life. Check. And so when you track your faithfulness this week, and he tried this thing, please don’t do it thinking you’re earning his faithfulness. You’re not. He beat you to it. You’re doing it in response to his unfailing and oh, so great faithfulness.

PRAYER
Usually I end my messages, I pray, and then you politely listen. You pray with me today I’d like to do something different. I’d like to pray together and not say a prayer together. I’d like to sing a prayer together. It’s the words of hymn called “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” It’s a classic. And if you notice the words are talking directly to God. It’s a prayer. You just happen to sing it. So church, you’ll catch on if you don’t know the melody. But let’s pray:

Great is thy faithfulness,
Great is thy faithfulness,
Morning by morning new mercies I see,
All I have needed thy hand has provided,
Great is thy faithfulness,
Great is thy faithfulness,
Lord unto me.

Just thank you for it. And in this prayer, your faithful servant, Jesus taught us to pray. He teaches us to look again to your promises, and you are faithful to every one of them. As we say, together:

Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name,
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven,
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespassed against us,
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory,
Forever and ever.
Amen