These last couple weeks, I've been working quietly on a major overhaul to our training curriculum--something I've been working on without fully realizing it for nearly 30 years! To celebrate getting our three core tracks nailed down, I decided to pull out and update this post from two years ago. It's also a fitting ending to the month of January...



As we draw close to the end of January, and look back over the past month, it's easy to see we've talked a lot about goal-setting, planning, habits, and the like. And if you participated in this year's Rocket Goals program, you may have even put together a strategic plan for the coming year, and have a solid strategy in place to implement that plan. You are ready and waiting to make this coming year, your best year yet!

But one thing more is needed: persistence. Persistence pays.

I often illustrate the compounding power of persistence when talking about Scripture memorization. A person can go through a short course like our Survival Kit and memorize a handful of verses. They might even go through our entire discipleship track, and learn a few dozen. And however positive that experience might be--in the grand scheme of things, it amounts to little if you are not persistent.

With persistence, a couple verses a week can easily become a hundred in a year. A thousand in ten years. And thousands more over the course of a lifetime. If fact, as memorization becomes easier--your pace can accelerate. And the collective impact of all those verses bouncing around in our brain together, creates a literal firestorm of life-changing insights.

Fail to be consistent, however, and your memorization will soon slow to a crawl, and eventually stop. The few dozen verses you did learn will become rusty, have diminishing impact, and eventually fade away. All your hard work in learning them, will result in little or no lasting life transformation.

Consider again the two scenarios: a lifetime filled with living, powerful Scripture imprinted in the heart, and vitalizing the life. Or a distant memory of learning a few verses years prior but long since forgotten. They hardly compare, do they?

And perhaps more important: what makes the difference? Persistence. Persistence pays...

The same thing happens with goal setting and time management. You can spend 10 days putting together a detailed strategic plan for the coming year. And you can even work at it for a few months, and accomplish a few goals. But if you fizzle out down the road, and drift back to old ways--it is unlikely to produce real, lasting impact. Accomplishing a few projects simply won't amount to much in the grand scheme of things.

But consider the alternative again. You not only develop a strategic plan, but you persevere. You work diligently at implementing your plan, you stick to your schedules, you complete your projects. And you continue reviewing and revising your plan, through the months and years to come, so it is always current and in sync with the circumstances of your life. You maintain a clear sense of direction and purpose. For decades, perhaps.

And because you are faithful in achieving your initial goals, new prospects open up for you. You reach health goals, financial goals, relationship goals, education goals, and all the rest. And each of these gives you more resources to pursue greater goals still.

Not only that, but bit by bit, your character begins to change. You gradually become more goal oriented. More motivated. More committed. Your powers of concentration strengthen. You ability to focus deepens. You become a steady, successful finisher. And all of this empowers you to accomplish greater goals as well. Everything builds. Compounds.

On the one hand, you have a nice 10-day experience. Maybe stick with it a month or two--and accomplish a few things. But you slip back into old ways of doing things, and the whole process eventually becomes an increasingly distant memory.

Or, you stick with it. And your life becomes a string of successes. Each equipping you with new and powerful resources. Each cultivating and reinforcing a character able to maximize those resources. Your whole life begins to develop a momentum. An acceleration. It takes you down an altogether different path.

What's the difference? One thing, again: persistence. Without persistence, efforts to change yield minimal results. With it, the benefits of change will grow, compound, and multiply.

How is it with you?

As we close our month, I want to challenge you with the need for persistence. Rarely is anything worthwhile ever achieved without it. Persistence pays.

Comments

Does persistence come natural to you? Or do you have to work at it? How did the comparison between life with and life without persistence impact you? How determined are you to persevere in your goals for 2018? Leave a comment below...

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