Daily Dose 42: Perseverance

How often have you heard, “If I only knew then what I know now, things would have been different?”

When was the last time you were in the midst of a major project and found something crucial had been overlooked or was missing? All your good intentions ground to a halt, the rhythm broke, you got discouraged, perhaps the whole project was set aside.

What feels worse than that sick chagrin in your stomach when something you ought to have done was not done and the day of reckoning has arrived?

If it were possible for you to be genuinely prepared for all your projects, to have done what needed doing—before it was needed, and to see your skills and wisdom increasing as you got older, how would you feel, grateful or filled with pride?

Big Expectations

Priority stewardship goals are really big. We want all the tasks, responsibilities, activities, and plans on our to do lists to reflect all of God’s life priorities for us, not just urgent, clamoring, immediate needs and deadlines. We want to improve our ability to foresee what we need, and build cushions for consistent ministry-mindedness when the  inevitable unforeseen happens. Since good stewardship shoulders all needful life tasks in a Spirit directed way, we want to wean ourselves away from neglecting and avoiding the parts of life we don’t like, or aren’t drawn to, or aren’t good at.

As is true with all skills, the skills that allow someone to plan ahead, stick to their schedule, and finish on time come easier to some than others. Recording plans and schedules will be more natural and more fun for some than others. But all of us can improve the skill level we have if we will attend to it on a regular basis. The biggest hindrance to good stewardship is not a lack of innate or natural ability, but a lack of perseverance: the resolve to come again and again to any issue in new and different ways, ways conceived from and built upon past failures, rather than being stopped by them.

The end result of priority stewardship is not to become swamped by charts, spreadsheets, intricate doomsday scenarios, and reams of paperwork requiring five hours a day to monitor (unless you love such wonky work and thrive on it!). For most us, though, taking time to write some lists, plans, and schedules could actually help us view our lives before the Lord more seriously.

Writing as a Secret Weapon for Perseverance

Here then is a best practice for any apprentice, whether that apprentice is ourselves or others for whom we  have some  responsibility to encourage, train and/or oversee: perseverance is easier to maintain when we write. Write down ideas to try, write what went well and what went poorly, write down new ideas to try next, and, once in awhile, at least, just record thoughts. Get inspired…go design a form!