The Power of Persistence - Part 2

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. Do you stick to your objectives, or are you prone to give up easily? Today we'll discover some practical steps for setting and achieving godly goals. Here's more on the power of persistence.

What are you going to find? You're going to find this trait in them. That is the trait of persistence. Now, what in the world is persistence? Well, persistence is an attitude. Persistence is a characteristic. It is a quality trait to be found in the life of every person who accomplishes or achieves anything. In fact, what it is, it is a combination of two things. Persistence is a combination of strong desire and willpower.

It is a combination of strong desire and willpower. Now, it's very important you watch and listen to what I'm going to say. Are you listening? Say, amen. Amen.

Alright, now watch this. Whether you believe it or not, every single one of you, whether you believe it or not, every single one of you has this trait. You have this trait. And you have demonstrated in your life the most awesome example of persistence. When you were born god inbred within you in the beginning, this trait of the capacity and the will and the ability to be persistent. Now, the tragedy is most people after they get over this particular experience, they lay it down. Tragedy of tragedies of tragedies that you would lay it down.

You say, well, now, how can you prove that I have this trait? Well, you have to watch this. When you were born and you got big enough, your parents put you on the floor and what did you do? You crawled, right? And you know what happened? You kept doing that until finally you could stand up. Then your mother, your father's on the other side of the room, they said, now, come on, honey, walk up.

Show me you walk over here. One step, down you went again. You stood up and you failed. You stood up and you failed. You stood up and you failed. You stood up and you failed. You stood up and you failed. You stood up and you failed.

Until one day you stood up. You took a step and you failed. You took a step and you failed. You took a step and you failed. You took a step and you failed. One day you took the second step and the third step and finally you walked. Let me ask you a question. Tell me now at your age of one or if you walked before or after that, what got you off of all fours onto your feet, standing up and walking and running? Tell me what got you there? Persistence. Now, what would this world be like if everybody had kept that same spirit all of their life?

Can you imagine where the gospel be today if all of us who know Jesus Christ as our savior would be that persistent? So when somebody says, well, you know, I just don't have that trait. Yes. Yes, you do. Embraed within you and what you did, you laid it down. You voluntarily gave it up. You surrendered it. You surrendered it to negative criticism. You surrendered it to all kinds of feelings.

You listened to other people. You laid down one of the most precious gifts God has ever given. He gave it to you as a child and born within you. He did not intend you to crawl all of your life, but to stand up and walk and make progress and achieve goals in your life. Some of you are still crawling emotionally.

You're crawling in your thinking. God wants you to stand up. He has a goal for your life, a purpose and a plan for your life. Don't give up.

I want to say again, this is where you live. It doesn't make any difference what your color, what your language, what your culture. It doesn't make any difference what that may be. You were created by God to be somebody very important in this world. You may not be important to a lot of people, but you can be you'll be important to somebody and you never know what that somebody is going to do. Well, when I think about that, I think about this whole idea of not only the motivation, but why it's so important.

I said, first of all, the reason it's important is because these things are vital. Defeat and failure is a part of our life, and therefore we have to learn how to deal with them. A second thing is this, and that is in the development of our persistence, we learn how to view and how to relate to and how to respond to failures and difficulties. Any person who has goals in their life and sets out to accomplish those goals are going to face those difficulties and hardships. So what happened is we learn how to deal with them. And a person who is persistent, they're persistent and they keep on because they are in the process and have learned how to deal with them.

For example, there's some just very basic principles and I just mentioned several. One of them is this, a person who is persistent has learned the difference between being a failure and an event of failure. It's one thing for me to have an event in my life that defeats me and something else to say, I'm a defeated person. There's a difference in failing at something in this event and being a failure. And if you don't distinguish between somebody says, I'm just a failure. No, you're not.

Absolutely reject that. You are not a failure. We all fail at times in particular events and situations and circumstances. That doesn't make you a failure.

That's an event in your life. And a person who is persistent has learned the difference between being a failure and experiencing a failure in their life. A second thing is this, and that is we learn that oftentimes we experience test, but that doesn't mean stop. A test does not mean you stop here.

A test means here is my opportunity to learn something new on my way to reaching my goals. But oftentimes people, if they get tested with something, they think, well, you know, I guess I need to stop at this point. You see, a temporary defeat is just that. It's a temporary defeat. It's a delay. It may delay me in reaching my goal, but it's not going to keep me from getting there.

It's not the dead end. We all are going to have make mistakes no matter who we are, but we don't just give in to the mistakes. Likewise, I believe that in every momentary event of failure or defeat, there is the seed of an equivalent.

Listen, of an equivalent success. That is, I'm going to learn something out of that if I look. You see, is this a weakness in my life? Is this something I keep failing at? Is there something God trying to teach me at this point? And so, listen, in every single failure or defeat, there is the equivalent seed of success.

There's something is I'm going to learn if I'm willing that's going to help me succeed later on in the next step toward that success. So, when I think about the things that people go through, I think about also the fact that what we have to do in our failures, we have, listen, now watch this one, we have to learn to bury our failures. Don't frame them, hang them on the wall and keep going back and saying, I was doing fine, but back here in my life, here's what happened. Bury the failures. Listen, if God is willing to forgive you for them, bury them.

Let that be the end of it. Don't go back trying to bring them all up. What did the apostle Paul say? He said, forgetting those things which are behind. You think about all the stuff he had to forget. He said, I was a, these are his words, I was a violent aggressor of the church of Jesus Christ. He says, forgetting those things behind what? Forgiven by God?

Yes. Forgetting those things which are behind, I press on toward the mark of a high calling in Christ Jesus. So we have to remember to bury our failures, don't hang them up, frame them up and keep going back and saying, well, here's what happened in my life. Don't look for somebody else to blame. I do not know nor have I ever read of a persistent person who was always blaming somebody else.

You know what happened? Listen, if you get in the awful habit of blaming somebody else for the difficulties and the hardships, if you get in the habit of blaming circumstances because of what's going on in your life and blaming anybody else for it, you will not be persistent because just what that does, it automatically undermines your desire to keep moving on. Well, it's their fault.

I wouldn't be in this position if it were not for their fault. I do believe that God triggers some defeats in our life in order that you and I would develop our faith stronger, develop endurance and develop persistence because God is in the process of building character. He's not in the process of just accomplishing because he's in the process of building godly character.

And certainly Apostle Paul and Jesus would be two wonderful examples of men who knew how to endure, who had godly character. So we come to this whole idea. If all of this is true and this is how important it is, how do I develop the spirit of persistence in my life?

So get your pencil out now. If you've been sitting here listening to this, you don't want to overlook this because every single one of us and you could add some things to this. I don't mean this is absolutely totally all that you could do.

But these are just a few suggestions because my purpose is to at least get you to thinking about where you are, who you are, what God has in mind for your life, what could you do, what goals do you have? Are you being persistent? Are you giving up your dreams? Are you laying it down and you just decided I can't do it? And you're willing to sacrifice God's very best in your life because somebody else criticized you. Somebody else didn't think you could do it.

Somebody else thought it wouldn't work. And I do believe that many, many people listened to all kinds of garbage and that garbage steals their dream and causes them to be less than what God wants them to be. Well, certainly one of the first things that will help me develop my persistence is set a goal for your life that demands your best. Set a goal for your life that demands your best. Now, you know, we've been saying all along we're setting goals under God's leadership. Set those goals that God would enable us to set and have us to set. Under his leadership, set the goal high enough that it demands your best. So first of all, set a goal high enough. Set a goal high enough that it demands your best, that it's going to squeeze out of you the potential that God's placed there.

Number two, you've got to develop a burning desire to make it a reality. Look at the apostle Paul. Did he say, I think I'll go over to Ephesus maybe. Oh, one of these days I'm going to get up to Philippi and I'd like to be able to share the gospel of the resurrected Jesus over in Corinth.

And so one of these days, you know, when it's convenient, I'm going to get me a ship and I'm heading that way. No, something burned within him. Listen, if you don't have anything burning on the inside of you, if somehow you've allowed people to throw enough cold water on the flame of your soul and your spirit. Listen, ask God to reignite your heart, to burn something within you, stir something within you.

Don't let you be satisfied and longer being with less than God wants you to be. You've got to have something burning on the inside of you. Then life gets exciting. You get challenged. You say this, suppose I fail. Remember that it is a failure doesn't mean that you're a failure. A mistake, a sin, yes. A defeat, yes. But does that make you a defeated person?

No, you just suffered a defeat. The third thing I would mention is this. That is, you've got to keep your eye on the goal. If you set a goal, remember, it's got to be worthy of your efforts and your energy. If you don't keep your eye on the goal, here's what's going to happen. You're going to float around over here and you're going to look up, you know, listen, watch this. Somebody always has a deal.

Somebody always has a very appealing sidetrack or a detour or a side road. There are all kinds of people out there who have no purpose in life, no sense of direction, and they want to get you off course. You've got to keep your eye on the goal, remembering this is a goal that God has helped me to set. He helped me to set it. It's worthy of my attainment. If it's worthy of my attainment, he's going to enable me to do it. And so I persist. I refuse to give up. I refuse to be sidetracked. I refuse to listen to negative criticism. I will not listen to negative criticism, which is a point I want you to jot down. I absolutely refuse negative criticism, whether it's from your husband, your wife, your children, your parents, your friends, your enemies, your employer, your employees.

Doesn't make any difference who it is. Absolutely refuse it. You know what? And just say, you know what? I'm not hanging around people like that, which leads me to a next point, and that's this. Surround yourself or make your friends people who will encourage you, not discourage you. I mean, you need to be around people who will encourage you. Hey, you're doing a great job at that.

You may have known that you blew it bad, and that person says to you, you know what? I love you. God loves you. And they say, what can I do to help you? I believe you can reach that goal. If you just hang in there, we're going to help you. All of us need encouragers. I've got some encouragers in my life.

Thank God. Now, I certainly wouldn't set myself up as an example, but I can tell you this. I used to work in the textile mill way back when I was going to college. And, you know, they criticized me. They called me the deacon.

I don't know where they got that from. I wasn't but about 18 years old. And so they'd go, here comes the deacon. Here's what happened.

Wasn't there very long, about three weeks. When I walked up, they shut up their dirty jokes. They stopped. And you know what? When they used profanity, they'd come and count me. And I never said a word.

They'd just come and apologize. I didn't say a word. God began to do something in their life. You know what?

I was just a kid. They knew they were wrong. They knew they were wrong.

It doesn't take but one person who'd just stand up and be positive. Don't be, I never said, y'all come to church, let me tell you how to get saved. No, I never tell you. You know what? They asked me, what's this stuff about salvation? And so help me, this is the truth. And the man who was, they called him a second hand.

He was the boss. After a while, at first I tried to avoid it, but I couldn't. I would go to the restroom, take a little break, and we'd just sort of stand out of the heat because in a bleachery it's just burning hot. So these guys would come in there, they'd want me to talk to them. So I'd get their witness to them. I could have just said nothing the whole time. And you know what?

It'd have been the same place I left. Where you are, God may have a goal for your life that'll transform somebody else's life, that'll transform somebody else's life, transform somebody else's kid. And you know what? You and I'll never know till you get to heaven the awesome impact you had that went like a ripple through one family after the other till it finally got out there to the one person that God was going to use the most. Don't let down your dreams. Don't give up no matter what. Don't listen to criticism. Don't let it get to you.

It'll destroy you or it'll develop somebody else no matter what happens. Not only that, but listen, in every single defeat, look for a personal lesson. Whenever I get defeated in some area, what I want to say, okay God, what are you up to? What is it you're trying to show me? Don't blame somebody else. What is it you're trying to show me? Look for the lessons that you can learn in every single mistake and every defeat. Now listen, listen carefully. If you look for somebody to blame, you're going to miss the lesson.

If you say, well, it's my circumstances. They mistreated me. They didn't understand me. They did this. They did that.

They did the other. You know what? Forget it. Persistence does not look for someone to blame. Persistence looks for the lesson. What is it that I can learn in this particular situation? And not only that, one other thing, listen, you've got to rely upon God to enable you.

This is not a matter of knitting, grinding, you know, just my strength versus my problem. No, it's relying upon the Spirit of the living God to enable you, strengthen you, give you the wisdom to know which path to take, show you when to take a turn, but not give up no matter what you may face in life. Now, let me give you two verses of Scripture. Listen to this.

Now watch these. Here's one of the reasons you shouldn't give up and shouldn't quit. Because the most persistent person I know is Almighty God.

Now think about what He said. Paul said in Romans chapter eight, he said, For you and I have been predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. You know what that means? That God will not, He will not give up. Ultimately, He will conform every single one of us in our character to the likeness of His Son.

He's not giving up. You remember what Paul said in Philippians chapter one, verse six? He said, I am persuaded. Listen, that He who has begun a good work in you will, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. God doesn't give up. Now let me ask you a question. If God gave up on you since you've been saved one time, stand up and tell me.

No, no, no, no, He didn't. You know what? God hasn't given up on you and me. He knows that we're going to blow it. He knows we're going to make mistakes. He knows we're going to have moments of failure and moments of defeat. Has He given up on us?

No, He has not. God hasn't given up on you. He will never give up on you, no matter what. We are not to give up on the God-given goals that He set for us.

Why? Because listen, they're goals that will enable us to become the persons God wants us to be and achieve the goals that God has set for our life. Here's what I want to challenge you to do. I want to challenge you to resurrect those goals that God has given you in the past, bury all of your defeats and your failures, rekindle those goals that you know that God has set for your life, and take a step in the direction that God would have you to take, knowing that He's going to be there to enable you, strengthen you, and help you to reach those goals no matter what they may be. God can change your life beginning right now if you'll place your life in His hands, find out what His goals are, and head in that direction.