What If Diligence Is A Spiritual Practice

We challenge you to stop drifting through the day and start living with a clear mark that you can actually hit. We connect diligence, hope, and wisdom to a simple daily practice: choose your top three, do them early, and let that momentum reshape your life and legacy. 
• setting a clear target to avoid missing the mark 
• choosing a top three list for daily focus 
• keeping hope alive by hoping for something specific 
• identifying patterns that block growth and letting them die 
• balancing rest with rhythm, planning, and discipline 
• accepting the messy parts of increase and the process 
• rejecting comfort as a substitute for stretching and wisdom 
• slowing down to gain understanding and guard your words 
• building morning success to fuel the rest of the day 
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Transcript

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elcome And The Day’s Challenge

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to another episode of For Life and Legacy. We're glad that you're here. Listen, just go ahead and sit back. Don't relax yourself. Get yourself ready for what's about to happen to transform your life and your legacy. We're still believing that great things are happening, and they're happening in you. Come on, let's get ready to make this happen. Our life's been waiting for you to show up. Yes it has Alright. It's a good day to do great things because God has given us a good opportunity to stretch out and to believe him for more. You have to believe that today is a day like another. It's an opportunity that you've never had before, and by the grace of God you're able to see it. Now I know typically what we have is a lot of things on our plate. We have this, that and the other, and so many times we get trapped in the other. Or maybe, maybe just simply maybe you are not disciplined like I myself was at one point in time. Didn't have a focus, didn't have a plan, just woke up and ran. I'm just telling you, when you don't have a focus and you don't have a plan and you wake up and ran, which is what I did. I had to say that just to make it rhyme. Listen, you're going to do yourself a disservice by not being able to have focus in the morning, not having an agenda, not having a target to hit. Literally, the word sin means to miss the mark. Guess what? You will miss the mark every time if you never set

et Your Mark With Top Three

SPEAKER_00 1:41

one. So here's what we're going to share with you today. Set a mark on today. I don't care if it's one, two, or three things. Set a top three. Get it fixed and focused in your mind. Because here's what I know the scriptures plainly declare and tell us that the diligent hand shall be made fat. Well, you gotta be in order to be diligent, guess what? You have to have a mark. You must be working on something. It's very difficult to hit or to become prosperous in something if for whatever reason you've not been focused on it, right? In order to be focused, you have to be looking at it. And if you're looking at it, you gotta have a point to focus on. So are you focused on a point today? If you're not, come on, take the time out. Choose something that you know you can actually achieve today. Start with something small. Some would say, well, that's not great. That's not a great thing. Guess what? Every great thing starts small, y'all. Every great thing starts small. Listen, even for most of us, God did not start out as big as he is right now in your life. At some point in time, he was not. He was not the most important thing. You know it and I know it. And as your relationship with him has grown, so has your ability to see him in a very larger scope, in a larger stance, in a larger way. And I will tell you specifically, you have

ope Deferred And What Blocks You

SPEAKER_00 3:04

to be focused on this. Listen, Scripture tells us in Proverbs 13, 12, hope deferred, maketh the heart sick. So hope on something today. Because here's what it says, but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. So if you want to see your life change in a miraculous way, I'm going to challenge you today to go ahead, get hope alive, make hope alive in your heart, in your life. But that means you gotta hope for something. Ah, that's right. We're back to that point where we're focused on something. And sometimes, you know, we may be focused on something grand, something that's beyond imagination, or something that you think should really happen to you, but for whatever reason. There's an adversarial force at work in your life or around you, something that's keeping you from getting there. Now, many times it could be simply this. There may be patterns in your life that you are adopting, you're allowing to live. Some things God just wants to die in your life, but you're still giving it breath. You're still allowing it to stick around. Like me, I did at one point in time. I would stay in the bed to try to see if I can get all the sleep out of that bed, all of it, because that pillow just seemed to love my head. I tell you that pillow really, it's a pillow, it's nice and soft, and it's your enemy. It's your enemy when it comes to you being able to be progressive and you being able to do all that God has mandated, commanded, desired, hope, plan, focused you to do, it sometimes can be

est Rhythm And Real Discipline

SPEAKER_00 4:38

a hindrance. Right there, don't get me wrong. There is a time where you must get your rest, right? Even in Scripture, six days you work. Oh yeah, you heard that, didn't you? Six days you work, but on the seventh is your Sabbath. The understanding then is if you're working a five-day week, you still have another day of work left. Can you actually maximize that day that's left? You're supposed to rest on the Sabbath. Now, if you're a preacher or prophet or evangelist or someone in the ministry, uh that Sabbath is typically the day in which you work. Uh and we are made. Uh we have the understanding that's how things work, and typically most ministers take that Monday off or something along those lines in order to recuperate. But you have to have rest, you have to be able to gather yourself, you have to have a focus, you have to have a rhythm, you have to have a plan. Because if you don't plan, then you've already planned to fail, right? Because if you don't plan to succeed, you've already planned to fail. You won't see increase, you won't. It will not happen. There's another scripture that says, uh maybe find it for you really quickly, and and I want to get after this.

ncrease Requires Messy Strength

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Um where no oxen are, the crib is clean. Proverbs 14, 4. Where no oxen are, the crib is clean. But here's the thing but much increase is by the strength of the oxen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I know you don't use an ox, but back in the day, they needed an ox to make things happen, to pull the car, to do this, to do that, to do that manual labor. But the bad part about it is you gotta clean up. You have to clean up behind the ox, right? But you can't throw the ox out and tell it to stop doing what it naturally does, right? You have to feed that ox to make him strong. Well, when you feed him, something's gonna come out the other end. That's right. And you might not like what comes out the other end, but it's a part of the process, and sometimes we don't want the nasty part of the process. And I get it. I get it, everybody wants to be comfortable. Well, I shouldn't say everybody, most people want to be comfortable.

omfort Stops Growth So Stretch

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Most people want to be comfortable, but I will share with you that being comfortable is the enemy of growth. You can't grow without being stretched. You can't grow without being stretched. You cannot grow without being stretched, one way, shape, or form. Matter of fact, if you stop stretching your body, your muscles and in themselves will atrophy, and they will you lose their strength, stamina, their ability to do things, to pull, to push. So I'm gonna push this through your way right now. You have to understand that in order for you to get wisdom, you have to stretch beyond where you are today, which means you need to learn something more than you knew yesterday. Which means that you have to get up early, which means you have to have a focus to learn, to become something better. To become that which God has made you to be. Let me say this. The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way, but the folly of fools is deceit. Look, stop deceiving yourself. The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way. You have to understand God's way. You may even need to understand your way and ask God to reveal to you your way. If you're listening to this, you know in the back of your head that there is some need that you something that you need to change, and you already know what it is. I don't even need to be a prophet to reveal it to you. You know what it is. I don't need to be a seer to reveal it to you. You see it for yourself. So here's what I'm telling you. You have to be a mind, you have to be of my of the mind. There we go. You have to be of the mind to not only identify it, but now take the challenge to stretch yourself. That's right. Stretch yourself out so that you can become more than what you are today.

in The Morning To Win Day

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Today, right? Because yesterday is gone. You can't get it. Tomorrow's not promised. But today, you could change everything. You could change not just your life, but the lives of those around you. All you have to do is what? Focus. If you could just focus, focus, focus, focus, focus on something today. I'm telling you, if you're able to do this, you will see your life change. So go ahead, write down three things. Every single day you know you need to do three things that you need to do every single day, every day, and focus on those three things. Do them in the morning. Do them in the morning. I'm going to say, do them in the morning. Why? Because once you set a level of success for the morning, it gives your mind, it gives your insight, it gives you a deeper desire to be as successful for the rest of the day. And everybody wants a really good day. Don't you want a really good day? All right, so here's what we understand.

low Down Guard Mouth And Mind

SPEAKER_00 10:17

The fear of the Lord, and the fear of the Lord is strong confidence, and his children shall have a place of refuge. The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life to depart from the snares of death. Proverbs 1426. Well, we know this to be true. Then even more so f if we go down to 1428, and the multitude of people is the king's honor, but in the want of people is the destruction of the prince. He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding, but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly. So listen, let's balance ourselves out. We don't have enough time today to go to all of those. But I want to focus on 1429. He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding. But he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly. We're not asking you to run. We're asking you to take your time to get it right so that you can get great understanding. Slow to wrath allows you to temple yourself, to not take things too uh heavy, right? Take them light. Except if it were an offense toward your God, your wife, or your family. Right? You need to protect your family. Right? You do, you do. God can protect himself, but you do need to be able to stand up and say, Hold on, not in my face, not about my God. Ah, yeah, there are things where you have you you have the right to say that's not righteous, especially in the house of God, right? Not in the house of God. We don't do certain things in the house of God because it is holy, it is sanctified, it is pure, right? So we we do need to take those things into consideration, but we need to continue to do this. We need to drive ourselves into the place where we rest in the wisdom of God, right? So that we have clear understanding, so that we're able to make ourselves all that God expects us to be. Because we know the king's favor is toward the wise servant, but his wrath is against him that causeth shame. We want not to bring shame to God. If anything, we want to bring favor. We want favor to be all over us. I have a song called Favor. I've got favor all over me. Favor all over me. Proverbs 13 3 tells me specifically that he that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life, but he that open wide his lips shall have destruction. So we need to take our time, all right? We need to take our time today. Because lastly, Proverbs

iligence Overflow And Closing

SPEAKER_00 13:04

13.4. The slow the soul of the slugger desire that hath nothing, but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat. Alrighty, Proverbs 13.4. Listen, you take that with you on today. I'm gonna get out of here. It's not a long one today, but I want you to keep it in your mind that God wants you to be diligent. So you can have overflow for somebody's ability to overcome. So let's go for it today and let's challenge ourselves to believe God for more. Amen. Because there is more in store for you. I believe that for you. I love God. You love God. Let's love Him real good together. God bless you. Until next time. For your life and your legacy. Let's do it all in the name of Jesus. Oh, we truly want to thank you for joining. We know that it took some time out of your day, but we hope that it was seen as an investment for your future because we know that you're expecting great things. Why? Because he's promised great things for your life. As a matter of fact, he's promised great things for your life and your legacy. If you're enjoying this, we're gonna ask you to like and share. Tell a friend about it. We're gonna continue to bring you this good content. We have the rest of this teaching coming up next week. So please, please tune back in. Even set the alert so that you'll get notification of when it does come on. So again, we love you, and there's nothing you can do about it because we are here for your life and your legacy. You stay blessed now you're here.