Consistency

I had a mini adulting melt down recently. I vacated my hiding place under God’s wings and found myself taunted by feelings of stagnancy and helplessness. You know that feeling of being stuck? Like your life isn’t moving in any direction but backwards? You then start questioning yourself and what you’re doing, trying to find fault in either. You assume that there’s something different you have to do because what you’re doing obviously isn’t working. But when you can’t find what it is that you can do to bring the change you long for, you fall into the trap of feeling helpless. It’s a long dark tunnel from there on. (Tell me I’m not alone.)

Albert Einstein is credited with saying ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.’ I think I understand what he meant, but I also feel the saying can be misleading (I know, how dare I question Einstein. But hear me out). The deficiency with this statement is that it undermines the power of consistency.

Being consistent is doing something the same way over and over again. The key of being consistent is knowledge and trust. When I know what I’m doing is what’s supposed to be done, and when I trust that it will produce the promised results, I’ll keep at it. I’ve seen this well with both my hair and my body. When I returned to keeping my hair in its natural state, I was obsessed with having it grow fast into a voluptuous fro. In the first year I saw rapid growth, mainly because I was so consistent in my hair regime. Now, I postpone wash day as far as possible, I only base my scalp with oil once a week, as for trimming, LOL. So I’m not really surprised my hair isn’t growing at the same pace as before. I’m just lazy and inconsistent, delaying my own growth.

My body, on the other hand, is starting to produce the fruits of my labour. I thought I’d have a well- toned body a month into my gym membership. What a joke. I’m months in now, and I don’t go two days without exercising, even when I’ve missed class, I make sure to catch up at home. It goes without saying that I’m loving what I’m seeing and seeing what my body is capable of doing is a real confidence booster. To continue seeing results, I’ll obviously need to keep working. Consistency means to keep on doing what I need to do, getting better at what I do, without letting up. And boy are there many obstacles to being consistent, from not being in the mood to not seeing the difference you expected in the time you set. But in those moments, like this cold morning, you need to remind yourself why you started and what you believed about it when you did.

The parable Jesus tells in Luke 18 carries the lesson of consistency. In fact, I love how intentional Jesus is in telling it.
“Then, Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” Luke 18:1
Jesus shows here that effective prayer requires consistency, not because God is hard of hearing but because the answers have certain conditions. Either they are wrestled against like in Daniel’s case, or they are not for the time I’m praying in like in Habakkuk’s case or they carry a deeper meaning like in Paul’s case. At times, our need to persevere in prayer is mainly about growing and developing in the discipline than it is about the answer. Prayer readies the one who prays, incapacitating them for what is to come. Take Jesus in Luke 22, praying the same prayer repeatedly, then being given strength in light of his impending death.
Jesus also implies that there’ll be obstacles and challenges to prayer by mentioning not giving up. Anyone who prays knows this. You get to a ditch, where you even question the effectiveness of your prayers, which is exactly what the enemy intends, because then prayerlessness and unbelief kicks in. But being consistent means I’ll keep going even if I don’t feel like it, just because I know and trust in what I’m doing.

Jesus then tells them of a widow who kept going to a judge for help. He blatantly refused to help her. You would think this would stop her. But instead, she kept coming, over and over again, until she got the help she wanted. Beyond rejection, she continued coming because she believed in her cause. Consistency requires stern faith. I have to have conviction about what I’m pursuing if I’m to pursue it relentlessly. To some degree, I agree with Einstein that it’s insanity, because faith has a certain measurement of crazy since it’s being defiant in the face of what wants to be known as reality.

So before you introduce change, evaluate the situation properly. If you’re certain what you’re doing is what you’re supposed to be doing to get the desired results, don’t let anything or anyone talk you out of it, not even yourself. At times there’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing and even how we’re doing it, it’s just a matter of time. Consistency requires patience and perseverance to make it across the bridge of time. Change sometimes comes from doing the same thing long enough.

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." Galatians 6:9