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Habits of a Healthy Heart
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We're wrapping up our series Habits of a Healthy Heart, and today we're talking about the idea of being steadfast—or you could say faithful. In modern terms: just don't quit. You gotta stay with it.
There's a principle I've watched play out for years: being faithful in the little things is a big thing. Jesus illustrates this in Matthew 17:20 when He says that faith even as small as a mustard seed could move a mountain. The concept is that small, consistent actions over time make a tremendous difference.
Consider these examples:
Being faithful in the little things is a really, really big thing. But it can be difficult when you're in the race. A lot of times you just want to quit. You started your gym membership on January 1st, and now it's February and you're done. You've walked by the sweet table too many times. Don't quit. You've given up on a relationship—reach out one more time. You never know what might happen. Maybe you're done saving, but just keep saving. Or maybe you're tempted to give up on your marriage.
I've seen it too many times: people just give up on their marriage. If that's you today, let me share advice my dad gave me 28 years ago, when I was 21 and nervous about getting married.
My dad was a steel mill worker and certified millwright—a big fella, 6'6". He was working under a car, and I was walking back and forth, saying, "Dad, I don't know if I should do this. I don't know if I can afford it."
Finally, he got up from under the car and looked at me. He said, "Son, do you love the girl?"
"Well, yeah, of course I love her," I said.
"Do you like her?"
"Yeah, of course I like her. What does that have to do with anything?"
He said, "Because some days you ain't gonna love her but you'll like her. And some days you ain't gonna like her but you'll love her."
In other words, you can't give up. You can't quit. You gotta stick with it. These faithful actions, these faithful little drops over time, make a tremendous difference.
Look at Life.Church today. People herald our generosity—through the YouVersion Bible app on over a half a billion devices, through giving away our resources to many churches, impacting millions. That heart of generosity has been around for a long time.
Twenty-four years ago, Pastor Craig and his wife Amy took my wife Jamie and me out for a night. They took us to a little Victorian town north of Oklahoma City called Guthrie, known for its bed and breakfasts. Pastor Craig paid for everything. When we went to dinner and I found out he was paying, I got hungrier. Then he ordered us a carriage ride—I hadn't had one since prom.
We ended up at this cute little bed and breakfast. When we got to our room, I went into the bathroom and found a heart-shaped jacuzzi tub. I thought, "Well, if there's ever a night to try this, I'm gonna give it a run."
So I found a little white bottle labeled "bubble bath." It said "cap full," so I put in a cap full. Not much happened, so I dumped the whole thing in and turned on the bubble machine. I went out to start my moves on Jamie. Midway through, she said, "What is that?" I turned around and looked—bubbles were coming from under the bathroom door.
I went in there, kicked the door open. Bubbles were everywhere. The whole floor. This bathtub had become like Krakatoa, spewing bubbles all over the place. I was running around in my skivvies scooping bubbles and putting them back in the tub. Have you ever tried to get rid of that many bubbles? It's impossible. There's probably still bubbles at that bed and breakfast. There was no bath that night, no hot tub. I spent the rest of the night cleaning the room.
The next morning, I got down to breakfast and Pastor Craig was there, all chipper. He asked, "Well, how was the room?"
I said, "It's clean."
A little bit can go a long way, can't it? Just a little bit of faithfulness can go a long way. Luke 16:10 tells us: "If you're faithful in the little things, you'll be faithful in the large ones."
This is my 25th year on the team. When you cross an anniversary—whether at work or in marriage—it makes you reflective. I found myself wondering: Does faithfulness compound? Does it matter over the course of time?
At a meeting, I met a guy named Kurt. He told me he was heading to Western Oklahoma because his parents were celebrating their 75th wedding anniversary. I had to rewind. "Kurt, did you just say 75th wedding anniversary?" I'd never known someone who had been married for 75 years.
When I contemplated this couple who had been married 75 years, I realized: yes, it does matter. Whether it's 75 years of marriage, 25 years of ministry, your first year of college, the first few months of a workout, or seven days of sobriety—when you string it together and you're faithful in the little things, it makes a major difference.
You just can't quit. And in order to not quit, you need what I call G.R.I.T.
You can't give up. I want to make this easy to remember using an acrostic. Here it is:
You need grace for yourself. Why? Because you're gonna mess up. When you mess up, you start thinking you're not good enough, not worthy, not capable. You disqualify yourself and pull yourself out of the race.
Second Corinthians 12 says, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness." If God says His grace is sufficient for you, why won't you let it be? Why are you gonna rip yourself down when God already said it's sufficient? Let it be sufficient.
Don't quit because you're gonna make silly mistakes. I made one just last Christmas. I was traveling with six teenagers and a five-year-old. That was the first mistake. It was getting close to dinner time, and a hungry five-year-old isn't hungry—they get hangry. They become Tasmanian devils. Teenagers become a hoard of locusts, eating literally everything in front of them.
So I pull up the Chick-fil-A app to order dinner. A few people wanted Panda Express too. I told my oldest daughter Grace, "You get on your phone and order Panda. You want Panda, go there. You want Chick-fil-A, come to me." I told her, "Grace, make sure it's the right restaurant, please."
She said, "Is it 0.8 miles away on 287?"
"That's the one."
I got my Chick-fil-A—they had a QR code I scanned going through the drive-through. The guy handed me my food and said it was his pleasure. It was amazing. Then I went to Panda Express.
I looked at the mobile order shelves. There was nothing there. I went to the front where a fellow named Clyde was working. I said, "Clyde, how you doing tonight?"
"I'm good. How are you, sir?"
"I'm good. I did a mobile order, but there ain't no mobile order. I got a bunch of hangry teenagers back at the house."
He said, "What's your name?"
"Sam Roberts."
"Well, I don't see it."
"How about Grace Roberts?"
"No, sir."
"Jamie Roberts? That's my wife."
"No Roberts at all."
I said, "Oh no, Clyde, this is gonna get ugly. If I go back with no Panda, this is gonna be bad."
He said, "Well, okay. Do you remember the order?"
"Well, Clyde, honestly I don't because Grace was taking the order."
He said, "You know what? We'll make it right for you. This happens quite often because the franchise owner owns a couple. She probably put it in the wrong restaurant. What was at least your order?"
"I wanted orange chicken, teriyaki chicken, and some chow mein."
When I said this, the people who had stacked up behind me all looked at me. The other lady stopped what she was doing. The whole restaurant went silent. Even the cook in the back looked out. And at the same time, Grace picked up the phone.
Clyde looked right at me and he said, "Sir, this is Jack in the Box."
When something that stupid happens to me, I just make fun of myself. I said, "Well, by golly, Clyde. It does say Jack in the Box right above your name, don't it?"
I turned to the mad lady behind me and said, "You smell that? Not a lick of chow mein in this store—burgers and fries. I gotta go, everybody."
I left. You ever done something stupid? I do all the time. But you have to have grace for yourself. You gotta have grace for yourself and let God's grace be sufficient for you.
You gotta have resilience. Galatians 6:9 says, "Let us not become weary in doing good. At the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."
How many of us know that it can be weary to do good? It can be weary sometimes. But at the proper time—not my time, not your time, but the proper time—we're gonna reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Pastor Craig illustrates this with a story about a donkey that fell into a hole. Some guys looked down and thought, "Ain't no way we can get this donkey out. We might as well make it short and sweet. We'll bury him alive."
So they started throwing shovels of dirt down on the donkey. The dirt would hit him, he would shake it off and step up. They'd throw more dirt, he'd shake it off and step up. This donkey had the spirit of Taylor Swift on it—he would shake it off and step up.
Eventually, maybe it wasn't the tenth shovel or the hundredth, maybe it was the thousandth or the ten-thousandth, but he kept shaking it off and stepping up. Over time, the pit got shallower and shallower until one day he could just walk out of it.
You gotta shake it off and step up. You gotta stay resilient. If you'll stay resilient and not become weary in doing good, at the proper time you'll reap a harvest if you don't give up.
Integrity is simple: if you have it, nothing else matters. If you don't have it, nothing else matters.
You've been told this since you were a little kid: you eat the cookie, tell the truth. All we have to do is allow our yes to be our yes, our no to be our no. Live a life that is consistent, no matter who you're talking to. Tell the truth. Because if you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have it, nothing else matters. It's that simple.
Proverbs 9:9 says, "Instruct the wise, and they will be even wiser. Teach the righteous and they will learn even more."
When I came on staff at 22 years old, Pastor Craig and Pastor Jerry used to say to me all the time, "You're wise way beyond your years. Your wisdom is just unreal." That never landed on me at 22. I thought wisdom was the ability to look at circumstances and figure a way out of them.
But literally all I did growing up from 16 on—and even to this day—is I would look at people who were successful at a given thing. I ask a lot of questions and then I do what they said. I would also have friends or other people in my life who made a bad mistake. And guess what I would do? I'd ask them a lot of questions, find out what they did, and not do what they did. When they told me that trail went off a cliff, I just believed them.
Wisdom isn't about figuring your way out of circumstances—it's about learning from others. When I was 22, my pastors told me I was wise beyond my years, but that never made sense to me until I realized what I was actually doing: looking at successful people, asking questions, and doing what they said. I also learned from people's mistakes by asking what went wrong and simply not doing that.
When someone told me that trail went off a cliff, I just believed them. I didn't need to walk it myself. Years later, I understood that this is wisdom—remaining teachable and learning from other people.
I've been married for 27 years, and it would be foolish to think I've learned everything I need to know about marriage. I've been a parent for 22 years with six children ranging from age 22 to 5, with vastly different talents, gifts, and personalities. Yet I can still learn from a parent of a two-year-old.
I've been a pastor for 25 years at Life.Church, and I've seen and been through a lot. But it would be insane to think I couldn't learn from an intern who's been here for three months. I couldn't have gotten here if I hadn't been faithful in learning along the way.
Here's how lack of teachability takes you out: When you decide you know everything about a topic and nobody can teach you, pride enters your head and you stop listening. The Bible warns us in 1 Corinthians 10: "If you think you're standing strong, oh, you better be careful not to fall." Proverbs tells us that pride comes before a fall.
When you're no longer teachable and won't listen, you become prideful. You fall, and that fall makes you think you're disqualified—because you didn't have grace, you lacked resilience, you didn't have integrity, you didn't have teachability. That's how not being teachable becomes a problem.
To combat this, we must always stay in a posture of learning from other people. Ask questions and be humble in heart. Does faithfulness compound? Yes, absolutely. My voice is different today at 47 with 25 years of ministry experience than it was at 22 with one year of experience. I've seen a lot and been through a lot, but I'm still here. That faithfulness compounds over time.
When I was in college, there was a man named Leon who worked at the chef station in our cafeteria. Every single day, Leon would be there serving omelets, burgers, and turkey to the student body. And there was always the same interaction.
If you were a guy and walked up, you were either a turkey or a pig. If you were a girl, no matter what, you were a pretty girl. I'd walk in and say, "Leon, how we doing today?" He'd respond, "Oh, Sam, there he is. How you doing?" I'd ask for one omelet, and he'd say, "One omelet for the turkey right here." Or at lunch, if I wanted two burgers: "Leon, I need two burgers." "Two? Oh that a pig right there."
Meanwhile, my fiancée (now my wife) could order ten burgers, and Leon would say, "Oh, the pretty girl she's hungry today. She needs more burgers." I'd protest, "Leon, I ordered two!" But he'd just laugh: "Yeah, but you're the pig, she the pretty girl, that's right."
Every day, the same conversation with every student, over and over. People would come in having done poorly on midterms or having a bad day, but when Leon encountered them with his playful banter, they'd leave with a big smile on their face. One omelet at a time, that man wedged his way into the hearts of the entire student body.
My senior year, second semester, I had just finished my basketball career and was two weeks from graduation. At our university chapel, I had seen celebrities, state and federal politicians, foreign dignitaries, and highly accomplished academics with robes and triple doctorates receive awards. It was impressive and cool.
Then, near the end of one chapel service, the university president announced they had one more award to give: the distinguished staff member award. I wondered which professor would receive it.
The president said: "This year's distinguished staff member award goes to Leon."
Something I had never seen before happened. The student body went absolutely crazy. We got out of our seats. I started high-fiving people. We were screaming so loudly you couldn't hear the president anymore. We started chanting: "Leon! Leon! Leon! Leon!" We were in the aisles. It became pandemonium.
I could see Leon standing with his wife, maybe his kids and grandkids, wiping tears away as they realized that a very simple but very faithful man had such a tremendous impact on the entire student body. One omelet at a time. He was faithful in the little things, and it became a really big thing.
For you, whatever journey God has you on, don't quit. Find grit inside of you. Have grace—God's grace to be sufficient for you. Have resilience. Be a person of integrity. Always be teachable.
I pray for you that you get something far greater than your name being chanted by a crowd. I pray you get the greatest gift: a hug from Jesus when you enter heaven, and He looks at you and says, "Well done, my good and faithful servant."
There's one more thing I need to tell you about grit: the greatest story of grit of all time is the story of Jesus. The Bible tells us that all of us have sinned and fallen short of God's standard. That sin separates us from God and destines us to hell for eternity. But God wasn't okay with that.
God sent His only Son, Jesus, so that whosoever believes in Him could not perish but have eternal life, be made new, be made right, be forgiven. But it wasn't an easy road for Jesus. The night before His crucifixion, He was so overcome with the desire to quit that He said, "Father, if there's any other way, please take this cup from me, but not my will be done but yours." And He had the grit to go to the cross and die on our behalf.
You have the sinless Jesus dying in your place to make a way for you to be made right and forgiven. Why did Jesus have such grit? Because He was thinking about you. He was thinking about me. He wanted us to have a way to be made right and forgiven.
All the Bible says you have to do is believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. You'll be forgiven, you'll be made new, your sins will be wiped clean. Even better than that, you get a new sense of purpose and direction for your life because you're now living from forgiveness.
There are those of you here today because God brought you here so His grace could truly be sufficient for you—so you could know that no matter what you've done, His grace is sufficient. All you have to do is say yes to a relationship with Jesus. If that's you, lift your hand right now. Say yes to a relationship with Christ.
