When I was younger, I had no idea what faith truly meant. I thought that if you believed in God, you had faith. Oh, how little I knew back then. It is easy to get trapped in the thought that this may be correct but it is not. I learned a very important lesson in my Christian group in high school, which is that, no matter how much it is, your best will always be enough for God. I never understood knowing Jesus as a friend, I just didn’t understand it because I wasn’t very close with him yet. I thought I knew Him really well, until, I prayed for the first time in the car while I was driving. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I remember that it was winter time and it was absolutely beautiful outside and the roads weren’t very good on my way to school. The sun was just peeking up over the horizon of the mountains and I said something along the lines of, “Lord, I just I pray you keep me safe, but my goodness is this beautiful Lord. What a beautiful Earth that you have built. I am so blessed.” That was the first time I spoke to Jesus as if there was someone sitting in my passenger seat. It was a wonderful feeling and now it’s something that I do quite regularly. Whenever I have a thought, it is so beautiful because I can just speak to Jesus because I know he is always there. It is truly like having a best friend on the phone all the time. So what does this have to do with being consistent, you may ask? Let’s go into that.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that having a relationship with Jesus is as simple as it sounds – a relationship. Relationship with Jesus should be just like a relationship with your sibling or your best friend or your fiance. The way that you earn trust and maintain that relationship is by consistency. When you stop talking relationships break. It doesn’t have to be the same every single day. Some days you will be less busy than others, someday you’ll be able to get to know Jesus a little better than others, but as long as you are giving your best that will always be enough for God. Your best will always be enough. Some days. He knows that all you have time to do is look at the verse of the day on the Bible app on your phone, or say a little prayer as you’re going to sleep but if that is all you have time to do and you still do it that will always be enough. But what you cannot expect is to have known Jesus when you were a kid or simply believed in him previously, not maintain the relationship, and just expect your relationship with him to be okay. We are all sinners, we will never be perfect, because that is in our nature. But, we do have to be consistent.
How do we do that? What has worked for me personally, is trying to set small realistic goals to make sure that I stay consistent, rather than getting caught up in the cycle of forgetting to spend time with Jesus for say a week, and then making it up by reading a ton of chapters. Instead, if I deep dive into one chapter or a section of a chapter every day I am much more likely to stick to this sustainable schedule and know Jesus better. But something like this might not work for everybody, but regardless the subject matter is still relevant.