So, do you ever look at people who are really successful in some category of life and wonder,

how in the world do they do that? Do you ever do that? You look at somebody who's successful in business

or they're really, really healthy and in good shape or they have a great marriage or they're incredibly

godly or they have massive influence and you wonder, how did they do that?

When I was growing up, I used to just think they must have been really, really lucky.

They were lucky enough to be born into the right family. They were lucky enough to have some kind of big opportunity.

They were lucky enough to have good genetics or lucky enough to meet the right person or lucky enough to have some break through idea.

And while there is some luck and some people have been given more, what I've noticed over time,

that in most cases, when people are really successful, at least in some area of their life, they're not just lucky, but they're consistent.

They're consistent over time. And I tell our team all the time that successful people do consistently,

what other people do occasionally. Let me say that again. In some area of life,

there's consistency, there's persistence, there's patience because successful people tend to do consistently,

what other people do occasionally. I've never seen someone that just accidentally paid off a ton of debt.

You know, someone who's got a bunch of student loan debt or credit card debt or big car payments or whatever,

who just said, I wouldn't even pay attention to my finances. I got no idea how one day I just paid it all off and I'm just accidentally debt free.

It doesn't tend to happen accidentally, but intentionally with consistency over time. The same is true with their merits.

I don't know anybody who says, I don't know, how in the world I just got a great merit.

I mean, we've been merit for 23 years and we've never had a fight. I mean, we're just like, kissy, kissy, kissy all the time.

I've never met anyone like that. What I have met is people who say, we work really hard at our marriage.

We intentionally prioritize our relationship. When we get it wrong, which is often we intentionally repent,

we apologize, we work to put Jesus first, we value one another. We work really, really hard at our marriage.

I don't know anybody who ever said, I just accidentally got close to God. I don't know how to do anything. I mean, I was just sinning and sinning wildly.

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