Bala came out of the crossover service on the first night of January with three resolutions written on the back of the programme. He would rise at five every morning to pray for an hour. He would read the whole Bible in a year, following a plan he had downloaded onto his phone. And he would fast every Wednesday until six in the evening. He showed the paper to his wife in the car on the way home to Kubwa, and she smiled and squeezed his hand. She had seen papers like it before.
The first two weeks were glorious. Bala woke before the alarm. He prayed in the sitting room while the house was dark and quiet, and he felt the presence of God as he had not felt it in years. He read Genesis in four days. On Wednesdays he drank water at his desk in the ministry and felt clean and light.
Then, in the third week, he was posted to a new department with a director who liked meetings that began at seven-thirty. The drive from Kubwa into the city stretched to an hour and a half. A cousin came to stay. Their second child was born in February, a beautiful girl who did not believe in sleeping between midnight and four. By the end of the month Bala was in Leviticus, three weeks behind on the plan, and he had not prayed at five o’clock for nine days. He broke the fast one Wednesday at noon because he was dizzy in a meeting, and he never resumed it.
By March he had stopped opening the Bible app altogether. The red notification telling him he was forty-one days behind was more than he could face. And somewhere in that season he reached a quiet conclusion about himself, which he only spoke aloud much later. “I decided I was not a spiritual person,” he told me. “Some people are made for it. I am made for fire at the start of the year and nothing after.”
What Bala did not yet know was that his father’s Bible was waiting in a carton in his mother’s house in Kaduna, and that it would tell him a different story.
When the seed springs up quickly
Jesus told a parable about a farmer sowing seed, and one of the soils He described is painfully familiar:
And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness; And have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word’s sake, immediately they are offended.
Notice how the stony-ground hearers begin. They hear the word and “immediately receive it with gladness.” There is nothing wrong with gladness. Jesus is not criticising enthusiasm. Joy at hearing the word of God is a good and right response. The problem is described in the next phrase: they “have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time.”
In the earlier telling of the parable, Jesus explains why the seed sprang up so fast: “because it had no depth of earth” (Mark 4:5). On rocky ground in Galilee, a thin layer of soil sits over limestone. The sun warms that shallow soil quickly, so seed germinates almost at once. It looks wonderful for a few days. But the roots cannot go down, and when the heat of the day comes, the plant withers.
Enthusiasm can work the same way. A conference, a crossover night, a powerful sermon or a new season can warm the surface of our lives very quickly, and something springs up immediately. That is not a bad thing. Many lasting practices began with a burst of zeal. The question is what happens when the sun comes up: when the new job arrives, when the baby cries at night, when the feeling fades and the practice becomes ordinary.
Jesus describes the good ground differently in Luke’s account: “they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience” (Luke 8:15). With patience. Enthusiasm may start a practice. Patience is what carries it. And patience, in Scripture, is not a grim, white-knuckled determination. It is the steady endurance of a heart that has put down roots.
Abiding is a daily thing
On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus gave His disciples a picture of the Christian life that changes the way we think about consistency. “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches” (John 15:4-5). And He went on:
Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.
The word abide means to remain, to stay, to continue in a place. Jesus uses it again and again in this chapter. It is a word for staying put. Notice that He does not tell the branches to strain, struggle or produce fruit by force. He tells them to stay connected. The fruit comes from the life of the vine flowing through the branch that remains in it.
This is crucial for anyone who has struggled with consistency. Many of us think of spiritual discipline as something we produce, a performance we must sustain by willpower. When our willpower fails, we conclude that we have failed. But Jesus pictures the Christian life as a relationship of remaining. You are already in the vine. Your union with Christ is His gift, received by faith. Consistency is simply the daily practice of turning toward the One you already belong to.
Notice the order in verse 9: “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.” Love comes first. Jesus does not say, “Be consistent, and then I will love you.” He says, “I have loved you. Now continue in that love.” Your spiritual habits are not a way of earning His love. They are ways of staying in the place where His love is felt and known.
Verse 6 is a solemn one, and sincere believers have understood it differently. Some see it as a warning about those who profess faith but were never truly joined to Christ. Some see it as describing the loss of fruitfulness and usefulness in a believer who has drifted. Others take it as a warning that a believer can finally fall away. Whatever view you hold, the point of the image is plain: a branch separated from the vine has no life of its own. Jesus is not threatening His disciples into anxious activity. He is telling them where life is found.
“Without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). That sentence is a relief for people like Bala. You were never meant to sustain your spiritual life by yourself. The question is not whether you can generate enough zeal. The question is whether you will keep coming back to the vine.
Sowing in ordinary seasons
Paul uses a different picture of growth, one that every farmer understands:
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men , especially unto them who are of the household of faith.
“Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” This is often quoted as a warning, and it is one. But it is also a promise. If you sow to the Spirit, you “shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” The harvest follows the seed.
Notice the phrase “in due season.” Harvest does not come the day after planting. A maize farmer in Kaduna plants when the rains come in May and does not expect to eat the corn until August. In between are weeks of weeding, watching and waiting, when nothing much seems to happen above the ground. A farmer who dug up his seeds every few days to see whether they were growing would ruin his harvest.
Paul adds, “let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” The word weary suggests losing heart, becoming discouraged. And faint suggests giving up, letting go. Paul knows that the space between sowing and reaping is where many people quit. They do not stop because the seed failed. They stop because they could not see it working yet.
What does sowing to the Spirit look like? Not mainly dramatic acts. It looks like a chapter of Scripture read before work, a prayer offered in traffic, an act of kindness to a colleague, a refusal to gossip, a gift to someone in need. Paul ends with a very practical instruction: “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men.” Sowing is made of small, repeated acts done as opportunity comes. Each one may look insignificant. Together, over seasons, they produce a harvest.
The same principle works in the other direction, and Paul is honest about it: “he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.” Most of us do not sow to the flesh through one dramatic act. We do it through small, repeated choices too. An hour of scrolling at midnight that leaves no strength for the morning. A grudge rehearsed every time a colleague walks past. A habit of complaint that slowly becomes the tone of a home. These seeds are also small, and they also grow. Consistency is not neutral. We are always sowing something, every ordinary day, and the question is only what kind of seed we are putting into the ground.
PunchlineEnthusiasm may start a practice, but patience carries it. The harvest belongs to the one who keeps sowing in ordinary seasons, long after the excitement has faded.
Give thyself wholly to them
Paul’s instruction to Timothy shows us what steady growth looks like for a young leader:
Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.
“Meditate upon these things.” The word means to care for, to attend to, to practise. Paul had just listed the things Timothy should give himself to: reading, exhortation, doctrine, the use of his gift. Now he says, keep returning to these things. Make them your occupation.
“Give thyself wholly to them.” The Greek is literally “be in them.” Live inside these practices. Let them become the place where you dwell.
And then: “that thy profiting may appear to all.” The word profiting was used of progress on a journey, and sometimes of an advancing army, cutting its way forward step by step. Paul does not promise Timothy instant transformation. He promises visible progress over time. Others would see that Timothy was growing.
Notice also “continue in them.” Paul’s word is about persistence. It is the same idea as abiding. Timothy is not to try these things for a season and then move on to something else. He is to stay with them.
This is good news for those who measure their spiritual life by how they feel on a particular morning. Progress is not always felt day by day. You may not feel holier after reading a chapter of Leviticus on a Tuesday. But over months and years, the cumulative effect of steady engagement with God becomes visible. People notice that you are calmer, kinder, wiser. You notice it yourself, often by looking back.
Habits give growth somewhere to happen
When Daniel’s enemies persuaded King Darius to forbid prayer to anyone but the king, Daniel’s response is recorded in one verse: “he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime” (Daniel 6:10).
As he did aforetime. Daniel did not invent a dramatic new prayer campaign when the crisis came. He simply continued what he had already been doing for years. His habit had been formed in the ordinary days, and it held him in the extraordinary one. The open window toward Jerusalem, the three times a day, the kneeling: these were the trellis on which his relationship with God had grown.
That is the role of habits in the Christian life. They are not the life itself. Christ is the life. But habits give that life somewhere to happen. A plant can grow without a trellis, but it grows better, stronger and more fruitful with one. A regular time, a regular place and a regular practice make it easier to keep turning toward God without having to decide afresh each day.
Some practical wisdom helps here. Start smaller than you think you need to. Bala’s three resolutions were each good, but together they demanded hours a day from a man with a newborn and a ninety-minute commute. A single chapter and ten minutes of prayer, kept faithfully, will do more than an hour that collapses after two weeks. Attach your practice to something you already do: read before your morning tea, pray as you drive, give thanks as you lie down at night. Keep your Bible where you will see it. Expect some days to feel dry, and keep going anyway.
Jesus Himself lived this way. Luke tells us that when He came to Nazareth, “as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day” (Luke 4:16). On the last night before the cross, “he came out, and went, as he was wont, to the mount of Olives” (Luke 22:39). As his custom was. As he was wont. The Son of God had habits. He had places He returned to and patterns He kept, and on the worst night of His earthly life, Judas knew exactly where to find Him because Jesus had been there so often. The habit that had shaped His ordinary evenings carried Him into Gethsemane, where He prayed so earnestly that His sweat was “as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). If the Lord of glory gave His prayer life a shape and a place, we should not imagine we are too spiritual to need one.
Grace matters here. Habits do not earn God’s favour. A believer who reads three chapters a day is not more accepted by the Father than a believer who manages one verse. But grace does not make habits unnecessary. Grace is what makes them possible and what makes them joyful. Paul worked hard, but he said it was “not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).
When you fall behind
NuggetSooner or later, you will lapse. Every believer does. You will miss days, sometimes weeks. The question is what you do next.
Bala’s response was one that many of us recognise. He did not simply miss a few days. He drew a conclusion from the lapse, that steady spiritual growth was impossible for someone like him. That conclusion did far more damage than the missed days.
Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations in the ruins of Jerusalem. Everything had fallen apart. Yet in the middle of his grief he wrote:
It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD .
“They are new every morning.” God’s mercies do not run out because you missed yesterday. Each morning brings a fresh supply. You do not have to make up for lost time before you can come back. You do not have to read forty-one days of missed chapters before you are allowed to read today’s. You can simply return.
This matters more than it may seem. Many believers, when they fall behind, design a punishing catch-up plan: four chapters a day until the deficit is cleared, an extra hour of prayer to make up for the missed week. It sounds like zeal. Usually it is shame in religious clothing, and it rarely lasts more than a few days before the believer falls further behind and feels worse. The Father is not keeping a ledger of your missed readings. Turn off the notification if you need to. Begin where you are.
“It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait.” There is a quietness in this return. No drama, no grand new resolution, no tearful promise that it will never happen again. Just a quiet turning back, today.
Solomon puts it plainly: “a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again” (Proverbs 24:16). The righteous man is not the one who never falls. He is the one who gets up.
Think of Peter after his denial. He had failed far more seriously than missing a morning prayer. Yet Jesus came to him on the shore of Galilee, cooked him breakfast, and asked three times, “lovest thou me?” (John 21:15-17). He did not demand that Peter prove himself. He restored him and gave him work to do. That is how Jesus deals with lapses. He invites an honest return.
An honest return means admitting what happened without excuse and without self-punishment. It means saying, “Lord, I drifted. I am coming back.” And then it means opening the Bible today, praying today, and doing the next small thing.
Adjusting for a changed season
PunchlineSometimes a lapse is not only a matter of drifting. Sometimes your circumstances have genuinely changed, and the pattern that worked before cannot work now.
A new baby changes everything. So does a new job with long hours, shift work at a hospital, caring for an elderly parent, illness, exams, bereavement or a move to a new city. A rhythm that fitted one season of life may not fit another. That does not mean you have failed. It means the season has changed.
Jesus Himself adjusted the rhythm of His disciples’ lives when circumstances demanded it. When they were overwhelmed by crowds and had no time even to eat, He said, “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while” (Mark 6:31). He recognised their limits.
So when your season changes, change the shape of your practice. If you can no longer pray at five because the baby is up at four, pray while you feed her. If your commute is long, listen to Scripture in the car or the bus. If shift work has broken your mornings, find another anchor in the day. A mother of young children may read one psalm a day and pray short prayers through the day, and that is real faithfulness. The relationship continues. The form adjusts.
It is also worth saying that some lapses are connected to depression, anxiety, exhaustion or illness. If you find that you have lost interest in prayer and in almost everything else, or that you are persistently low, tired or hopeless, please speak to a doctor or a qualified counsellor as well as to a trusted pastor. Your difficulty with consistency may not be a spiritual failure at all. Seeking help is wise, and God works through it.
Followers of them who inherit
The writer of Hebrews encouraged believers who had begun well but were in danger of becoming sluggish:
For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister. And we desire that every one of you do shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end: That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
“God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love.” Every act of faithfulness is remembered. Nothing you have sown in love is wasted.
“That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” The writer points to those who went before, men and women who kept trusting and kept going. Abraham waited twenty-five years for Isaac. Joseph waited years in prison. Their faith had the shape of a long obedience in the same direction, sustained through years when nothing seemed to be happening.
You may have such people in your own life: a grandmother who prayed every morning for sixty years, a father who read his Bible every day before work, a pastor who has quietly served the same congregation for decades. Their example is not meant to make you feel guilty. It is meant to show you what is possible. They were ordinary people who kept coming back to the vine. And the Psalmist promises that those planted in the house of the Lord “shall still bring forth fruit in old age” (Psalm 92:14).
Bala’s father had died three years before, and his mother had packed his things into cartons. That Easter, visiting her in Kaduna, Bala found the old Bible. The cover was soft with use and held together with tape.
He opened it and saw that, in the margin beside each chapter, his father had pencilled dates. The first was from 1978. Some chapters had six or seven dates beside them. Bala sat on the floor of the storeroom and turned the pages. There were gaps, sometimes of several weeks. In 1993, the year Bala was born, there was a gap of almost four months. Then the dates resumed, one chapter at a time.
“My father was not a man of fire,” Bala told me. “He was a schoolteacher. He drank his tea, read his chapter and cycled to work. When he missed, he started again. That was all.”
Bala took the Bible back to Abuja. He did not make any resolutions. He simply began reading one chapter a day in the car park at the ministry before going in to work, and praying for his family as he drove. Some days he missed. When he did, he read the next day’s chapter and carried on. He pencilled the dates in the margin of his own Bible, beside his father’s.
A year later, he showed me the pages. There were gaps. But the dates kept coming back.
You do not need more fire. You need roots. Stay in the vine. Keep sowing. And when you fall behind, come back today. His mercies are new this morning.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Which of your spiritual practices began with enthusiasm and later faded? What made them difficult to sustain?
- How does Jesus’ picture of abiding in the vine change the way you think about consistency?
- What conclusion have you drawn about yourself after a lapse? Is it true?
- Has your season of life changed in a way that requires you to adjust the shape of your practices? What might a realistic rhythm look like now?
- Who in your life has modelled steady faithfulness over many years? What can you learn from them?
This Week
Choose one small, realistic practice for this week: one chapter of a Gospel each day, or ten minutes of prayer at a fixed point in your routine. Attach it to something you already do every day. Each time you complete it, write the date in the margin of your Bible or in a notebook. If you miss a day, do not try to catch up; simply begin again the next day and write that date. At the end of the week, look at the dates and thank God for His faithfulness.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You that I am a branch in You, the true Vine. Forgive me for the times I have tried to grow by my own fire and then given up when it faded. Teach me to abide in You day by day, through ordinary seasons and difficult ones. Give me patience to keep sowing when I see no harvest yet. When I fall behind, help me to return honestly and quietly, trusting that Your mercies are new every morning. Show me how to adjust my practices wisely in each season of life, and let my profiting appear over time, for Your glory. In Your name I pray, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.