Unlocking Your Destiny: The Key of Diligence - David Mitts

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. But avoid worldly and empty chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness, (2 Timothy 2:15-16 NASB).

God holds us accountable for our level of diligence with our lives.  We are instructed to correctly handle or implement the Word of Truth in our lives and so operate without shame. Shame both is the result of a lack of diligence and a factor influencing more lack of diligence.  Shame produces worldly and empty chatter.  This is a type of heart condition and speaking that is driven by the world and its influences and NOT the Word of God!

Diligence is a master key of equipping that brings us from the realm of mediocre into excellence.  We are in a spiritual battle with an enemy called average.  Average seeks to cause the unique contribution that our life is called to manifest to disappear into the crowd of non-being.  Average is the middle of the curve.  It is the place of non-significance.  We are all called to be the 1% percent, the extraordinary the achievers.  

Listen to Unlocking Your Destiny: The Key of Diligence

Solomon spoke about what it took to achieve that unique place that became his legacy to Israel that separated the Jewish people into the place that we hold today in the affairs of man.  As Craig Hill quoted from his accountant fried that Jewish people live out of the front of the book and Christians live out of the back and success info is in the front, especially in the writings of Solomon, which we call the book of Proverbs.

Solomon said this about diligence in Proverbs 10:4

Poor is he who works with a negligent hand, But the hand of the diligent makes rich. (Proverbs 10:4 NASB)

Diligence, that quality that we will flesh out and apply is essential to financial success.  

Again Solomon said:

The hand of the diligent will rule, But the slack hand will be put to forced labor. (Proverbs 12:24 NASB)

So diligence is essential to authority operating in our life.  Ruling is the area that is assigned by God for our specific stewardship over.  The Hebrew word is “mashal” which is the same word used in Genesis of the sun ruling over the day and the moon over the night.  Each is assigned to a particular time period and is the source of light for that time period.  In a similar fashion we have each been assigned a certain assignment which is our ruling, our “mashal”, which requires diligence.

Notice in both scriptures the opposite of diligence is the slack or negligent hand.  The hand is the place of power.  The negligent or slothful or slack person is not using their power in a diligent way,

Let’s look at another outcome of diligence:

The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, But the soul of the diligent is made fat. (Proverbs 13:4 NASB)

This isn’t speaking about being overweight but being full of blessing and satisfied.  This is also a picture of the fullness of the anointing.  God’s anointing is fully upon the diligent person and they prosper in all that they do.  

Are you getting the picture?  What I am trying to share is the impact that diligence is on our destiny. So far we have financial success, and soul prosperity.

One more:

The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage, But everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty. (Proverbs 21:5 NASB)

Diligence affects the success of our plans and actually even the ability to plan.  The contrast is with hastiness.  The Hebrew word for hasty is UTZ, and it is the picture of a very narrow ravine pressing in on all sides.  There is a pressure that comes on those who exhibit this opposite quality to diligence.  I have felt it myself.  It is the power behind impulsiveness.  There is a kind of action that is driven by impulses which is poverty producing.  It not only affects where we end up but interferes with God’s actual plans for us which are to give us a good future full of hope.

OK. So now let’s look at what diligence actually is and how to activate it in our lives, because tat is what BEST Shabbat is all about.

Last week you learned about counsel and building a success team. This is a key part of diligence.

The Hebrew word for diligence is: Charutz.  It means literally a sharp cutting.  It is where we get the colloquial expression about an individual that they are “sharp”.  It is an assessment that an individual is on their game.  It is the story of the woodsman who sharpens their ax.

But diligence is more than being sharp.  Many people can look sharp on the outside but diligence lives on the inside, in the heart.

So how do we develop a sharpness a cutting and what does that mean in a biblical sense for us to accomplish our destiny.

Well, what is sharp as a 2-edged sword?  We all know the answer to that.  

The Word of God is the sharp 2 edged sword.

Hebrews 4:12:  For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12 NASB)

This is where true diligence lives.  When we live our lives out of the word of God then we become diligent and the rewards of diligence are ours.  How do we live the Word of God. 2 paths and both  require effort on our part.

First is the pathway of trials.  We will be refined by trials.  Trials reveal the Word that is in your heart.

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4 NASB)

True diligence with the word of God is developed in trials.  Trials are the refiner’s fire.  They reveal the true gold of the Word that is actually yours.

I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. (Revelation 3:18 NASB)

The other path is meditation.  Meditation is the eye salve that anoints our eyes so that we can see.  It is another way to access diligence.  It is called bringing our thoughts captive to Christ.

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete. You are looking at things as they are outwardly. If anyone is confident in himself that he is Christ's, let him consider this again within himself, that just as he is Christ's, so also are we. (2 Corinthians 10:3-7 NASB)

Through meditation, we actively use the weapons of bringing our thoughts and imaginations into obedience to the promises and instructions of God.  It takes diligence, sharpening of ourselves to destroy speculations and lofty prideful things that exalt themselves through defensiveness of our own ideas of what works.

What works is diligence. What works is focus and humility, what works is being teachable, part of a team accountable and in the company of those who call us to greatness.  What works is the Word of God applied consistently by the anointing of God with wisdom.

Activation:

Imagine yourself standing before Yeshua.  He is so excited to see you.  It is time for Him to receive the return on His investment in you. He has only made 1 of you, unique and specific in purpose and intent.  You alone have the gifts and talents that He has created you with.  These have been revealed in your trials, the fire of God the threshing floor.  I want you now to ask Him to show you your trials and what was developed in each trial. Let Him walk you back through your life to the places where you struggled.  What is valuable to him are the times that were hard.  Let Him show you what He developed in you as a living Epistle in those times of trials.  Write down what He shows you.

Now look ahead to your goals.  What of those trials do you need going forward?  This is a new day but it is built on a life that He is making, a song that He is singing.  Write down what He tells you and shows you.

Now make a daily plan to see yourself applying those lessons to your goals and succeeding.  You already have the finished work. Now enter into that place of rest.

This is the Shabbat of God. The diligence that inherits the promises.

So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience. (Hebrews 4:9-11 NASB)