Practice Makes Perfect

I'm sure you've heard our title phrase a thousand times. We usually are talking about daily habits that can help us achieve our goals. And while we will look at some of that today, I primarily want you to think of our phrase in a spiritual way. When it comes to our spiritual activities:  both good and bad, how does Practice Make Perfect?  I have been wrestling lately with the idea of balancing confidence in heaven with my daily sin. How can I be saved if I sin? The answer is found in daily pursuits. The answer is found in what I'm trying to do, defending, and working to get better at:  righteousness or sin.  It will make all of the eternal difference. 

- What does Practice Makes Perfect mean?

- How is this statement important to use in our spiritual decisions?

- Is there a different between sinning and practicing sin?

- Is there a difference between righteousness and practicing righteousness?

- How can I be confident in salvation while also being vastly imperfect?

Transcript

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Hello, welcome back for season two of the Excel Stillmore Podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I'm here to encourage you with tips and strategies to help you deepen your faith, build stronger relationships, and do the most with your life in Christ. Thank you for joining. Let's get started. I am so glad you've tuned in today. Thanks for joining. Our title today is a term that practically everybody knows. At some point in your life, maybe a bunch of times, you have uttered this phrase, practice makes perfect. It's old, you don't need to look up the etymology, I did the work for you. But this phrase has been used for like 500 years. And it's always meant basically the exact same thing. If something is important to you and you want to get better at it, you must put in the work. That's where the word practice comes in. Be consistent with it, be regular with it, make it a part of your normal daily routine. Keep at it. Because the result of that kind of commitment, even though there may be stumbles along the way, the result of that is that it makes you into something else. And I really like that we use the word perfect here. We're not talking about flawlessness. No one ever gets to that point, no matter how hard we work in any category. And the figure understands that. Actually, what I think is really cool about the term practice makes perfect is that its origins were not religious in any known way. It wasn't created as some biblical reflective. And yet the definition of perfect in that phrase is a lot like the idea of perfect in the New Testament. Jesus talks about being perfect like your heavenly father is perfect. It clearly doesn't mean flawless. That's not the goal. The goal is to get to the highest level that we can. Perfection means you at your best. If you are really putting in the work and you're sticking with it and you don't give up and you make it regular and you start improving, you get to the best, whatever it is that you could possibly be. I can become a perfect husband, at least me at my highest level. Father, Christian, servant, basketball player, whatever it is, I have limitations on the court that my son doesn't have, but I can become the best that I can be, but not without practice. Now, if you are familiar with the Excel Still More podcast, in particular all of the episodes in season one, you probably think you know where this is going. We're going to talk about the way you get up in the morning and the habits that you build and the things that you're doing every day and the stress-free way that you put those practices in place and just getting better. And we've used a lot of episodes talking about exactly that. But that is actually not where we are going today. Maybe in the last few minutes I'll give you some practical daily things, but if you have been listening to season two of the Excel Still More podcast, and in particular the last few weeks, you know that I have made a change. At least in the short term, a different approach to each and every episode as we begin to shift the emphasis away from you being the best you can be for your life and shift it more towards you doing the best you can for Jesus in your walk with God and for his glory. This started for me coming out of the episode Around the Sun. I am trying to put Jesus in the center of everything that I do. He's already there. I'm just trying to acknowledge that and let his light permeate and bring warmth to every aspect of my life, putting proper and prioritized emphasis on him. So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to look at practice makes perfect, but we are going to connect it to a spiritual point first and probably exclusively as we look at a few verses in the book of 1 John. 1 John champions a series of words that are great to mark throughout that text. One of those words is practice, which appears like 10 times in this letter. And the other word is perfect, which is associated with certain practices. The whole thing is there, except it's centered in our relationship with the light, with Christ. So now you might be guessing, okay, I think I know where he's going today. He's going to talk about us practicing daily spiritual activities, reading the Bible, praying regularly, trying to have a daily spiritual highlight so that we can get better at all of those things in Jesus. Well, kind of. I mean, yeah, I guess secondarily that will be the application, the daily things you are making automatic and repetitive so that you can grow. But there's really something else going on here. Let me tell you about it. I struggle with understanding the balance between 1 John 5 13 and verses like it that tell me that I can be confident that I'm going to heaven. He said, I wrote this letter so that you may know that you have eternal life. And I'm supposed to be walking around every day, 100% convinced that I am saved. I am surrounded by the glory of God. I am blessed by the power of the King. I am going to heaven. And that becomes the light that I reflect out to the world. Well, I have trouble sometimes, maybe I'm not alone, squaring that with the fact that I am a sinner. Still, even now, there are sins that I commit. Everybody has their weak areas. Maybe it's attitude towards others, maybe it's selfishness, maybe it's anger, maybe it's lust, whatever it is, the devil keeps working. And I wish I could tell you that as a Christian, I just stopped sinning. We defeated the devil, and now I know I'm going to heaven because I don't sin. That will never be true for me. So how do I live with confidence, even though there are mistakes that get made in my life, dark places to which I return. Do you ever think about that? And has it ever really punctured a hole in your confidence, let all the air out? Like I'm sitting here telling people that I'm saved, but because of the sin in my life, that can't be so. Listen, God does not want you to live like that. The Bible talks in 1 John 4 about the love that God has for you and you for him. And in that perfected love, there's our word, there is no fear, no fear of judgment. And so to boil it down, there's my struggle. How do I live in God with no fear of judgment when I sin and God judges sin? There, I think I said it plainly for myself. You probably got it two minutes ago. But I needed answers to that. So now maybe I have totally confused you and you're thinking, what does the battle between confidence in heaven and sin have to do with the phrase practice makes perfect? In the book of 1 John, it is revealed that our understanding of practice makes perfect will be the key to gaining confidence in salvation even as we battle sin. So let's get into that for about 10 minutes or so. Before we do, shameless plug. I have a YouTube channel called Color Bible Marking. We are putting out a series of videos, one each week, that walks you through how to mark the words in 1 John. There are nine different videos, I think seven at this point have already been released. All you have to do is go to YouTube, type in color Bible marking, subscribe to the channel. It's all free and everything. But the whole premise is there are some words that occur in a text that you need to see. They are saying something through their repetition, and you need to mark that repetition and notice the flow of its usage. And I think practice in particular will reveal itself to you as something certainly worthy of marking. Alright, I'm ready to get into it. My Bible is open to 1 John chapter 1. I understand this idea, chapter 1, of being in fellowship with Christ. I am covered by his blood, I am saved. I know that when you get to chapter 5, it says we know that we have eternal life, but it also says some things in between that really give you pause. I mean, listen to this. Chapter 3 says this in verse 6. No one who abides in him sins. No one who sins has seen him or know him. Well, there you go. I'm out. I have sinned, I still commit sin, I will always do so, therefore I do not abide in God, and I do not know him. When you add to that passages like Romans chapter three that say that we all sin, there's no hope. All of it has been taken away. But then we dig in a little deeper. We begin to find hope again in our fight against sin, and it comes in the form of the word practice. In chapter 2, verse 29, 1 John, the Bible says this if you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of him. So we begin to get this idea that while none of us can be righteous at all times, if we set about practicing righteousness, we'll talk more about that word in a minute, then we are born of him. And right after it says that no one who abides in him sins, it says this little children, make sure no one deceives you. The one who practices righteousness is righteous just as he is righteous. And the one who practices sin is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose to destroy the works of the devil. No one, first John three, verse nine. No one who is born of God practices sin, because his seed abides in him, and he cannot sin, that is, he cannot practice sin, because he is born of God. By this, verse ten, the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. I don't know if that helps you, but it helps me tremendously. This idea of practicing something is to work at it, to accept it, to get better at it, to master it, to raise it to its highest level in my life. If that is my attitude about sin, if there is sin and I choose to accept it, in fact, I do it so often that I'm getting pretty good at it. And it is perfecting in me the ability to perform it, to justify it, to live in it, I will be lost. Not because I sin, everybody does that, but because I have made sin a habit. I have accepted it as a daily practice. When we talk about practice makes perfect, we talk about daily routines, regular attention, training to improve. If I am doing that with sin, I cannot be forgiven of God. In fact, I may even stop seeking forgiveness because this sin is just who I am now. And by the way, to me, that's the idea of perfect as well. It just becomes who you are. My son, Luke, 16, plays golf five times a day. He's practicing hard, he's getting really good. He's not just somebody who plays golf now. That dude's a golfer. He has become something. If you told him today that he had to give up golf, he would struggle with that and fight it mightily because that's who he is now. It's one of the things that he loves. And that's fine with pursuing a sport or something, but the devil has more ominous plans. You see, sin wants to have that kind of a relationship with you, so that we serve the devil with our habits, even though we claim to serve God with our words. The devil wants a bad attitude or negativity to become who you are. You've gotten really good at it. It's just a part of the way you think now. Sarcasm or rudeness, maybe things like anger and aggression. You're just the kind of person who reacts negatively to things you don't like. At first it was just a sin here or there, you felt bad about it, you asked God to forgive you, but you've you've practiced it so long that you've actually got quite proficient in anger. This can be true of lust, things like pornography. There may be a man who fights that every day, who will not accept it, who is sorrowful anytime it happens, and he may falter. And he turns from it, he doesn't want to get good at it or good at justifying it, and he begs for God's forgiveness, and he receives it. But he is not a pornographer. He has not become someone who lives this life and who cannot break away from it, because it has sown itself to his identity. But don't tell me that doesn't happen. It happens to people in which they never intended it to be like that. At first it was just this sin that they were fighting, but it started to get what? Regular, daily, obvious. They made it an automatic part of their evenings, and now it's something else. Chapter one of that wonderful letter says, When we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, but we have to continue to confess them, to fight them, to say, that is not something I am willing to get good at or practice or justify, and I will fight it with every ounce of my being, and we're going to heaven. Even if we sin, we are still going to heaven because we constantly turn and keep fighting. It's called repentance. But if there is ever any sin in my life, even one, that I accept, that becomes a part of who I am, and I stop fighting, I will lose the Lord. This would perfect the devil's work, and I'm not going to let that happen, are you? On the other hand, we can make the same kind of points as it relates to righteousness. In fact, the text began in chapter two, verse 29 by talking about practicing righteousness and ended with that very idea, he who does not practice righteousness is not of God. So it's not just about, hey, I need to make sure sin doesn't become a habit. It's also I need to make sure that righteousness does. It doesn't mean I'll always be righteous. God told me I won't. But it means that I am practicing righteousness. I'm working on it. I'm training. I'm journaling in the morning. I'm making commitments. I'm setting up my schedule to do righteous things. I don't always do them, but I'm always trying to do them. I'm making them easier to do. I'm making them automatic. I'm getting things out of the way to put a place for righteous living. And I have to tell you, I'm not great at it, but I'm getting better. Practice makes perfect. Practice makes it more integral to who I am, and I become the best version of me as it relates to that thing. Listen, I may not know what the best version of you is related to, but it had better be righteousness. Living righteously for God, living purely for the Lord. It talks about in chapter three that everyone who has the hope of God purifies himself just as he is pure. And just like with occasional sin not being what will sink you, occasional righteousness will not be what holds you up. Even the most unrighteous person does a nice thing every now and then, but it's not who he is or who he is becoming or what he is working towards. It just happened. This is why things like faithfulness to worship when we have the opportunity to worship with God's people, regular daily Bible reading, all of that is so important, not just because it's the right thing. Anybody can do the right thing once a month. It's because I want to get great at the right thing. I want the right thing to dominate my life, to start every week, to totally fill my schedule. Because the more righteousness I pursue, the more righteous I become. Never righteous enough to be saved, but God didn't ask me for that. He has asked me to practice righteousness so that I can abide in connection with him, my goals aligned with his. And when we do this, an amazing perfection comes. The Bible says this in chapter four, verse 17. Love is perfected with us when we abide in him, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. Does that describe you every day just trying to be like God, trying, practicing, pursuing the character of God, knowing that you will always fall short, but through faith and confession and perseverance, you live with this joy in your heart that in God, practice makes perfect. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you enjoyed the program, please remember to share with your family and your friends. Also, you can go to excelstillmore.life to sign up for emails, order the three month journals, or just catch up on old episodes. So until next time, let me leave you with this whatever you choose to do today in the name of the Lord Jesus, excel stillmore.