3 Ways Diligence Creates a Better Future | Jake Vayda

Sunday, August 2nd, 2026

This week in our How Life Actually Works series, we continued through Proverbs by looking at diligence. We asked the question: if God holds my future, what’s my part?

We were reminded that trusting God doesn’t mean becoming passive. Grace is a gift we could never earn, but it also invites us to participate in what God is building in us, through us, and around us.

The invitation is simple: stop waiting and start participating. Be faithful with what God has placed in front of you today, because the future you’re praying for may be connected to the diligence God is asking of you right now.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Do you remember the first dream that you ever had of your own life? Maybe it was a dream of a great wedding. Maybe it was a dream of being a cowboy or being Barbie. I don't know. For me, I remember the first dream that I had. In fact, I was 13. I remember making a commitment to God. I was lying down under the stars, and I remember asking or saying, God, if you're really real, I want to give you everything I have. And from there, I remember starting a Bible study with a bunch of other sixth to seventh graders, and I don't remember anything I said. It was probably all hearsay, because what does a 13-year-old know? But I loved it. I did it the same in high school, did it in college, and during that time, God started putting it a dream in my heart to one day actually start a church. And that dream actually led me here to San Diego. Do you remember the first dream you ever had as a child? Like I said, some of you, it could have been of a wedding or maybe it's of a great marriage. For some of you, you might have a dream right now of a great, well-supplied retirement fund. Come on, somebody. For some of you, you have a dream of a thriving connection with Jesus. Some of you have a dream of a great, satisfying career. What is your dream now? Here's what I know. It can get a little confusing because you have dreams. I have dreams. And then you come to church. And sometimes a pastor just like me might say things like, let go and let God. Let God do what only He can do. Right? These are true sayings, but can kind of confuse me. So I have this dream, but you're saying that like God does it. So like what's my part in this whole dream thing that's in my heart? Because some of you, you actually might be an atheist in the room. First, I'm glad you're here. Some of you are Christians. You might not know if this is a dream, or maybe it was a dream that God gave you. Either way, you have a dream. Like, what's my part to play in this? Oftentimes at church, you'll hear God does all of the work. And what's what's what's my part? But then you go on TikTok and Instagram, it's pull yourself up from bootstraps, work nine to five, hustle culture. There has to be a balance here. Is it all me? Is it all God? In fact, that's the question I want to answer today. So if you have a dream, if you have something that you're going after, this is a question that you will have to ask yourself. And today I'm giving you the opportunity to ask it today, and it's this. When it comes to my future, if God holds it, if God holds my future, what's my part? If God holds my future, what's my part? I'm convinced that the greatest enemy of achieving our dreams is passivity. Passivity says, wait, hold off. Because if we believe that God does all of it and we do none of it, what will end up happening is that dream of a great marriage and that conversation that needs to be had won't be had. That dream that you have of a great retirement fund and waiting for God to put the money in your bank account might not happen. That dream of having a satisfying career without your own perseverance and work ethic won't happen. And I God loves passive people. I think God hates passivity itself because he hates what it does to his people. I think God's seen too many broken marriages. I think God's seen too many addictions. I think God has seen too many bankruptcies, and he knows what happens when passivity takes control of our dreams. But it's not just God. I mean, we're left with regret. I mean, I don't know about you. I don't want to look back on my life and have a lot of wishes of what could have been and hopes. So the question today is a pertinent one for all of us who are dreamers. We are continuing our series called How Life Works. We're looking at the book of Proverbs. Uh, it's a book in the Bible, and it's all about wisdom. Now, these wisdom literature, it's not all true. It's not a mathematical equation, but what Proverbs is, is I've seen a couple of lives and I'm starting to see patterns on what happens. And Proverbs, it's noticed a lot of people who have dreams, and it's realized, the book of Proverbs, there's one word, only one word that we need to know today in order to look at our dreams and maybe have a good chance of maybe some of them actually coming into reality. Only one word. Today I want to talk about that one word, and my hope is it would be a blessing to you, and maybe even give you the next step to the dream that you have for your life. If you're first time, glad you're here. We are a Bible-believing, Bible preaching church, and today we'll be looking at a word study on a word called diligence. Everyone say diligence. Here's what my own personal definition of diligence is. Diligence is working hard in the right direction for what matters. Diligence. Working hard in the right direction for what matters. If passivity is the enemy to dreams, the friend of a dream would be diligence. Oftentimes, you might not even consider the fact that there's a desire in your heart that actually might have originated from God Himself. Maybe it's from a mix of your giftings, maybe it's from your past, maybe it's from your parents, or something a teacher once said. Maybe that's actually God's idea. What if it was a God dream in your heart? The issue, though, with these dreams is that it often takes an unusual amount of diligence, hard work, in a very specific direction for what matters. Do you know why it takes a lot of diligence? Because it's not here. It's a dream. It's not reality. So you're saying in order to take something from re from a dream to reality, you have to create something new, a whole new pathway. That takes a lot of dreaming, but a lot of work in order to make that happen. And this is why Proverbs speaks so highly of this word, diligence. Hard work in a specific direction for what matters today. I like to give you three ways that diligence creates a better future. Three ways that diligence creates a better future. Here's the first way Diligence allows you to create a better you. Proverbs 10 says, lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. Oftentimes, Proverbs, they talk about this dichotomy of wealth and poverty. But don't get it twisted. This is not just about how much money you have in your bank account. You can have a poverty of relationships. You can have a wealth when it comes to a connection with Jesus. You can have poverty when it comes to an addiction. You can have wealth when it comes to discipline. My question, where is there wealth in your life right now? Where is there poverty? Proverbs says, When it comes to poverty, lazy hands make for it, and diligent hands bring the wealth. For whatever reason, God has often used the mechanism of diligence for these dreams to be realized in our lives and the people that we love. When I moved to San Diego, I remember being so excited to start my career. I had a dream of planting a church. In fact, when I moved here with the interview to become a pastor, I asked two questions. Do you develop leaders and do you plant churches? I came here for a mission, 3,000 miles away by myself to plant a church. And I got a job as a pastor, a youth pastor. And now, first job, I get up there so excited, and there's 10 sixth graders in front of me. Do you know what my first thought was? I got this. Now, some of you are laughing because you've been around a group of sixth graders. And you know, you do not got this. In fact, my three years with these sixth graders, uh, I would say that oftentimes uh my face or my emotions would look a little bit like this. That's an actual picture of many minaschoolers throwing color stuff at my face. But oftentimes I would leave feeling emotionally bruised and spiritually bruised, and they don't listen to me. I thought I was so cool coming across the country, a man on mission, and I can't even hurt sixth graders. It's almost like God was saying, hey, you there's a promise I have for you. There's a dream I have for you, but there's a process to develop the promise. And I was most definitely in the process. In fact, God was calling me to diligence. Could I become a person that a sixth grader would listen to? The answer is no, but could I try? So I started trying, and you know what trying looked like? You know what diligence looked like? Reading a lot of the Bible, studying a lot of psychological reports on what the heck is happening inside the brains of a sixth grader, uh praying, talking to other middle school pastors. In fact, it was weird because it was a lot of work. It's almost like if you have a dream, it takes a lot of work to get there. There was a lot of work. I was waking up early, going to bed late at night, trying to go to their schools and talking to them. It's God gives us promises, a dream for our lives of that great marriage, of that financial security, of the freedom from addiction. And yet he invites us not into the promise, but oftentimes the process to get to the promise. And that's not fun. The promise is the fun part, you know what I mean? Like laying down in a field. God, if you're really real, I want to give you everything I have. And God births this promise in me. The process is the hard part because it requires one word. Do you know what that word is? Specific work in a specific direction for what matters. Diligence. Before he built something through me, he was building something in me. And this is always the process. What is God building in you before he builds something through you? You want a healthy marriage, but God is trying to build in you selflessness. You want a stronger body, but God is trying to build in you discipline first. You want a better career, but God is trying to build perseverance in you first. There's a promise, there's a dream. But what is God trying to first create in you? And that process always will include the word diligence. I am convinced diligence will create a better future for your life. It actually creates a better you. But here's the exciting part, here's what diligence does. Here's the second thing that diligence does to create a better future. Diligence allows your people to create a better life. Personally, this is where it gets exciting. Diligence allows your people to build a better life. In fact, this is what it says in Proverbs. When right living people, diligent people, bless the city, it flourishes. Evil talk turns it into a ghost town in no time. Proverbs is saying the character of the people eventually becomes the culture of the city. But Jake, I don't care. There's four million people in San Diego. Yeah, you might not be able to affect a city. But can you affect your family? Could you affect your apartment mates? Could you affect the people that you work with? The character of the person can oftentimes determine the culture of your circle of influence. Not always, but it can. And I started noticing this. God was inviting me to participate in this idea of discipline and diligence. And uh what was really exciting is once in a blue moon, they would actually listen to me, these sixth graders. And then they started listening to me a little bit more and a little bit more because I started doing things that would make them want to listen to me, like uh listening to their feelings, uh giving them advice about a friendship, uh praying with them, and I would do this the first year, and then I would do it a second year, and then a third year, and then a fourth, and then a fifth, and a sixth, and then all of a sudden they were seniors, and I got to be with them every step of the way. And my heart was growing fond of who these people were, and I was praying for them, and it was a lot of work to love these students, and I can't imagine being their parent, being their teacher. I was a part of the process, and now a lot of those students are graduating college. Lawyers, doctors, pastors, politicians, to name a few of the career choices that they've decided. If I got to be a little piece of that because of the dil diligence that God formed in me a decade ago, sign me up again. If this is what diligence does, yeah, it's good for me. I want a better future for my son. For my wife. For you. And you know what that requires? God to form in me something first, but then it blesses other people through me. My question for you is when has diligence paid off for the people that you love? I bet for some of you, you worked a lot on your emotional intelligence before you got married, and it actually helped your marriage. For some of you, you started stewarding your relationship with your body, and now you're healthy and you can run around with kids, and maybe you couldn't do that before. For you, you actually was studing your money, and it was hard, but now you get to help your kids with college. I mean, for some of you, diligence has actually paid off. Where has diligence paid off for your life? I'm guessing you'll look at that situation and say, sign me up again. Diligence, it creates a better you. It creates a better life for the people that you love. And here's the third way that diligence creates a better future. Diligence allows your church to create a better future. Proverbs 6 says, Go to the ant, you sluggard. Have you ever called someone a sluggard? Consider its ways and be wise. It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it sources provisions in the summer and gathers its food at harvest. An ant. Of all of the creatures, this wise guy talks about, he talks about an ant. The person he really should be looking up to is an ant. That's basically what he's saying. An ant has a brain the size of uh a grain of sand. An ant has 250,000 neurons. That sounds like a lot. A human has 86 billion neurons in their brain. The ant is stupid comparatively to a human. The ant is 100 times smaller than a human. And yet, did you know that it makes up almost one-fourth of the entire entire biomass of animals on Earth? You put birds and reptiles together, and it still doesn't equal the weight of the amount of ants there are on Earth. Wait, so wait, this can't be right. The dumb, small ant is more successful than almost any other species on the entire planet. Why? It is an ant like this because of one word: diligence! Diligence! They work together. You get a couple of diligent people together, and you can create a different future. That's what the Proverbs is saying. They store food for the winter, thousands of ants working in unison, each carrying a load, so that the other person doesn't have to carry more than them, and all of a sudden they become this most successful species on the planet Earth. It's amazing what diligence can do when you combine it with somebody else. I was working so hard on being diligent myself, seeing the success. And then we started this idea of having a church and realizing I need a lot more than me to do this. In fact, uh, we got a group of people together at our house. We didn't have a name for the church at this point. This is the actual picture of the first ever get together, uh, or maybe second at that point, of just giving this idea of a church in our home and not having a name yet. And uh I'll be honest, we didn't even have diligence yet because you don't even know how to like work hard in a specific direction if you don't even know what you're working on, right? Like, how do you even start a church? Some of you are realizing I didn't even know you could start a church. Like, I didn't even know that was a thing. You know what I mean? I didn't know how to start a church, but it was a dream that got a place in my heart. So I participated, and then God built within us diligence, a group of us getting together saying, Hey, I don't know, I don't know how to accomplish this dream. Do you? No. All right. Oh, but uh, we do have a next event coming up. Okay, so let's uh let's put our heads together and try to figure this out. Okay. Oh my gosh, we did our first service. This is amazing! What do we do next? I don't know. Oh, but people talked about how the fact that it was a little sad that there was no coffee. Oh, well, let's make some coffee. Let's learn how to make some coffee. And it's almost like you don't know how the dream is gonna end up, but God will give you a next step to accomplish the dream. And you take one step, and then another, and then another, and then all of a sudden, you're like diligent. You're like working hard in a specific area for what matters. It's crazy what God does. God does not ask for your diligence, he's asking for your participation in the dream that he's given you. You'll figure out diligence along the way. We started in a living room. We ended up here 18 months of a group of people trying to become diligent together. 18 months? What could happen in the next 18 months? We've had 60 baptisms. Could we double that? Because we have 120 baptisms in the next 18 months. You know, we're leasing this building. Could we buy it one day? That's kind of crazy. There's a lot of buildings over there that's on this property. Could we have a preschool, maybe? I mean, there's three Three to four acres in the city of San Diego. What could happen if we get a little bit more diligent people working together to create a it's almost like if we work together, we can create a better future. It's almost like that was God's design all along. That's why today we're doing something called Surf Central. Because I think the next 18 months are gonna look twice as good as the last 18 months. But in order for that to happen, we need some more people who are willing to participate. And you're saying, Jake, I don't know how to make the coffee. I don't know what it looks like to run slides or do photography or uh come early to greet or to park or to uh do marketing and communication, which by the way, all of these are run by volunteers. We have 75 volunteers all across this church that's making this happen. 75 uh members, diligent members. But they started first with participating. So, my question for you if you're a first-time guest, you can just ignore this. But if you're a second-time guest, third time, fourth time, maybe even call great church your home and your wonder man, this is great. Who does all of this? People like you. That's what happens. People like you deciding to use a little bit of their gifts to unleash upon the church and their community. And so here's my promise to you. I don't care if you're diligent or not. In fact, uh, you won't be probably diligent in what you'll end up doing, but my ask for you is the same ask that God would give you. Would you participate? Would you just take one step in that direction and see what God could do? Because these 75 volunteers, they look really cool because they're doing amazing. I mean, everyone turn around. Look at these people in the back. They're live streaming, slide, they look so cool. They got headsets on. I mean, they're like the coolest people in the world, right? They had no idea what they were doing six months ago. No idea. And look at what God's done, turning them into diligent at their work. We are a pretty cool church plant, what God's done. But let me tell you, we don't have enough volunteers for what God wants to do next. I'm gonna say this one more time. We don't have enough volunteers for what God wants to do next. School is coming back. This is our first school season in this building. What could God do? We need more people who are willing to participate. So that's why we're doing Service Central today. Maybe that's a call for you. Diligence. What does it do? If God holds my future, what's my part? Diligence is working hard in the right direction for what matters. Diligence creates a better you, a better life for the people that you love, and it creates a better future when you get some diligent people together. I love this quote, and if you have been around Create Church for a while, uh you've probably heard me say this quote, and this is a Dallas Willard theological quote. He says, Grace, which is another word for God, God's often equated to grace. God is not opposed to effort, he's not opposed to your participation, he's not opposed to your diligence, God is opposed to you earning it. In other words, and let me be very clear about this there is no amount of practice, there is no amount of diligence or effort that can earn your way to a perfect relationship with your father, God. In fact, God knew this, that he sent his perfect son to be murdered in replace of us because we couldn't do that ourselves, and now Jesus is that bridge that allows us to have a perfect relationship with Jesus and with God. This is why we often say, in the name of Jesus, the name of his perfection, not my perfection, we're able to be in the house of God. Because God can't be around anything that's not not perfect. That's God could not do that. Justice wouldn't allow it. So Jesus sacrificed his life. There's no amount of earning that can get you there. And by the way, let me pause and just say, some of you, that's your word because you've been trying to do all of this by yourself. For some of you, you've been saying up so many nights, and you are sleepless, frustrated, it's not working. I'm waiting for so long, and you haven't even invited God into the process. For some of you, it's not about diligence. You're good at that. You need to be diligent in your relationship with Jesus to allow him to work with you, talk with you, and learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I want to invite the band to come up. Maybe you've accomplished a lot of it. Maybe it's just a dream. In fact, it might be a pipe dream. For some of you, it might be in process, and I'm guessing most of us in this room were in the process of the dream. God, the good intention of this dream, God God wants it to happen if it aligns with his will. I mean, he wants a healthy marriage for you. You know that, right? Like he wants you to have a healthy singleness, he wants you to have money in the bank, like he wants you to become generous, he wants you to become spirit, he wants all like the good intentions that you have, they align with God's intentions for your life. So if those are your dreams, which I'm guessing are a lot of our dreams, God's the biggest fan of them. In fact, God actually wants to help make them happen. But he also needs your participation in the dream. So maybe you're like me in the living room of our house without a name for the church, but a dream. And God wants to encourage you to take a next step. What's your next step when it comes to your dream? I'm guessing it's some form of participation. You know, uh, if you could actually stand with me, we're gonna sing a couple more songs as we end today. When we made this announcement of starting a church, most people were excited, and a lot of people were like, why the heck would you do it? The idea in the pastoral world is it's the hardest thing you could do as a pastor. Why would you do the hardest thing? First, because God called us to it. But secondly, after walking and talking with my wife, we realized that we would be better humans 10 years after the church plan. Like in 10 years from now, if we're able to make this dream happen with Jesus, we'd look back and we'd realize that God formed within us a better lover of each other, a better pastor to our people, a better mental health for my like it's gonna challenge me to become the person that I've always dreamt of becoming. That's what a dream does, right? And I would say personally, when it comes to local church, this is where I've I've learned diligence since I was six years old to now. I've learned diligence through participating in God's will of the local church being the center of our lifestyle, where we learn we love each other. And maybe that's your invitation today. What's your next step when it comes to your participation with a dream that God's placed in your heart? I'm gonna ask all of you to put out your hands like this. We had someone uh who felt far from God, but we're often almost never far from God as much as we think. Uh in fact, Jesus once said that you're closer to the kingdom of God than you think. And uh he kept doing this because I asked him to do it in the service. He's like, fine, I'll do it. Uh, felt nothing. And then one time he said he opened up his hands like this, this hardcore navy guy, right? Large big guy, he's like, I don't I just did it once. And then it felt like the Holy Spirit encountered me. Like I felt Jesus for the first time in my life, like felt his presence. Uh, that's what I want for you. If you're a Christian in the realm, this is probably why you came to encounter the living God. And this is a way of participating and saying, God, I want to hear your voice. And the Holy Spirit, which we would call as the great helper, comes and helps us learn what our next step is of our dream. And I believe God wants to give some discernment to you right now. What if you left this room in just 10 minutes with a vision of what your life could be? What if you left this room right now with a new dream? What if you left this room with a new next step to accomplish the dream? What if you left here with a very what is it that God wants to give you? I don't know. Uh that's above my pay grade, but the Holy Spirit knows in the next 10 minutes, would you be open? And sometimes openness could look like this, this, this, closing your eyes, sitting down, do whatever you want. I don't care. The hope is you'd encounter God over the next 10 minutes, and he would give you the next right step of what participation looks like with the dream that God gave you all those years ago. Lord, we thank you. God, we say, Holy Spirit, would you come? God, you don't need to always be invited to every room, but we want to specifically invite you into our lives, into our dreams. God, would you give us discernment on the dream we're going after? Would you give us discernment on the next step of what this dream looks like? And God, we know that you're going to give us diligence along the way. That's not the question. Uh, but would you give us our next right step with these dreams? I want to pray for my friends. God, that they would leave here with that discernment. God, with a tangible presence felt by you during this time, Lord.