DILIGENCE — "BE ABOUT IT"

"If you wanna be somebody, you wanna go somewhere, you better wake up and pay attention." This is a memorable line from the movie Sister Act 2. It was delivered by Whoopi Goldberg as Sister Mary Clarence, a Vegas lounge singer turned fake Catholic nun/ high school music teacher. She's addressing her hooligan inner-city students, who all just happen to have enormous musical talent. In the movie, the class turns her off-the-cuff admonishment into a catchy pop tune. The hook in this movie is that this improbable group of teenagers — led by their even more improbable teacher — actually wakes up and pays attention, wins a choir competition, and saves their school. The story illustrates how, if you harness your talent and apply yourself, you can overcome circumstances and be successful. The students, though talented, appeared to be going nowhere until Sister Mary Clarence gets them to pay attention to their gifts and apply themselves. They set a goal — winning the choir competition — practice, and overcome obstacles to reach success. They worked diligently to win the competition.

Over the years that I've spent working on this book, I've had to deal with a couple of things that made it difficult to complete. Aside from the fact that I'd never written a book before, the main complication has been the amount of time that it took. I'd been thinking about this book for a long time, but actually sitting down and putting this all into words has been more than a notion. Because of that, the process has been marked by starts, stops, and restarts. It seems like once I got a little momentum, life sidetracked me. Though I intended to get right back to it, I would go weeks without writing a word. It usually took deliberate planning and a conscientious effort to resume this project. But because you are reading this, you know that, ultimately, I completed what I started.

The quality that I had to put into practice in my own life and in the process of writing this book is the first principle that Peter mentions in this system: diligence.

In 2 Peter 1:5, he instructs us to "make every effort to add to your faith." In other translations, the phrase "make every effort" is substituted with the phrase "applying all diligence." Diligence means to give attention and care to something. In a legal sense, we speak of "due diligence," which means the attention and care that is required. So to be diligent means to maintain attention to something to make sure you are doing what is necessary. Sister Mary Clarence implored her students to wake up and pay attention. Where I'm from, we had a phrase that encouraged people to be diligent about pursuing their expressed plans. "Don't talk about it. Be about it."

In the book of Romans, Paul states that diligence is the critical quality for exercising leadership (Romans 12:8). He says leaders should govern "diligently." This gives a good illustration of what diligence means. In a sense, it also means to be serious about something. If you are going to do it, then you have to be serious about it! You have to be about it! Imagine a leader of an organization or government who lacks diligence. He or she would fail to give attention to the organization, and before long, there would be a noticeable decline in the effectiveness of that organization. If the leader is "asleep at the wheel," as the saying goes, then people under him or her would likely become lax in their responsibilities as well. The same is true of governing ourselves. If we are not diligent in managing our own lives, we become lax in the responsibilities we have. Perhaps this is what Solomon meant when he said, "Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23).

Jesus Christ displayed just how diligent and serious He was at the age of twelve. Luke tells a story of His family's annual trip to Jerusalem for the Passover feast. When the rest of the family left to return home, young Jesus stayed behind in the temple, listening to the discussions, asking questions, and answering questions from the Jewish teachers. He was there for four days before His family returned for Him. When they finally found Him, his mother asked Him why He'd caused them such anxiety. His response was "I must be about my Father's business" (Luke 2: 49, KJV). Although we are tempted to think that Jesus had all knowledge and wisdom at birth, this shows that He was diligent about learning and preparing for His later ministry. Scripture supports this view in verse 52. "And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men." When it came to ministry, Jesus showed early on that He was going to be about it.

Peter lists diligence first of the principles, but he doesn't exactly say it's part of the list. Instead, he says, "apply all diligence" to cultivating these qualities. Diligence is necessary to make the system work. The reason that's true is because we have a tendency to get distracted, especially when it comes to doing something that takes a long time. Often it is easier to do things that can be completed in one sitting, but if we have to drop it and pick it up again later, it is more difficult to finish. For example, there are lots of people who have yet to earn a college degree that they started years ago. Once you get out of the swing of going to class and doing homework, it's hard to get back into it again. It's like that with most things that require multiple efforts. Once you stop doing it, it's harder to get going again. So to complete a difficult undertaking, you have to get serious and be about it.

Thinking of diligence as being serious about something also highlights its necessity. We really only maintain the effort and focus on something over an extended period of time if we are serious about it. I can't count the number of things that I started doing on a whim, only to conclude fairly quickly that I'm not really that serious about it. For example, because I love music, I have always dreamed of playing an instrument. In junior high school, I played the bass horn, which most people call a tuba. I was pretty good at it too. But since playing the tuba wasn't considered cool, I stopped playing in high school. Nevertheless, my interest in playing an instrument hasn't waned. As an adult, I have actually purchased a keyboard, a full drum set, and not long ago, I talked my kids into buying me a guitar for Christmas. Unfortunately, I still can't actually play any of them. The truth is I was never serious about learning to play any of those instruments.

So for something this important, Peter wanted to...