The Danger of Drift — Part 2
In Part 1 of this series, I described the catastrophic consequences of drift. If you didn’t read it, click here before moving on.
In this post, I’ll share five simple steps you can take to reverse course. Whether it’s drift as it relates to physical health, marriage, family, or your personal relationship with God, these steps can help you reorient the direction of your life.
1. Take personal responsibility for where you are now.
Refuse to make excuses for why you added the extra pounds.
Reject the tendency to shift blame for why you and your spouse have drifted apart.
Resist creating a cover story for the gap that exists between you and God. He hasn’t moved. You did.
Former Navy Seal and best-selling author Jocko Willink nailed it when he wrote:
“Once people stop making excuses, stop blaming others, and take ownership of everything in their lives, they are compelled to take action to solve their problems…”
—Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
Take ownership of where you are and even how you got there.
I love the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin.
“I never knew a man who was good at making excuses who was good at anything else.”
—Benjamin Franklin
If you’re going to interrupt drift in any area of life it begins with taking personal ownership and responsibility. This is why the writer of Hebrews challenges his congregation with these words in Hebrews 3.
See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. —Hebrews 3:12-13 NIV
Talk about throwing down the gauntlet! The writer of Hebrews almost explodes. He lays down two challenges:
Challenge #1: Take personal responsibility!
“See to it!
Deal decisively with personal sin.
Confront the unbelief you’ve allowed to develop in your heart.
Don’t make excuses for the fact that you’ve veered off course.
Own it.
See to it.”
Take ownership. Make a decision today that you’re going to tackle head-on the sin, unbelief, or anything else that has caused you to drift in any and every area of life.
Challenge #2: Take community responsibility.
It’s interesting that the writer not only challenges these believers to take ownership of how they got to wherever they are. He even stresses the fact that they also have a responsibility to and for one another.
Check out Verse 13. “Encourage one another daily…so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
The writer realizes that sometimes it’s difficult to spot drift in our own life. We desperately need the help of a friend.
A proofreader for your life.
For instance, I work as the managing editor at ISOW Bible College. I also do a lot of writing for the school. Sometimes I’ll work on and read a piece multiple times and still miss grammatical, punctuation, or structure errors. And, it’s my job to catch those.
Why do I miss them? Is it laziness or carelessness? Absolutely not. It’s because my brain sees what should be on the page not what is on the page. I need the help of an excellent proofreader to come alongside me and put a red pen to my work.
Some discomfort on this side of a project is better than public humiliation after something is published online or in print.
We all need someone who loves us but isn’t impressed by us.
We need the same thing in almost every area of life. We need someone who loves us, and is committed to us, but isn’t impressed by us or afraid of us. They love us enough to “speak the truth in love” so that we can continue to grow (Ephesians 4:15).
“Faithful are the wounds of a friend…” —Proverbs 27:6 ESV
I need a brother in Christ who loves me enough to call out my insecurity and selfishness.
You need a sister in Christ who loves you enough to challenge you about your physical health.
We need married couples who love Jesus and love each other and who will not allow us to drift from our spouse. Friends that will fight for us on their knees and fight “with” us in terms of challenging us to deal decisively with drift.
Do you have that in your life?
Who can you invite to become that kind of friend for you?
Where do you need to take personal responsibility today?
Your physical health?
Your relationship with your spouse?
Your relationship with God?
Don’t procrastinate. Don’t make excuses. In the words of the Nike slogan, “Just do it.”
2. Get a clear vision of who you want to become and where you want to go.
One of the things Janet and I share when we lead marriage events or conferences is this truth:
The most important day of your marriage isn’t the first day, it’s the last day.
It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.
If you know how you want to finish,
you can reverse-engineer your marriage
so that you live and love in a way
that causes you to finish strong and finish together.
That idea isn’t original with us. We ran across it several years ago.[1] But we love it! Reverse-engineering is about getting a clear picture of your desired destination — whether it relates to health, marriage, or your relationship with God — and then living in a way that will get you there.
Janet and I have become so serious about this that we’ve developed a vision statement for our marriage. Maybe we’ll share that statement in another post, but after living through a relational train crash that almost cost us everything, it’s important to both of us that we finish strong and we finish together.
Finish strong. Finish together.
Proverbs 29:18 reminds us:
Where there is no vision [no redemptive revelation of God], the people perish…
—Proverbs 29:18 AMPC
Get a clear vision of who you want to become and where you want to be as it relates to any and every area of life. This single, but powerful step, gives so much clarity when it comes to the next steps you can take in dealing a death blow to drift.
3. Develop a plan or system for getting you there.
The vision is the picture or painting of where you want to end up.
The plan describes the steps, systems, habits, and actions it will take to get you there.
Lack of a solid plan for moving in the direction of the dream God has given you
is almost always a guarantee for failure.
I refer to the next quote so often because I’ve found it to be one of the most helpful thoughts I’ve run across in years. In his bestselling book, Atomic Habits, James Clear wrote:
“We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.”
—James Clear
So, develop a game plan.
Create a system.
Devise a strategy.
For your health.
For your marriage.
For your relationship with God.
For any area where drift could be a problem.
The plans of the diligent lead to profit
as surely as haste leads to poverty. —Proverbs 21:5 NIV
Don’t get overwhelmed. Designing a plan or creating a system isn’t as difficult as it may sound.
For instance, as it relates to physical health, a few years ago I landed on this simple plan:
- I will eat in a way that fuels me for excellence.
- I will exercise to gain strength and increase flexibility, mobility, longevity and endurance.
- I will rest in a way that reveals I deeply trust God.
Yes, there are specific details for each bullet in the above plan that we don’t have space to describe here. But the point is that the above plan is simple, memorable, and doable. God’s Word says that kind of plan “leads to profit” or success.
So, what’s your vision?
For your health?
For your marriage?
For your family?
For your relationship with God?
Now, what’s the plan or system that is going to help make it a reality?
4. Take action and keep taking it over and over again.
Author Tommy Newberry wrote:
“More than any other single factor, you are where you are today because of the choices you have made. To achieve things you have never achieved before,
you must take action today that you’ve never taken before.”—Tommy Newberry
Take action. For instance…
Physically.
Create a weekly meal plan.
Go for a walk or run.
Get to the gym.
Walk an average of 8,000 – 10,000 steps a day.
Drink lots of water.
Avoid alcohol.
Do strength training at least 3 times a week.
Relationally.
Encourage your spouse daily.
Greet him with a hug.
Kiss her on the cheek.
Schedule and go out on a date.
Text her a sweet message.
Write him a thoughtful note.
Go for a long walk together.
Share a cup of coffee together.
Read a great book on marriage together like Tim Keller’s, The Meaning of Marriage. Attend a Marriage BLDR Conference together.
Spiritually.
Start a daily Bible Reading Plan.
Spend time every morning with God in prayer.
Talk to God throughout the day.
Make worship a priority.
Become part of a small group.
Become a part of a life-giving church.
James, the half-brother of Jesus, in perhaps the most searing book in the New Testament wrote this:
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like. —James 1:22-24 MSG
If you really want to put an end to the tyranny of drift, take action.
Don’t be a physical couch potato.
Don’t be a relational one, either.
Act on what you hear!
5. Treat failures and setbacks as an opportunity to learn, not something that disqualifies you from your calling.
Albert Einstein once wrote:
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
—Albert Einstein
The question is not IF you will fail. You will. You will. You will. I have.
The question is, WHEN you fail will you allow it to knock you completely off course and take you totally out of the purpose and plan God has for your life? Or, will you process the failure, confess any sin that needs to be confessed, and continue to move forward powered by God’s radical grace and amazing love?
The words of Psalm 37:23-24 have been a huge encouragement to me, especially over the last two years. This is a psalm of David. A guy who knew and experienced failure personally.
The Lord directs the steps of the godly.
He delights in every detail of their lives.
24 Though they stumble, they will never fall,
for the Lord holds them by the hand.
—Psalm 37:23-24 NLT
Wow! What a passage! What a promise!
God directs our steps. Not just the general direction of our lives, but each and every step.
He delights in all the details — the vision, the plans, the strategy, the steps, the actions. They all make God smile. Can you imagine that? God delights in the details of YOUR life! Wow! What a God!
When we stumble, God makes sure we don’t stay down on the mat.
Instead, He holds us by the hand like a loving Father and says, “Get up again. Believe again. Try again. Trust me again.”
One self-help writer summed up a great response to failure like this:
“The secret of life is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”
—Paulo Coelho
Long before he wrote those words, the writer of Proverbs 24:16 the following words. I love the way they read in The Passion Translation.
For the lovers of God may suffer adversity and stumble seven times,
but they will continue to rise over and over again. —Proverbs 24:16 TPT
I love it! Don’t miss the last line! We “continue to rise over and over again.”
That’s the stuff God has made you of.
It’s who you are.
It’s part of your spiritual DNA.
Refuse to stay down.
It’s time to get back up!
Reject the drift.
It’s time to get back on course!
So, how do you deal with drift? Regardless of the issue or area in your life?
—Take personal responsibility for where you are now.
—Get a clear vision of who you want to become and where you want to go.
—Develop a plan or system for getting you there.
—Take action and keep taking it over and over again.
—Treat failures and setbacks as an opportunity to learn, not something that disqualifies you from your calling.
See Part 1, The Danger of Drift by clicking here.
[1] I think I first ran across the concept of “reverse-engineering” in Mark Driscoll’s book, Real Marriage.