After knowing where your shots are landing, only then you can work on your consistency, your groupings. Groupings are what many of us are simply going for when we go to the range. Are you getting a jagged hole, a clover, are they all in the A zone, did they all hit the plate? What kind of grouping are you going for? If you are just trying to hit the paper, then maybe you aren’t ready to be focused on grouping your shots and improving your consistency. Once you are focused on the idea of “aim small miss small” and you are focused on taking your time and repeating the same actions over and over, then you are building a discipline and habit. The tighter the group, the more consistent you are, the more focused you are, the easier it will be to move on to the next steps of being on the right target and being centered on that target.

As we go through our lives, we develop habits whether we want to or not. Some of these are good habits, some are not so good. These grouped actions, shape our lives, our friendships, our relationships, our marriages, and our families. If you are not consistent, your relationships are going to suffer. If your word, your work, and your actions are all over the place, it will be hard for people to trust you. The people affected are your co-workers, your spouse, your kids, your family, nothing is going to affect just you. Sometimes it might be your actions that affect someone else in a way that you did not expect. If you look at the story of David bringing the ark back in to the city that I referenced in the last post,(2 Samuel 6:1-7, 12-15 and Exodus 25:10-15) David’s actions and desire to move the ark back was good, but he was not doing it the way it should be done. Yes, they were able to start moving it, yes, they got it closer to the city faster with the cart, but God didn’t want it moved that way. God had given specific instructions on how the Ark should be built, moved, who should move it, ages before David ever needed to move it back.

As we take the time to figure out where our shots are landing and how consistent our shots are, we can move that consistency on to the proper target, to the proper place on the target.

Shifting our focus, shifting our priorities, allows us to get into proper alignment. Once we have started to shift our groupings, shift focus, and start to make improvements we will make our lives and the lives of those we love better, eventually. It’s not going to be easy, there are going to be things that continue to fight for our attention, life is going to happen, things aren’t going to go right every day. The true test of our consistency comes from these chances to prove our faith and our training. When issues arise, our training or lack of training will be evident. When we have been consistent in growing in our faith, in growing our relationship with God, and with our family and our support groups, we will be able to go through tough times and come out on the other side. I’m not going to say that you will come out unaffected, but you very well could come out of the fire not smelling like smoke. The more consistent you become, and as you start to move to a better place, you start to focus on the target, you will have to be prepared for attacks from the enemy. These attacks may not be extremely obvious, it could be just that you get to a point where you have more and more on your plate and small things that need pieces of your time. Keeping your priorities in line, and keeping up your consistency, is the only way to win these battles.

“…be earnest and disciplined in your prayers.”

1 Peter 4:7b

So with that, I challenge you to work on your habits over the next few weeks. Work to be more consistent in your prayer life, in your time spent with God, and be intentional in the time you spend with your family. Be intentional watching for those things or those people that pull you away from being consistent, and move them out of your way.

Next post we will talk about being on target, not just on paper and grouped, but what it means to really be grouped near the center of the target.