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When was the last time you told someone you would do something, and then not done it? Or you did it so poorly that you would both have been better off if you had said "no" to begin with?

If you don't care what people think of you, then maybe there's no reason to worry about it. After awhile, those who know you will just assume that you're not reliable, and they'll just stop asking you for commitments. Those who don't know you well enough to avoid asking you will find out soon enough, and they'll stop asking you too. After a while, the only people you'll need to worry about are the ones who either don't yet know you, or haven't yet asked you for anything.
If you have a great personality, or lots of money, or a wonderful spouse, you may not even notice the lack of esteem others have for you. They will continue to invite you to do things -- they just won't count on you. Whether you show up or not, no one will be inconvenienced anymore, because they're not expecting anything from you.

Even if you either don't care, or don't care enough to do something about it, if you are a Christian you have another problem. The Bible tells us to let our "yes be yes and our no be no". (Insert reference). When we say yes and are consistently unreliable, we do more than damage our own reputation -- we damage God's reputation in the eyes of those who see Him through us. Not only do we discourage other Christians, but to those who do not know God, we provide a witness that they will likely have to overcome to even want to consider becoming Christians.
I don't think I've ever met a person who really wanted to be known as unreliable. But I've known a lot of people who have too often said yes when they should have said no. Or they have said yes but not been well enough organized to perform as they have promised.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about the person who just occasionally doesn't live up to their commitments. We have all experienced that from time to time. No, I'm talking about the person who acquires a reputation for not being reliable.

Need for Quiet Time to become motivated

There are several different reasons for becoming known as a person who is not consistently reliable. It may be that you've never consciously thought about the fact that you're not reliable. Maybe all you have to do is make a conscious effort to do what you say you'll do, and you'll solve the problem.

Or it may be that you don't know how to become personally well enough organized so that you can be consistently reliable. In that case, you need to first become motivated, and then become committed to greater personal organization. Or it may be that you know how to be personally well organized, but you just agree to do more things than you can do. In that case, you need to master the ability to say no.
If your problem is that you are not personally well-organized, the chances are that you will not become motivated to improve without a good deal of pain. There seem to be some people who just enjoy being well organized, and they'll work on it just for the sake of being organized. Then there are those who don't mind being personally well organized and are motivated to be because they see what they can accomplish through it. Finally, there are those who resist being personally well organized because they see it as something negative. They actively desire to not be well organized.

Wherever you may fit on that spectrum, it may help you want to be better organized if you can see it in terms of what God wants you to do, or be, or become. If you struggle with the question of whether God wants you to be better personally organized, then you might try spending some quality time with God on just that subject. Ask Him to show you just what He desires for you in this area of your life. Establish enough time to be with Him on a regular basis so you can have the confidence that you'll hear whatever it is He may have to share with you.
If your struggle is not so much whether God wants you to be personally better organized, but rather how to get there, then be sure you have enough regular daily quiet time to enable Him to tell you how. Again, you must have the confidence that you've spent enough quality time with Him to have heard whatever He might have said.

And if your struggle is in the area of knowing when or how to say no, that's what you should address in your time with God. The bottom line is that unless, and until, you are willing and able to spend enough time with God regularly, you probably will not make significant progress in becoming more reliable. And if you do, you will.

Need for Quiet Time and Planning Time

Once you're motivated to become a reliable person on a consistent basis, you're well on your way to success. It may be that God will gently convict you of His desire that you become more reliable. Or it may be that you will be motivated through the pain of not being reliable. Either way, once you're there, once you're motivated to become personally well enough organized to be consistently reliable, then you're ready to begin a process.

That process should include a regular daily quiet time with the Lord. Don't try to do too much too quickly. If you have no time regularly committed, you might begin with 15 minutes a day. If you already have established the habit, then I would encourage you to set a goal of one hour with the Lord, but work up to that gradually. If you're presently doing 15 minutes, you might want to try 30. If you're at 30, you might try 45. And if you're already at an hour, concentrate on improving the quality of your time with Him.

The process of becoming reliable should also include a regular time for personal planning and daily organization. Again, assuming you don't have any time set aside for that, you might want to begin with 10 or 15 minutes. Even that will sound like a long time until you learn to fill it wisely. Once you establish the habit of having that time available, you may very well find ways to use even more.

In the beginning, I would recommend that you have your planning time in the morning before the day catches up with you (maybe right after your quiet time) or at the end of the day. After you've established a routine, you can then discover the best time for you on an ongoing basis.

During this planning time, you need to do several things in order to improve your ability to be reliable. The first is to make a list of all the commitments you've made to others, including God. Remember your spouse, your kids, your boss, your coworkers, your friends, your pastor, and everyone you talked to the day before. Perhaps you could carry a 3 x 5 card and write down any commitments you make.
Next, you need to establish a date by which you will fulfill every commitment you've made. Some of them will be very short-term and should be done immediately. Others will take longer and may need to be broken down into steps, each step with its own deadline.

Finally, you need to report back to the person to whom you made the commitment. Even if you haven't done what you promised, at least report your progress or lack thereof.

The Value of Routines

When you set aside planning time on a regular daily basis, you can review your ongoing commitments, and you can add any new ones you made the prior day. You can begin to measure your progress. You can see which ones are slipping. You can give yourself time to recover before it's too late. And if all else fails, you can at least report to the person you committed to that you have not lived up to the commitment.

Too often, when we see ourselves slipping behind schedule, we hunker down and sentence ourselves to feeling guilty. Time passes, and so does the pain associated with a broken commitment -- until we see the other person, or remember. Then the guilt just washes over us again and again. If you're living with the guilt of broken commitments in the past, put them to rest. Call the people involved and ask for their forgiveness. Then accept that forgiveness, forgive yourself, and move on. If you're struggling with a commitment that you must break, take the initiative. Contact the other person and receive a release from the commitment, or make a new one that you can keep.

Once quiet time and planning time have become routing parts of your day, you're ready to establish some other routines. Routines are the key to personal organization, and personal organization is the key to becoming consistently reliable. You should have a routine time to go to bed and a routine time to get up. You should have a routine time to break for lunch, and to leave the office. If you have a family, you should have a routine diner time, and a routine time to spend with family members.

As you establish more and more routines in your life, you'll find that you are becoming more and more reliable in your commitments. You'll begin to think in terms of when you'll do the things you're committing to. Just as importantly, you'll begin to realize what you do not have time for. You'll begin to say no and not feel guilty. You'll realize before saying yes that if you do, you run the risk of being unreliable.

Contrary to what some people might think, routines do not make life boring. If they do, then change the routine. But don't resist having routines because of the threat of boredom or lack of freedom. Having the right routines produces maximum freedom. When you know the important things are going to get done in routine fashion, you can begin to enjoy saying yes to other things. You no longer have to worry about procrastination or plain old forgetfulness. Habitual Tardiness
I have two friends each of whom is unreliable. One is unreliable because he thinks he wants the freedom of not being organized. The other friend is unreliable because he thinks he's better organized than he really is.

Both of my friends have the same problem: they both say yes when they should say no. The Bible tells us that our yes should be yes and our no should be no. It also tells us in Luke 16:20 that whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. Although the context has to do with money, the principle is universal. If we cannot be trusted to do what we say we'll do, neither God nor man will trust us to do greater things.

It's easy to overlook punctuality as a problem area. But have you ever heard anyone rush into a meeting or appointment late and say "boy, am I glad I'm late"? Of course not. We instinctively know that tardiness is bad. In school, many of us were graded on tardiness.

But have you ever stopped to think about why habitual tardiness is bad? I don't mean being late once in a while. I mean making it a habit. habitual tardiness reveals an attitude or lack of respect for the other person.

If you are guilty of habitual tardiness, try looking at it as being consistently unreliable. If people expect you to be late, if they plan for you to be late, your reputation is sullied. You're in effect saying that you consider yourself more important than those around you -- and they know you think that! If you want to overcome habitual tardiness, just decide to and plan to be early wherever you go. Determine in advance when you should leave in order to be early. And then exercise the discipline to leave at that time.

If you need some help -- some accountability -- then you might do something like imposing a fine on yourself for every minute you're late. Or decide in advance to give up something you want whenever you're late. If you want to become known as a reliable person, true to the commitments you make, decide to become personally better organized. That's the key to success.
 

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