Discipline Over Desire
For this week’s BlogThursday post, we will delve into the topic of disciplining ourselves instead of yielding to our fleeting desires, exploring how this practice aligns with our faith and draws us closer to God’s purpose for our lives.
The Benefit of Discipline
Living a disciplined life is challenging, especially nowadays, when the world is full of distractions pulling our time and focus away from what truly matters. Social media, TV shows, video games etc. can lead us to procrastinate from doing what our future-selves would thank us for. Sometimes we are our biggest enemy. We choose to do what we want instead of what we need. A lot of the time, this can be because we feel overwhelmed by the amount of work we have to do so we procrastinate even further to find a way of escape, making it no easier for us to do what is needed. Sometimes we fear what the future holds so instead of disciplining ourselves by finding ways to achieve our future dreams and goals, we give into fear to procrastinate by staying stuck where we are. Naturally, we, as humans, hate to be disciplined - we dread it! But after we discipline ourselves, we find joy and peace from it. Hebrews 12:11 reads “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” So we must deny our wants and prioritise our needs instead to discipline ourselves because we receive peace and produce good fruit in doing so. Hebrews 12:8 reads, “If God doesn’t discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his children at all.” If we are not disciplined by God, we cannot call ourselves His children. So we must see discipline as a gift and not a burden, because without discipline, it is impossible to be a child of God.
How Does God Discipline Us?
Our heavenly Father does not discipline us in an earthly manner. He doesn’t discipline us out of anger but rather, out of love. As His children we must expect discipline in the same way we expect our parents to give us a punishment for breaking their rules. God has a different way of disciplining each of His children because we are all different and God knows how to discipline each of us in a way that will make us obey, get corrected and back on track. The purpose of God’s discipline is to bring us into true fellowship with Him. If God were to sit back in silence and do nothing when we disobey Him, where would relationship come in? Where would reverence towards God come in? Through being disciplined by God, we are reminded of how holy, righteous and perfect He is, and how flawed we are, which brings us to a place of humility. God doesn’t discipline us to humiliate us. God disciplines us to humble us. When He humbles us and we obey His command, it may take a while to witness but elevation will come because He is faithful.
Every Moment Matters
Time goes by so fast and is too precious to waste. There’s a quote by Charles Buxton that reads, “You will never ‘find’ time for anything. If you want time, you must make it”. Some of us say we don’t have time to read the bible, or we’re too busy to pray. If we really want to grow in our relationship with God, we must make time to spend with Him. God is the author of time. It doesn’t matter if we have too much school work, or if we are overloaded with work from our jobs - there is always time! If we choose to spend time with the Lord and put Him first before going about our other priorities, God will bless us even more in those priorities and give us peace when we feel overwhelmed by the pressure. Finishing off, I want to exhort us all to always strive to deny our flesh and discipline ourselves. As I mentioned earlier, discipline does NOT feel good in the moment but it produces good fruit in the long-run; so let’s all run our race with the Spirit of self-discipline, achieving our goals in obedience to what God has called us to do.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, I open myself up for You to discipline me, and when You discipline me, give me the understanding that this discipline will produce long-lasting profitable fruit in the future. Help me to prioritise what really matters over what I want. Give me the strength to deny my flesh every day and live a life of discipline. In Jesus’ name, Amen