TRAIN YOURSELF TO BE GODLY – I Timothy 4:7

I’ve always thought that discipline was good. And indeed, it is good. I guess it’s easy for me to say that because I naturally tend to do things in an orderly way, at the right time and the right place, that’s just who I am and I recognize that people do struggle with self-discipline. As I spent time reading God’s Word and thinking (or we could say, meditating) about it, God once again spoke to my heart. I don’t know about you, but for me, when I start reading the Bible and meditate on some verses, God likes to open my understanding and speak to me, He teaches me through His Word. Usually God makes me realize new and old disciplines that I should introduce to my daily life. What I mean by discipline, well, let’s say, self-discipline, is simple things found in the Bible that we are commanded to practice. God calls me to obedience. What usually happens is that I know I should change things in my life to obey God, but the act of obedience doesn’t really happen. It’s neat to have these great thoughts about God’s Words and standards of the Christian life and spiritual disciplines, and I realized that even though I was usually disciplined in life, well I was not for the things of God, or at least, it was much harder to practice and did not come to me naturally.
When I look around me and listen to what people say and the way they live, I realize that lots of us “Christians” think that discipline is good, but we are too lazy to actually “flesh it out”. I say lazy because that’s a good word to describe the main idea. We think discipline is good, but we are always excused for not practicing the spiritual disciplines, because we’re too busy at home, work, church activities, school or discipline doesn’t come naturally to them, so it’s too hard. In one word, we are a lazy people that doesn’t make time for obedience. I say “we” but I know very well that many Christians do make time and do obey Christ. Something else I’ve noticed is that lots of us think that practicing disciplines will make us boring little nerds without a life. But I realize that without discipline, we are not real disciples of Christ. Did you notice the word “disciples” isn’t it interesting how it looks like the word “discipline”? (I’m a bit sarcastic here). Jesus said “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me” (Mat. 11:29) and “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). True disciples, true followers of Christ are people who take up their cross, daily. Nobody dumps a cross on you and say “Hey! Here’s a cross for you!”. No we have to go after it. I believe that it is a big mistake to think that we are following Jesus when we do not seek to pick up our cross everyday and follow Him. I’m not saying that we have to do things in order to be saved, I’m not saying that we have to work for our salvation. We are saved only by the holy blood of the Son of God, Jesus who died and was brought to life again by God’s power. No one can claim to be a disciple of Christ without following Him daily.
Though our desire to become godly and like Jesus, should automatically dwell in us when we come to Christ for salvation, to practice spiritual disciplines, like reading and meditating on the Word of God, praying, fasting, making friends with unbelievers to set an example and tell them about Jesus, giving of “our” resources etc. these things do not flow from us naturally. I guess, for some people, it’s easier, but for most of us, we have to decide to set the alarm at 6:30am instead of 7:00am to have a time, or a longer time to meditate on the Word of God, we choose that next Thursday, we’re fasting, etc. That is discipline. It is our choice to take up our cross, the cross won’t happen to be on our shoulder.
Yes, it is hard work. Because we go against what we are used to. It is not easy at first, but I realize that we will never be free in our walk with God if we don’t seek to obey Him radically. I think that a lot of Christians struggle so much in their walk with their Savior because they do not discipline themselves. We have a hard time praying for more than 5 minutes, giving up our riches and desires to help others, it’s hard to read and find anything we can put into practice when we read the Bible, why is it? Because we do not discipline ourselves to be godly. That’s why we can’t pray with freedom and understand and “flesh out” the Word of God. When I first started playing the guitar, it was hard on my fingers and it was painful. Remembering how to do the few chords I learned and play them one after the other was so hard. Then I didn’t know how to strum and I was frustrated with that, I felt stuck. But I kept on practicing day after day and now, I play with much ease and it sounds very good. If I would have thought “Man, it’s hard, I give up” then today I would still struggle with chords and strumming. There’s no fun. I think it’s the same with the spiritual disciplines, yes it is hard, but if we stay there, thinking to ourselves “Man, it’s hard, it’s boring, it hurts me” then we will struggle all our lives, not being able to really spend good time with God, meditating, putting His Word into practice and whatever God calls you to. We won’t bear much fruit and be stuck.
I realize that if I do not seek and obey Jesus with all the means I have, like Zacchaeus, who climbed in a tree to see Jesus, I will stay behind the crowd without seeing, experiencing anything, I will simply hear people’s shouts of joy from afar because of the amazing things Jesus is doing for them. Who wants to live that kind of life? I don’t. That’s way it is so important to strive to obey Jesus.
It will cost us a lot. We might lose some of the things we always had, we might lose some comforts, it will cost us time with people we love. The call of Christ was never to live, but to die. Why do we think our call is to become better people and live to improve our comforts and what we have? The call of Christ on our lives is not to live, but to die. To take up our cross, daily and obey Him. We die to ourselves, our base inspirations, our flesh, to become alive to God in Jesus. And that is done by giving up our desires and start obey God’s Word.
These are things I’ve been thinking about and I am excited, because I am starting to obey my Lord in tangible ways, and it feels good. Obedience is tough, but it is so good to my soul to read and meditate and find God meeting with me every morning, teaching me. I used to read and pray every morning, but now I take the time to meditate in between reading and praying, it makes so a neat difference.

Anyways, if any of you would like to share with me how you discipline yourself to be godly and know God better, or if you would like me to pray for you, or anything else, just send me an email or leave a comment. Let us provoke one another to godliness!