Discipline is such a nasty little word. So many negative feelings jump into my throat as i even utter it. It harkens my mind back to the very few times that my parents punished me for one of the many bad things i had done [by the way my parents rock, now having my own kids, if i'd done half the stuff i did as a kid i would have killed me]. Disciple as a term seems so inextricably linked to the idea of punishment, but as of late i'm finding new love for the term.
It's no big secret that I'm not a big fan of the military, but one thing that I do love is how they teach young men and women to commit themselves to something no matter the cost or potential for personal detriment. They train their minds and bodies to be the very best tools to do the tasks that they've been called to do. In the same way I think we are called to a militaristic like training regimen when it comes to our spiritual life. To do anything well we need to both work within our natural abilities and giftedness but we also need to work hard at it.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately especially since I've been reading again a book called "Celebration of Discipline" by Richard Foster. In this book Foster explores some of the tools that it takes to craft our spiritual walks into something that is refined and chiseled down to be a good tool for the master craftsman to use. I think about this analogy in the same way I think of a sculptor chiseling down a piece of precious stone for a statue, Michelangelo's "David" springs to mind. The artist takes his sharpest tools into the battle against the rock and slowly chips away, grinds away, polishes away all the rough little edges and burrs until there standing before him is a masterpiece. I think this is what God wants to do in us, but with the exception that His masterpiece [you and I] are intended then to be the tools He uses on the next project. As He chips away at our edges, the shards of our old nature fall away and chip pieces off others as well. The spiritual disciplines act as an accelerator to the refining.
IF you're not familiar with some of the disciplines your probably not the only one, in fact, many people consider them so old and outdated that there's not much use in even entertaining their ideas in such a "Modern" time. Yet things like prayer, meditation (the good kind), fasting, study, giving, silence, solitude, serving... and others are very much timeless practices to focus our lives on God. I've been working, as noted in my last post, on two particulars lately... prayer and meditation but each have their own particular roles to play and developing us as individuals whose attention is on God.
The result for me is this little word called growth. The disciplines are hard because they cause us to grow. They stretch our spiritual muscles, pulling on the tendons of time and energy, to develop us into strong spiritual machines that are conditioned for the long haul. The pain of training results in the "muscle memory" of connection with God. When I was in Bible college I had several professors who would daily awake at 4-5am to spend time with God in prayer and study of the Bible before they drove more than an hour thru Chicago traffic to come teach. I used to think, "who are these lunatics!?" but now slowly by the grace of God, I'm beginning to discover the richness that poured out of their lives came from a disciplined life. I haven't arrived, nor will I ever but to challenge ourselves to change for the better, for God's glory, is a calling worthy of our very best efforts!
If you choose to follow God, may He greatly bless you with the richness of discipline.
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