Last week I failed.
And not a little failure, but a big failure. With a capital “F.”
You see, I stepped on the scale at the start of last week
and found I had gained over 10 pounds.
Despite my New Year’s resolutions to the contrary, I had gained
weight. And, not just a little weight,
but a lot of weight. An entire
pant-sized gain. An extra notch on the
belt gain. An “I can see it in your
face” gain. And, I felt devastated.
For the past 10 years or so, I have been trying to
improve my health and overall fitness.
My father had open heart surgery at 57, and both my parents have had
knee replacement surgeries and other health maladies. My goal was to reverse those trends in my own
life, and to get back in some kind of shape other than round.
So, 10 years ago, I started on my fitness journey. I began dieting and exercising and watching
what I ate. I was meticulous in
record-keeping -- counting calories, logging exercise, looking for trends. I tried to eat healthy food -- to avoid
excess sugar and desserts and to get rid of the other unhealthy habits I had
acquired. And, I saw results. Over the course of the last 10 years, I lost
almost 60 pounds, and have been able to maintain my
weight fairly constant over the past 4 years.
But, according to the scales and according to the
measurements of my doctor, I was still obese.
When I looked around at work, I was still the biggest guy there. So, I decided it was time to drop some more
weight. To finally get close to my
“ideal” weight in the charts on the wall at the doctor’s office. I began watching my diet closer -- exercised
more -- tried to stay active and increase activity to five days a week instead
of just three. But then
Thanksgiving. And I thought, one dessert
won’t matter -- just one piece of pecan pie won’t hurt. I have been maintaining my weight for over
four years, so just a little indulgence here and there will be quickly
resolved.
But Thanksgiving turned into Christmas and then into New
Years, and the little indulgences didn’t stop.
Then I got sick -- first with a bad cold and then the flu, both of which
hampered my ability to exercise and my desire to eat healthy. Nothing helps a sickness like a heaping bowl
of Kraft macaroni and cheese! In
February, I began pastoring a new church, who had a tradition of a Second
Sunday covered dish dinner on the grounds, and I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s
feelings by not eating their dishes, so I just poured on more homemade macaroni
and cheese, pasta, rice, etc. All of
which resulted in the distressing results when I climbed on the scale last
Monday morning.
It’s easy to point to why this happened -- too much
macaroni and cheese! But, if you were to
sum this up in one word, it would be a lack of discipline. A lack of consistently following my goals of
fitness, diet, and exercise. A lack of
discipline resulted in a failure to meet my health goals, plain and simple. The same can happen in our spiritual lives,
too.
The Bible teaches the principle of spiritual discipline
-- of faithfulness in our spiritual lives through participation in the means of
grace, such as reading the Bible, prayer, worship, and ministry. Being disciplined enables you to be
consistent with your faith and in your relationship with God. And, over time, this leads you to become more
and more like Jesus in your mind, heart, and soul.
Paul told Timothy in 1 Tim 4:7b-8 -- “Train yourself to
be godly -- for physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for
all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to
come.”
What does he mean by training yourself to be godly? He means first defining your goal --
godliness -- becoming more and more like Jesus in your life. That is where we want to go.
The question is how do we get there? We get there by taking consistent actions
that lead us in the direction we want to go.
Things like praying and reading God’s word. Ministering to other people. Worshiping God alone and in corporate
settings. Having a daily quiet
time. Reading a daily devotional. In other words, being disciplined in your
spiritual life by establishing habits that you do daily and without fail. These lead you to grow in grace and to become
more like Jesus. So, discipline equals
spiritual success and leads us to godliness.
I like the concept of discipline. It works for me. I do well when I establish structure in my
life and form habits that I do every day.
It keeps me moving in the right direction, and it helps me make
decisions in what to do and what not to do.
Thinking about this makes me realize just how perfect of
a fit Methodism was for me. I was raised
in a Methodist Church and served as a pastor in Methodist churches. Methodists obtained their name because of the
methodical way the members were encouraged by John and Charles Wesley to train
themselves in godliness. They were given
spiritual disciplines to follow daily and weekly, and by following these
methodically, they grew closer to Christ in mind, soul, and spirit.
In his book “Extreme Ownership,” Jocko Willink makes the
following observations about the effectiveness of discipline in a team,
specifically, among the members of the Navy Seal teams he helped train:
-- “when
individual members of the team are highly disciplined, they can be trusted, and
therefore allowed to operate with very little oversite”
-- “I
knew they would act in a disciplined manner within the standards we had
established -- professionally, ethically, tactically, and strategically”
-- “they
knew what was expected, and they executed accordingly”
-- “they
made decisions based on the disciplined structure we had -- the disciplined
structure allowed them that freedom”
Willink’s overall point in his book is that discipline is
not restrictive, but freeing. He states
that discipline equals freedom, because it allows you to meet your goals and
not to take off in unplanned directions that could cause mission failure.
Spiritual discipline is something we should all consider
in our Christian lives. Building spiritual habits will help us grow and make us
more like Christ. Training ourselves
through these daily disciplines will turn into the people Christ intended us to
be -- as Paul said, “for both the present life and the life to come.” But, we have to start.
This week, I want to encourage you to pick up one
spiritual habit and start to make it part of your daily routine. Maybe it’s to pray every day. Or to read one chapter from the Bible each
night. Whatever it is, just pick one
spiritual discipline and practice it faithfully for the next 30 days and see
what a difference it can make.
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