Good day everyone!
I am very delighted to be back! For quite a long time, I was not able to update this blog due to many tasks that I have to attend to especially my thesis outline (requires a lot of time for researching, reading, validating, consulting etc.). Anyway, enough for the reasoning! I would like to share with you a part of the book entitled Beyond Easy Believism[1] by Dr. Gary R. Collins.
I, myself, am not that too disciplined (not easy to admit though)! It is a challenge on my part (and so do you, I hope) to take a good stand and live the disciplined life. Please let me know your thoughts about this blog. Enjoy and ponder!
From the book:
Self-discipline
I once knew a student who described a very common problem.
“I’m 27 years old and haven’t learned a thing about discipline. I get up late. I eat a lot of junk food and don’t bother to get exercise. My spiritual life is an off-again, on-again (mostly off-again) type of relationship. I only pray when I feel like it. I don’t plan ahead. I cram for exams and stay up all night when an assignment is due – then I coast. In a word, I don’t have any discipline.”
Sometimes I get the impression that in the previous century, discipline was indistinguishable from rigidity and unchangeable rules of behavior. Twentieth-century men and women resisted binds like that and went from too much discipline to a state of almost no discipline at all. Our schools advocated a non-structured type of learning and people began to talk about “free love” – which was not restrained by the ties of marriage. Even Christians began to emphasize freedom in Christ and that sometimes translated into “freedom from discipline.”
But freedom and discipline are not opposites. In a recent book, Richard Foster titles his first chapter, “Spiritual Disciplines: Door to Liberation” and notes that all of great spiritual leaders affirmed the necessity of disciplines – such as prayer, service and meditation – if we are to mature freely.[2] An undisciplined life is really wasteful and unproductive[3] – both personally and spiritually. Without discipline, we become slaves to our whims and impulses. We really are not free.
My student recognized that without discipline, little of value is accomplished in life. He made his own lack of self-discipline a matter of prayer. He began getting up at regular times, made a list of his goals, and started scheduling his work day. He found a couple of friends who could encourage and prod him – and he went on to get his doctor’s degree primarily because he had learned to discipline his time and energies.
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