Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Pursuing Gold

As you know, the winter Olympics are right around the corner. All the athletes that participate in the Olympics want the gold medal. So in return, all the athletes have great discipline. If you're going to succeed in anything, you have to have great discipline. If we're going to succeed spiritually we have to discipline ourselves and pray and study every day.

There are a few things we should try and do:

1) We need to raise the bar for ourselves. If we want to feel a sense of accomplishment, we have to raise that bar and discipline ourselves. We live in a maze of mediocrity where everybody settles for less - don't have a settled state of mind! Paul didn't run with any uncertainty (Phil. 3:14)

2) We need to learn pain before pleasure. Hebrews 11:24 says;

"It was by faith that Moses, when he grew up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25 He chose to share the oppression of God’s people instead of enjoying the fleeting pleasures of sin."

In the moment, all discipline SEEMS painful - but later it yields a great reward.

3) We need to learn to consider BEFORE crisis occurs. We need to learn how to make advanced decisions. You don't get to do it over again - you only have one chance. If we wait till we're in the moment, it will be so much harder to resist temptation. Foolish decisions trap us in a dead end (Gal. 5:22-24)

As Christians, we should be striving for spiritual "gold" each and every day. But in order to reach that gold, we have to learn to discipline ourselves.

1 comment:

  1. A very good topic to talk about; and so true.
    I like that quote:
    "In the moment, all discipline SEEMS painful - but later it yields a great reward".

    thanks,

    bc

    ReplyDelete