Skilful Discipline

Over the last two and a half years I've managed to shed about two stone in weight and keep it off. Quite a beneficial exercise from a health and fitness point of view, but it was also really interesting as a lesson in discipline.

In many areas of life discipline seems to be one of the key ingredients for effectiveness and success. It's not the only thing you need, but it's massively important. If you want to persevere in daily prayer and bible reading, be good at your job, be a good husband, run a business or excel in an area of ministry, a lot of it does just come down to discipline. Which is in itself quite a skill.

Here are a few of my current observations on the nature of effective discipline:

1. You have to set yourself a goal. Long-term, mid-term and short-term help spur you on and track your progress. In particular, having daily and weekly goals really help you drive and achieve what you're aiming for overall. If you just have the big long-term vision without breaking it down into smaller steps, you don't notice your progress quite so much and tend to get easily discouraged. You get sort of lost in the journey there.

2. You have to really go for it. The end goal is something you have to really want. Anything you set out to achieve is likely to be quite difficult and challenging. Desire, passion and zeal are tools in your pocket that you have to have. Otherwise the discipline becomes cold, hard, bitter and lifeless, and you'll inevitably give up. The thing you're fighting for should be a source of joy. The joy and satisfaction you gain from being successful in your fight needs to outweigh the struggles and trials you face on the way.

3. You have to experiment, problem-solve and persevere. The initial methods you employ in your goal are going to need refining and perfecting. They might not be very effective at all to begin with. But you have to try for a period, then look back and analyse what did and didn't work. If you can figure out why something worked or why something failed, you can then take that information a create a more effective method. You repeat the process over and over until you home-in on something that really works for you. It's quite a time-consuming process, but one which can lead to long-term effectiveness. The hardest part is getting the momentum in the early phase without giving up. If you can persevere at the beginning, you're in good stead for long-term success.

4. I think the final lesson I've learnt thus far is that overall consistency is more effective than 'peaks and troughs'. For example, it's better to hit consistently at 80% capacity than attempt short bursts at the limit of what you can achieve. If you set out to run a marathon, you don't sprint out of the blocks like you're running the 100 metres. You'll knacker yourself out and collapse in a heap before the race has really begun. Instead, you have to pace yourself at a lower level which you can maintain. Your initial short term goals should be very achievable to ease you into the flow of things, like a good warm up. Then, as things progress and you acclimatise to the challenge, you can gradually increase the intensity.

It's not Joy vs Discipline

I was in the shower yesterday morning when a thought struck me. About the nature of discipline.

Discipline, you must admit, is absolutely essential for anyone to live a life that pleases God. The very word 'disciple' comes from the root word 'discipline'. And that's exactly what we're called to be. But, when have you ever been able to consistently do anything you didn't want to?

Joy and discipline are inextricably connected. You're disciplined in the areas that you believe lead to greater happiness, and you often enjoy the disciplines themselves. The guys in the gym cranking out their routine every day are there because, underneath the hard work, they love it. They love the gradual transformation of their bodies, and they probably enjoy much of the routine itself. There are hard, difficult days, but they know that their long term joy is routed in overcoming certain obstacles.

And I think the same must be true of the Spiritual Disciplines. We engage with God daily because we love it. Discipline is involved, but it is by no means the main ingredient. Our love of God is. And that leads to great joy.

I was in Bedford a few weeks back in a teaching session by Andrew Wilson. He was talking about the fight for Joy (which he's also taught at Kings previously: The Fight for Joy). One of his points was that we should discover what things increase our joy in the Lord and make a discipline out of them.

Just like the guys in the gym, it probably takes some hard work, perseverance and experimentation to find what really works for us. But when we get the thing going, engaging with God daily, our joy and the love of God are what fuels our efforts.

Content with the Seasons

I've been thinking of late: enjoying the season of life that you're in is a very good discipline. You can spend your whole life longing for the next phase, dwelling on the tougher points of your current existence and totally overlook all the good things life is offering right now.

A while back I felt slightly challenged when I was chatting with my wife about how I totally loved the summer, and how the rest of the year kind of sucked. She pointed out that if you only enjoy those summer months, you'll only enjoy about a quarter of your life. She then when on to tell me all the things she loved about autumn, winter and spring. Quite a profound, far reaching point. I've since been enjoying crisp winter days, amazing autumnal colours when all the trees turn red, and spring, when all the flowers and blossom suddenly break out. I had somehow never really noticed any of these before.

"But godliness with contentment is great gain"
1 Timothy 6:6

It's interesting that godliness and contentment is described as gain. Most of our thoughts, longings and strivings are looking forward to seasons where we get something extra. Some sort of life upgrade or bolt-on: a job, promotion, financial security, a spouse, having children, more free time and so on.

And yet this verse is talking about the underlying root of all of these: gain. Contentment and godliness, I imagine, are two incredible sources of joy. They provide the ability to enjoy God and everything he's provided, and you can tap into that whatever stage your life is at.

When you look back at seasons that have now come and gone, you realise that there were many, many good things that God provided and were very enjoyable, that you somehow didn't appreciate to their full extent at the time.

So it leaves you with a few questions: what is it that you're longing for, and what are you overlooking? Will anything other than God satisfy you?

Joy Blocker

A couple of lines from J.I. Packer in his book 'Great Joy' that got me thinking:

"Fifth, the practice of joy means losing your inhibitions. Some of us are so emotionally frozen that we never get close to anyone, and feel paralyzed with embarrassment when urged to loosen up. Inner restraints of this kind block out joy in our relationships both with other people (even our nearest and dearest) and with God."
p10

It's very easy if you're a bit of an introvert and a bit reserved (like myself) to just think 'that's the way God made me' and sort of nullify any need to push through your inhibitions. But these lines of text do reveal their tendency to block out some very positive emotions. They can put a false ceiling in place, and a shallow foundation. The great heights and depths of joy are beyond our grasp when we let our inhibitions dominate. We should be seeking to push that ceiling up, dig that foundation down, even if it's just little by little.

Ecstasy Just Beyond

"In the words of C. S. Lewis, "All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.""

Heaven, Randy Alcorn, page 37.
Original Quote: C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 118.

More Trials, More Joys

"More trials, more joys; more temptations, more triumphs; more prayers, more answers; more toils, more strength; more fights, more victories; and then come sickness, old age, disease, death. Is it over now? No! there is more yet-awakening in Jesus' likeness, thrones, harps, songs, psalms, white raiment, the face of Jesus, the society of saints, the glory of God, the fulness of eternity, the infinity of bliss. O be of good courage, believer."
Spurgeon

Just Wait

A little snippet of wisdom I heard recently that is most definitely laced with truth and applicable to many, many areas:

"Delayed gratification increases pleasure"

The Importance of Joy and a Cheerful Soul

On George Whitefield...

"At Basingstoke, as in Georgia, friends were astonished at his cheerfulness when sick and vomiting. He explained: 'The comforts I enjoy within are inexpressible. They have a great effect upon my outward man and make me of a cheerful countenance, which,' he added, spitting some remaining gall out of his mouth, 'recommends my Master's service very much. Oh, free grace in Christ Jesus!' He lay back exhausted on the pillows."

George Whitefield and the Great Awakening, John Pollock, p79

Trials build strength

Hudson Taylor on young converts and the importance of trials:

"In their spiritual infancy they should be left to grow naturally in the circumstances in which God had placed them, strengthened by the very trials with which they found themselves surrounded."
Biography of James Hudson Taylor, p211

"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."
James 1:2-4

If life was easy, free from struggles and frustrations, we would remain weak and our faith never tested. We would never have the opportunity to trust God and wholly rely on Him. We would never grow or mature. As it is, we can count it as joy. That's hard. But that wording 'count it all joy' seems to suggest that it's not necessarily our immediate experience. It's a conscious decision. We step back and realise 'even though it's hard, this is a good thing'.

Dissecting Verses: Romans 15:13

"May the God of hope ¹ fill you ² with all joy and peace ³ as ⁴ you trust ⁵ in him, so that you may overflow ⁶ with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit ⁷."

My thoughts...

¹ God is being described here as the God of hope. That immediately raises the question "why?". God is many, many things and this is just one of his attributes. It's because, I think, it is incredibly easy to despair in this life. Hope is very good, and this is a reminder that God is the source.

² "fill you" → the notion of filling implies that you can be full or you can be empty, or somewhere in between. Perhaps you can have a certain measure of hope in your soul at any given time. Perhaps it's something that rises and falls, and changes over time. Maybe it's something that depletes if left unattended.

³ "all joy and peace" → who wouldn't want that? Is there a man or woman alive who wouldn't want to be completely full of joy and peace? Isn't this the void in our lives that the world is incessantly trying fill with all sorts of idols and pleasures? I would guess this is the thing most people spend their lives in search of.

An interesting definition of peace which I've heard is this: "peace is not the absence of trouble but the presence of God, even in the most troubled situation". Also, I've often heard joy described as a sort of consistent inner state, like a thermostat setting on your life; distinguishable from happiness which is simply an emotion experienced at a particular moment in time.

⁴ "as" → a crucial point. It's the key link in the chain, a conditional pivot point. It's something that we have to choose to do, and simply won't happen by itself. Suggests that our default position is a distinct lack of hope, joy and peace.

⁵ "trust" → I don't know about you, but I tend not to trust people I don't know. To trust God requires you to know him on a personal level. To have a relationship with someone you need to spend time with them, interacting, listening and speaking. Meditation and prayer are the order of the day. My dictionary describes trust as "firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something". This firm belief has to be rooted in our knowledge and experience of God in our day-to-day lives.

⁶ "overflow" → it's back to this idea of filling. The level at which God wants you to be full of hope is the level at which you are completely overflowing. It spills out on the people around you.

⁶ "by the power of the Holy Spirit" → suggests that a mark of being full of the Holy Spirit is your level of hope. If it's a quality that is severely lacking in our lives then it suggests we need to trust in God again. We need to go back to the word of God and re-align ourselves.