Archive for March, 2009

Discipline

First, I guess it would be appropriate to speak of discipline itself, not in the spiritual realm, necessarily. In a quick look at a dictionary.com the word is defined:

“Behavior in accord with rules of conduct; behavior and order maintained by training and control: good discipline in an army.”

-or-

“An instrument of punishment, esp. a whip or scourge, used in the practice of self-mortification or as an instrument of chastisement in certain religious communities”

Yikes – right? Obviously those are not all of the definitions possible but, I will choose not to bore you with all of them, as they are all along the same lines. Basically – obeying the rules or, being punished for the lack of obedience to the rules. This, of course doesn’t sound like a lot of fun – why on earth would a loving God put his beloved through such a trial of discipline? For that, we’ll take a look at scripture:

“7It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? 10For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness.”

– Hebrews 12:7-10 ESV

As we see here Spiritual Discipline is not just for punishment nor is it just some rule to obey – it is to teach us, so that we can be holy. God disciplines us for our own good, not just because He wants to or gets some sick pleasure from seeing us in pain, He is helping us by bringing us to a point where we can be more holy or, share His holiness. To me, this is a big deal, as we are in no way capable of being holy, ourselves.

I think a lot of times when people talk about certain things that may be considered a Spiritual Discipline they talk about it as though it is something to be picked up off of a shelf. As if, one day, they decided that perhaps they should be a little more patient or a little more faithful… and then it was so – here they are today faithful and patient. If this is how you feel about the topic, sorry, I will now have to disagree.

The very nature of the word implies to me that a discipline has nothing easy tied to it. We never think of a disciplined athlete as someone who eats donuts all day then goes out and wins a marathon, why would we feel as though this is any different in the spiritual realm? If an athlete trains daily and often falls on their face only to get back up and try again – so that they can be the best athlete possible… then perhaps we should be doing the same in our spiritual lives.

This is something that requires constant work, and will never be easy:

“For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

- Hebrews 12:11 ESV

Okay, so… all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, at least for the time being. That is, of course, until we reach that peaceful fruit of righteousness. Naturally, if you are a believer you should be striving for righteousness. If we are in fact all striving for righteousness it would make sense that we’re also learning how to be more disciplined daily.

God Teaches

Above we find that discipline is something that must be worked on and strived after – how do we work on this? How does God reveal to us what a disciplined life looks like, or, how does He teach us about it? Throughout The Bible God has a constant teaching method – as he is unchanging. This teaching method I heard a few weeks ago referred to as “Conversational Teaching” and another way I like to look at it is that He is reasoning with humans.

I’ve found in my reading that throughout history and even now in my own life, God likes to teach us by coaching us to the make the right choices. God gets his point across by challenging us to the point where we have to decide –and through that he teaches us a great deal as well as makes us stronger. A great example of this comes in Exodus chapter 32 while Moses is up with God on the mountain and the people became impatient. They built a golden calf and began to worship it as a god. Then, knowing this, God spoke to Moses:

“7And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go down for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. 8They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said “These are your God’s, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt!”‘ 9And the Lord said to Moses, ‘I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. 10Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”

– Exodus 32:7-10 ESV

So, God is mad, clearly. In this he tells Moses that he’s just going to start over again, with him. But, Moses then challenges God. What? Is he allowed to do that?

“11But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, ‘O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12Why should the Egyptians say, “With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth”? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. 13Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, “I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.”‘ 14And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.”

– Exodus 32:11-14 ESV

Right. So does this imply somehow that Moses changed God’s mind? That perhaps Moses was somehow more merciful or forgiving than God? Of course not, for we know that God is unchanging (1 Samuel 15:29). So, if Moses did not change God’s mind then what was happening in verses 11-24?

One of the best, most simplistic, ways of explaining what happened there that I have heard is the comparison, naturally, to a father and son. Growing up I remember wrestling with my dad – as most young children do. When we would wrestle there was always at least some moment where he would let me ‘pin him’ or ‘win’ when, in reality, he could have destroyed me like the child I was at any moment. Why on earth would a grown man ‘lose’ to a child?

Obviously, for my dad, he knew he had let me win and, even though I was a child I knew on some level, too. The point is that I learned something, in that case – perhaps something new about wrestling. Like a father, God does this so often with us, to strengthen us. However, wrestling does not always have to be a physical sport. It can be a strengthening of mind as well. This is par for the course with the nation of Israel. In fact, the word Israel means roughly ‘one who wrestles with God.’ Throughout time God has taught us with challenges.

So, if someone asks to have a Spiritual Discipline – God will likely teach them that discipline by putting them in a situation in which they have to use it. After all, who has been found faithful without first having a situation in which they need to have faith or, who could be called patient if they have never had to wait for anything?

For a moment, I will pretend I have people who read this. I’m going to part from what I intended to write about (the eternity of hope) to touch a topic that has been more present in my thoughts lately. I am involved with the Creative Team at my church and we have discussed a few times in the past couple weeks what does freedom mean. One, because we are revisiting the way a particular service we do each year is done – rather than focusing it in the way we have in the past we intend to focus on freedom and, what that means. Two, our church is almost to a point of financial freedom, that is, that we are about to be 100 percent free of debt. With that, we intend to do a sort of vision casting for what we need to now do, with our new financial freedom.

You see, with freedom comes responsibility – and this is where I will begin:

Being free of sin does not simply mean freedom to do as we please – as this is sin. It also should not imply that we are no longer capable of sin. The freedom in which we have been given is the freedom from the wage of sin –which is death.

It is, however, in freedom that we then find our greatest responsibility – life. With life being the ultimate gift that can be given we need to be sure that our lives are lived well. After all, it would be a terrible shame to come to the end of our life only to find we haven’t really lived at all.

So, freedom is life in the place of death. The responsibility of freedom, then, being that we should live our life in such a way that we honor God. Most every time freedom in Christ is mentioned the responsibility of such is introduced at the same time, a couple examples:

“For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” – Galatians 5:13 ESV

“Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.” – 1 Peter 2:16 ESV

These two specific examples point in a good direction to find what a life well lived looks like. In Matthew the Pharisees ask Jesus to name the greatest commandment:

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38This is the great and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” – Matthew 22:36-40 ESV

In verse forty Jesus basically states that everything hinges around these commandments. All laws are fulfilled through the keeping of these two. All prophecies are based in this, love. If we can love God and if we can love others as ourselves we will live a life worth living. If we can love we would be this unstoppable force in bringing people to God. In feeding the hungry, in quenching the thirst of the thirsty, in welcoming the estranged, in clothing the naked, in visiting the sick, and in going to the imprisoned.

You see, the responsibility is love. Life is love. Forgetting about our own wants and desires and taking on God’s wants and desires. It’s a part of following God, it is following God. He is the source of love. He pours his love out on us in such abundance that we may love him back with it as well as turn around and love others.

God has poured out his love, breaking the chains of sin, driving out fear and leaving a trail of changed lives in its path.

So here it is. We have this eternal life, this love from God. This freedom, this responsibility; it isn’t an option but, it is something that must be done. We must love and, if we do it – there is nothing that cannot be done in the name of God.