Tag Archive - discipline

Cultivating Discipline, Part 7: A Sound Mind…

September 2, 2010 in being christian, leadership with 1 Comment

For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self–discipline.
– Paul, The Bible, 2 Timothy 1:7

Why is it that all of the Christians that I know seem to struggle through life? With rare exceptions, we all have some area of fear or weakness or wounding… And I have my doubts about the exceptions…

A Christian teen who is a contact on my social-grid made an interesting statement about sexual abstinence this week… He said it “doesn’t work.” It wasn’t completely clear whether he was talking about “abstinence education” or individual, moral abstinence… But here are a few little factoids to chew on:

The Bible clearly teaches that 1.) the Spirit of God dwells in the heart of everyone who submits to the Lordship of Jesus (Romans 8:9). 2.) This Spirit is characterized by power, love and self-discipline (2 Timothy 1:7). 3.) Self-control is evident in the life of a person who is filled with this Spirit, in the same way that you can tell that a tree is an apple tree because it has apples on it (Galatians 5:22-23).

In the life of a believer, something like abstinence certainly does work… At the very least, it can work… it should work… A Christ-follower who believes that it can’t work or doesn’t work doesn’t understand the power of God’s Spirit at work in a person…

(At this point, I cannot emphasize enough the power of God’s grace at work in us when we fail to walk in self-control… but that’s a different discussion.)

I’m talking about the potential power that lives in your heart… Potential for power over our weakness… Potential for love to heal our wounds… Potential for self-discipline and stability…

The trick is tapping into that potential.

Our culture has conditioned us to follow our urges… emotional urges… financial urges… sexual urges… But God has called us to a life of potential and tapping that potential requires that we control those urges. So, God expresses the expectation that we control our urges and then provides us with the means to do it…

Got that? We experience the power of self-control when we practice self-control… The willingness to obey God’s expectation fuels the spirit of self-discipline, which gives us greater power to obey under greater pressure…

Older English translations of 2 Timothy use the expression “sound mind” instead of “self-discipline” but the intended meaning is the same… A person who has a “sound mind” is consistent, purposeful and not a slave to “urges”… and that’s what self-discipline looks like too.

Jesus promised that we’d have trouble… But the wacky, constant struggle to make it through another day that some Christians experience is the very opposite of what God desires for us. That’s the reason He gave us this Spirit of power and love and self-discipline…

Cultivating discipline is a process with many nuances, but the most important thing to keep in mind is this:

God is for us and has given us what we need to finish well.

Cultivating Discipline, Part 6: Making Good Decisions…

August 26, 2010 in being christian, leadership with 1 Comment

I knew I should've packed a map...

Good decisions leading to firm commitments are vital to developing discipline… BUT making good decisions requires discipline… This is the circular reality that always seems to bite me on the tush… So, I’ve given it some thought and reading this week and wanted to share with you guys…

Good decisions grow out of a life lived in conversational relationship with God… I can link almost every bad decision that I’ve made in my life to a lack of consistent prayer and Bible study… I have found that practicing this kind of intimacy with God is both energizing and exhausting, but well worth the effort in the face of any significant choice…

I don’t want to sound too mystical, but the truth is that when we saturate our minds with God’s Word and devote our hearts to intimacy with Him, He speaks… Often in an almost audible way (and I wouldn’t totally throw out the possibility of actual audibility either) to the simplest request for guidance…

Poor decisions grow out of a focus that is off of Jesus. So, make sure that your mind and heart are tuned to Him before you leap…

I recently found myself in the position of having already made a bad decision… I’ll tell you about it because it has a happy ending:

About a year ago, I wrote a post about artists helping missionaries tell their stories… After that, I had the opportunity to do a brand development and web presence project for an orphanage in the Philippines. This led to a similar project for the parent-ministry… Which led to an offer to join the administrative team of a small, but internationally-placed missions organization…

Up to that point, I was just using my gifts to serve these missionaries… Suddenly, faced with the decision of whether or not to join the leadership of this significant ministry, I jumped without really taking enough time to consider the decision…

I almost immediately regretted it… It wasn’t the kind of work that I feel called to do… I didn’t really enjoy it and it played to my administrative weaknesses… And it significantly sucked time away from my areas of deepest calling and vocation…

Fortunately, I was not financially bound to the position and I was able to pull-out of the higher administration role and stay connected to the promotional and marketing aspects that originally drew me into the organization…

There have been times in my life that I could not easily opt-out of a decision… I have several of these looming on the horizon… As I look forward to them, I see very clearly a truth that I’ve missed in the past:

Making a bad decision to a long-term commitment is not the end of the world IF you are positioned in close relationship to God so that He can guide you through the process of making the best of the situation… One bad decision doesn’t mean that you’re life is totally derailed… God is much bigger than that… But you may have to take the long road through the dessert to the Promised Land…

Wave encouragingly at the people you meet on that road, we like that…

NEXT in this series: A Sound Mind…

Cultivating Discipline, Part 6: Cut Yourself Some Slack…

August 20, 2010 in being christian with 1 Comment

I am not a perfectionist… but I’ve worked with a few of them.

It seems like a pretty miserable existence to me… Constantly stressed about every detail of every project… Unable to collaborate, delegate or overlook the tiny flaws…

Don’t get me wrong, I stress about project details and I get focused on correcting issues, and sometimes, I have been known to push a little too hard.

But I learned a long time ago that outcomes are rarely perfect, but most of the time no one notices…

Except the perfectionists.

I hesitate to hate on the perfectionists too much, because I have some perfectionist friends… And I LOVE having a perfectionist on my team. As a leader, it’s a huge weight off my shoulders to have someone else that I can count on to stress about the details…

Truth is, I feel bad for a person who is locked into a destructive pattern of perfectionism… In general, perfectionism is “destructive” when it looks like this:

1. If you are always on edge…. The stress of getting every detail arranged according to your vision is unmanageable.

2. If it limits the scope of your leadership because you (like any micromanager) can only lead as much as you can do yourself…

3. If the fear of failure is paralyzing for you or you would rather not work on a project where the outcome is likely to be imperfect.

The ex-perfectionists that I know all understand a very liberating reality:

They aren’t perfect and (in spite of best efforts) never were.

So, after you suck it up, don’t forget to cut yourself some slack… Your heart will thank you.

Now, I gotta go look at revision 17 of this graphics project I’m working on…

NEXT in this series: Making Good Decisions…

Cultivating Discipline, Part 5: Suck It Up…

August 18, 2010 in being christian, creativity, leadership with 3 Comments

Aw... Poor thing... Suck it up...

The “path of least resistance” is virtually the same as the “road of good intentions”…

Think about this: If you have a goal (let’s say you intend to lose 10 pounds) but you skip the gym every time you come to an obstacle or time conflict, you are never going to reach that goal…

Because all of our worthy aspirations are met with resistance…

I don’t really have an explanation for this, but I have a theory:

Since our best, most worthy goals are designed to improve us or our world, they are likely to run afoul the status quo…

I’ve never made it my goal to gain 10 pounds of fat, unlearn an instrument or narrow my friend-network to something manageable like 2 or 3 people… Those outcomes can happen all by themselves because I am introverted, lazy and tend to medicate with Oreos…

Paul has this to say:

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.     – Paul, The Bible, Philippians 3:13-14

It always makes me smile when I hear Christians talking about “pressing on” or “pressing in” because that’s so 15th century… Modern paraphrase: “Suck it up.”

To conquer the inertia of the-way-things-are, I have to suck it up to reach for the-way-things-could be…

Here’s an example:

I’ve been trying to interview an artist for the site for 3 months. We’ve set appointments and I’ve missed them… sometimes through no fault of my own… but I feel like a schmuck every time it has happened. The temptation to just quietly stop trying is overwhelming to an introvert like me…

But the goal is more important than my insecurity… The prize more appealing than the comfort of retreating into my embarrassment…

So, I suck it up and keep trying…

The payoff is that I’ll have the opportunity to learn from this artist, share his encouragement with you and move closer to my own larger goals…

So, what inner turmoil is holding you back? What does it look like when you “suck it up” and push toward your goals?

NEXT in this series: Cut Yourself Some Slack…

Cultivating Discipline, Part 4: Habit-forming…

August 11, 2010 in being christian, creativity, leadership with 2 Comments

I am a creature-of-habit… There are restaurants where everybody knows my name and that I drink Dr. Pepper… But I’ve found a pattern:

It takes more time and purposefulness to develop a good habit (like going to the gym) than to develop a bad habit (like eating a whole bag of chips in front of the TV)…

Maybe you experience the same struggle: the inertia of the status quo makes forming new, better habits hard… it’s work… and when I’m honest with myself, I don’t really want to do the work…

And here’s the circular logic that I get tangled up in:

Cultivating discipline relies on forming better habits and forming better habits is an exercise in cultivating discipline…

A few tips that I’ve gleaned from the www:

1. The 21-Day Rule… Everybody is different and some research in the UK has indicated that there may even be people who are “habit-resistant,” but the average person will form a new habit by repeating the desired behavior for 21 days.

2. It’s OK to Get Help… There is a reason that Alcoholics Anonymous is successful… It relies heavily on the esprit de corps (“spirit of the group”) to help group members form new habits, relationships and coping skills. Having a workout partner or Bible study group can make forming a new habit more challenging and more fun.

3. Attitude is Everything… Optimistic people are 4 times more likely to achieve their goals. If you are a generally pessimistic person (you will know this is you because you like to describe yourself as “a realist”) then your first goal should be to discipline yourself toward positive thinking. It won’t make your rich, beautiful or thin overnight, but it will open your heart to the possibility of substantial changes.

4. Remind Yourself… If I decide today that I’m going to drink 8 glasses of water everyday, I have got to remember to do it TOMORROW… Forgetting my goals is a real problem… Write it down, tape it to your bathroom mirror, or the fridge, or that bag of Oreos… Re-commit every time you see it… Decide everyday to do it again.

5. Suck it up… Sometimes, you need to just get to work… because nobody pays you to believe in the power of your dreams. Sorry to sound harsh, but some of the most pivotal times in my life have been those moments when someone cared enough to kick me in the butt…

You might find this website helpful: Habit Watcher helps you track your progress toward multiple goals…

What habits are you trying to make? or break? What tools have helped you?

NEXT in this series: Suck It Up…
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