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Whence the greatness? Discipline.
Mike Singletary is as disciplined a student of the game as any who have ever played it. In his biography, Calling the Shots, he says that in watching game films he will often run a single play fifty to sixty times, and that it takes him three hours to watch half a football game, which is only twenty to thirty plays!
We are accustomed to thinking of Ernest Hemingway as a boozy, undisciplined genius who got through a quart of whiskey a day for the last twenty years of his life but nevertheless had the muse upon him. He was indeed an alcoholic driven by complex passions.2 But when it came to writing, he was the quintessence of discipline! His early writing was characterized by obsessive literary perfectionism as he labored to develop his economy of style, spending hours polishing a sentence, or searching for the mot juste—the right word. It is a well-known fact that he rewrote the conclusion to his novel A
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We wonder at the anatomical perfection of a da Vinci painting. But we forget that Leonardo da Vinci on one occasion drew a thousand hands.5 In
Jascha Heifitz, the greatest violinist of this century, began playing the violin at the age of three and early began to practice four hours a day until his death at age seventy-five — when he had long been the greatest in the world — some 102,000 hours of practice. He no doubt gave his own “Hear, hear!” to Paderewski’s response to a woman’s fawning remarks about his genius: “Madame, before I was a genius, I was a drudge.”
We will never get anywhere in life without discipline, be it in the arts, business, athletics, or academics. This is doubly so in spiritual matters. In other areas we may be able to claim some innate advantage. An athlete may be born with a strong body, a musician with perfect pitch, or an artist with an eye for perspective. But none of us can claim an innate spiritual advantage. In reality, we are all equally disadvantaged. None of us naturally seeks after God, none is inherently righteous, none instinctively does good (cf. Romans 3:9-18). Therefore, as children of grace, our spiritual
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1 Timothy 4:7 — “train yourself to be godly” — takes on not only transcending importance, but personal urgency.
Therefore, the word “train” originally carried the literal meaning, “to exercise naked.”8
“Gymnasticize (exercise, work out, train) yourself for the purpose of godliness” conveys the feel of what Paul is saying.
Just as the athletes discarded everything and competed gumnos — free from everything that could possibly burden them — so we must get rid of every encumbrance, every association, habit, and tendency which impedes godliness.
The writer of Hebrews explains it like this: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Hebrews 12:1). Men,
energy toward godliness. Paul pictures this elsewhere: “Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. . . . Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave” (1 Corinthians 9:25-27).
First, in today’s world and Church, disciplined Christian lives are the exception, not the rule.
The difference is one of motivation: legalism is self-centered; discipline is God-centered.
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The second reason for this book is that men are so much less spiritually inclined and spiritually disciplined than women.
Why? Certainly the pervasive American male credo of self-sufficiency and individualism contributes. Some of this may also be due to the male avoidance of anything relational (which, of course, Christianity is!). But we do not concede that women are simply more spiritual by nature. The parade of great saints (male and female) down through the centuries, as well as spiritually exemplary men in some of our churches today, clearly refutes this idea. But the fact remains that men today need far more help in building spiritual discipline than women.
1 Timothy 4:7, 8: “Train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”
And, brothers in Christ, spiritual discipline frees us from the gravity of this present age and allows us to soar with the saints and angels.
We must understand that a progressive desensitization to sin and a consequent inner descent from holiness had taken root in David’s life. David’s collection of wives, though it was “legal” and not considered adultery in the culture of the day, was nevertheless sin.
Men, it is the “legal” sensualities, the culturally acceptable indulgences, which will take us down.
It is hard to maintain inner discipline when you are relaxing in this way. David was imminently vulnerable.
After the first glance David should have turned the other way and retired to his chamber, but he did not. His look became a sinful stare and then a burning libidinous sweaty leer.
Satan does not fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God.”
“How can something that has brought such enjoyment be wrong?” •“God’s will for me is to be happy; certainly He would not deny me anything which is essential to my happiness — and this is it!” •“The question here is one of love — I’m acting in love, the highest love.” •“My marriage was never God’s will in the first place.” •“You Christians and your narrow judgmental attitudes make me sick. You are judging me. You are a greater sinner than I’ll ever be!”
In answering such people, I take them to the most explicit call for sexual purity I know, 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8:
“Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy”
Pray daily and specifically for your own purity. I am amazed that so few men who are concerned about their lives pray about it. Enlist the prayers of your spouse and friends, and pray for others in this respect. Do not wait to be asked. Pray for the purity of your friends too. They need it, and so do you!
Men, it is impossible for you to maintain a pure mind if you are a television-watching “couch potato.”
Here is where the most radical action is necessary. Jesus said, “And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than have two eyes and be thrown into hell” (Mark 9:47).
(Proverbs 6:27).
Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving” (Ephesians 5:3, 4). There must be no sexual humor, urbane vulgarities, and coarseness, as so many Christians are
So we must lay down as fundamental to our Christianity this truth: a Christian mind demands conscious negation; a Christian mind is impossible without the discipline of refusal.
Here it is: It is impossible for any Christian who spends the bulk of his evenings, month after month, week upon week, day in and day out watching the major TV networks or contemporary videos to have a Christian mind. This is always true of all Christians in every situation! A Biblical mental program cannot coexist with worldly programming.
You must remember this: You can never have a Christian mind without reading the Scriptures regularly because you cannot be profoundly influenced by that which you do not know. If you are filled with God’s Word, your life can then be informed and directed by God — your domestic relationships, your child-rearing, your career, your ethical decisions, your interior moral life. The way to a Christian mind is through God’s Word!
The devotional/theological books mentioned most were C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, Oswald Chambers’s My Utmost for His Highest, John Calvin’s Institutes, A. W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God, and Thomas a Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ. The most frequently mentioned biographies were Mr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor’s Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret and Elisabeth Elliot’s Shadow of the Almighty. The favorite novels were Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Fyodor Dostoyevski’s The Brothers Karamazov (which was, for example, the favorite of Charles Colson, Wayne Martindale, Harold Myra, J. I. Packer, and
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We must protect our minds. We must refuse to allow our culture’s media to write our program.
The first is because of what prayer does to our character. Prayer is like a time exposure to God. Our souls function like photographic plates, and Christ’s shining image is the light. The more we expose our lives to the white-hot sun of His righteous life (for, say, five, ten, fifteen, thirty minutes, or an hour a day), the more His image will be burned into our character — His love, His compassion, His truth, His integrity, His humility.
When the Psalmist speaks of meditating on the Law of God day and night (Psalm 1:2), he uses a word which means “to mutter.”6 This word was used to describe the murmurings of kings in Psalm 2:1, and for the chattering of doves in Isaiah 59:11. In fact, St. Augustine translated Psalm 1:2, “On his law he chatters day and night.”7 Meditation is intrinsically verbal. This means the Psalmist memorized God’s Word — for one cannot continually mutter the Scripture without memorizing it, and vice versa.
Two supernatural things happen here: First, the Holy Spirit tells us what we ought to pray for.
That story graphically emphasizes that there is a mysterious efficacy to persistent prayer.
Only 13 percent of Americans see all Ten Commandments as binding on us today. Ninety-one percent lie regularly — at home and at work. In answer to the question, “Whom have you regularly lied to?” the statistics included 86 percent to parents and 75 percent to friends. A third of AIDS carriers admit to not having told their lovers. Most workers admit to goofing off for an average of seven hours — almost one whole day — a week, and half admit that they regularly call in sick when they are perfectly well. The survey also posed the question, “What are you willing to do for $10 million?”
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Integrity is one of the greatest needs of the Church today. The Church needs people who not only refrain from blatant lying, but are free from hypocrisy.
God wants us to be men of principle. G. K. Chesterton said, “Morality, like art, consists in drawing a line somewhere.”15 We must let God’s Word draw the line, not culture.
An out-of-control tongue suggests bogus religion, no matter how well one’s devotion is carried out. The true test of a man’s spirituality is not his ability to speak, as we are apt to think, but rather his ability to bridle his tongue.
Offered to God on the altar, the tongue has awesome power for good. It can proclaim the life-changing message of salvation : “And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’” (Romans 10:14, 15). It has power for sanctification as we share God’s Word: “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). It has power for healing: “For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn — conflicts on the outside,
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Besetting sins are the sins that attract and hold us with the promise of pleasure, including even some “pleasures” that bring no happiness or enjoyment but only disappointment and more despair. Their
The scriptural command calls for extreme actions. If we are to finish well in the faith, we must strip our souls naked of “everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles” us.
Going deeper, the question is: What “hinders” you? Literally, what is the weight that hinders you? Most likely, it is not a sin. It might be something that is good — good for others, but bad for you — a place, a habit, a pleasure, a hobby, an event, an entertainment. If this otherwise good thing pulls you down, you must strip it away. For example, there may be an apparently harmless place (a forest, a store, an apartment, a city) that, because of your past sins, still lures you downward. You must toss aside such a place and forget it.
Along with focusing on Jesus, we must focus on His focus — “who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame” (v. 2b, emphasis added). Jesus’ focus on the coming joy of his resurrection, ascension, and enthronement at God’s right hand, plus the joys of redeeming a people for Himself, strengthened Him to do two things: First, to endure the terrible agony of the cross with an “intensity, and with a unity of perception, which none of us can possibly fathom . . . because His soul was so absolutely in His power . . . so utterly surrendered, so simply subjected to the suffering”
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The hitchhiker’s thumb says, “You buy the car, pay for repairs and upkeep and insurance, fill the car with gas — and I’ll ride with you. But if you have an accident, you are on your own! And I’ll probably sue.” So it is with the credo of so many of today’s church attenders: “You go to the meetings and serve on the boards and committees, you grapple with the issues and do the work of the church and pay the bills — and I’ll come along for the ride. But if things do not suit me, I’ll criticize and complain and probably bail out — my thumb is always out for a better ride.”
