Way 2: Life Savers

The second Way from my list of twenty is, "Exercise discipline and self control in every area of your life, instead of being slothful and out of a balance." Although discipline and self control are required of Christians, not all Christians exercise them. Without them, we are no different from the world because we too would then be living by our sensuous desires (the flesh). We should know by now that when we allow our flesh to lead us we mess up every time. Christians are called to discipline their flesh. We literally have to beat it into subjection. 1 Corinthians 9:27 The New Living Translation reads, "I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should." From the NIV the same scripture reads, "No, I beat my body and make it my slave..." Both translations of this scripture give us a visual picture of how disciplining our flesh should look. What happens when we don't discipline our flesh? We get into trouble every single time. It caused me to over spend, gain weight, become unhealthy, be rude, not consider time, be a gossip, be lazy, be a poor mother, and more. I had too many hang ups to list right here. Because I failed to discipline my flesh, I was out of control all the time. I was so out of balance, because all I did was cater to my flesh. I only did what I wanted to do whether it was right or wrong. This could have been deadly for me. Look at what happened to David in 2 Samuel chapters 11 and 12. David saw Bathsheba bathing and instantly had to have her. This one move created one of the worst debacles ever. If only he had disciplined his flesh, things would have been different for his family and Bathsheba's husband. Look at what happened to Achan in Joshua chapter 7. He just refused to wait. He took what belonged to God. He and his family met their demise. Disciplining our flesh means that we have to tell our flesh what is good for it and what's not good for it. How do we know what's good and what's not? Read our Bible. We have to make ourselves do what is right and make ourselves stop doing what's wrong. At first, doing the right thing may seem totally wrong, because it may be extremely difficult to do. Do the right thing anyway. We have to fight through the pain of training our flesh by doing the right thing until it becomes a habit for us. That means we have to do it over and over and over again, despite how uncomfortable it may first be. We have to retrain our minds and that retraining will produce new actions. Please refer back to my original article 20 Ways to Grow Up in God. The original article explains how the process of renewing our minds works. We should think before we speak and before we act. Don't act hastily. We must think about our actions before we do them. Once we begin the discipline part, we must then exercise self control. We must take control of our flesh and maintain that control. We can't allow our flesh to get out of control and become unruly. If that happens, Proverbs 25; 28 says we basically become useless, "...like a city with broken down walls." We would be of no good to our selves or anyone else. 1 Peter 5:8 states, "Be self controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." So, if you are not self controlled nor alert you make yourself easy prey for the devil to devour. When we are out of balance, we are our own worst enemy. We may wonder why things aren't going our way. We may ask God why didn't certain things work out for us, not realizing that we were our own hindrances, because of our lack of self control. Until we get in order, we shouldn't expect things to go well for us. We all have discipline, and we all have self control. However, we don't all exercise them, nor do we all exercise them at the same rate. Right now, we must plan to exercise both of them in every area of our lives. Today is the day for change. Today is the day that we conquer wrong mind sets. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. We are more than conquerors through Christ who loves us. With God on our side, there's nothing we can't do! Ask the Lord what mind sets you need to change. Ask him to help you change them. You must walk these changes out hour by hour. I never said it would be easy. Boldly confess that you have discipline and self control in these areas. When I was working at losing weight, I confessed, "I have discipline and self control in my eating habits. I eat to live. I only eat to become satisfied in Jesus name." Honestly, I said this all day long, and my eating habits did change; however, I had to do some work that wasn't pleasant. I put my money where my mouth was, and I put my fork down and turned my plate over. The change didn't come by confession alone. It took work along with the confession. Actually, visualize yourself exercising discipline and self control in specific situations. See the outcome you are expecting. We don't have to go through life being out of order Christians. If you think that you are out of order, make the choice today to exercise discipline and self control. You may possibly be saving your life.