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PROGRAM D-7786
Do you have a snooze alarm feature on your clock? Most of us do, don’t we? It’s a great feature to help us get up and get going.
I think that the snooze alarm feature epitomizes the challenge most of us face on a daily basis—trying to put necessary disciplines into our lives so that we can accomplish what we are supposed to accomplish. We want to do the things we need to do, but it takes discipline, which comes hard for most of us.
To me, discipline is a chore, a major chore, and if I could find some way to get through life without it, accomplishing what I want to accomplish, believe me, I would. Believe me, I’ve tried!
Discipline is not fun. But here’s what it is: Discipline is necessary. It’s necessary, that is, if you truly want to accomplish something worthwhile in your life and reach your objectives. It’s necessary if you want to turn your wishes into goals, your visions into realities, your dreams into accomplishments.
I can imagine that talking about being disciplined is not your favorite topic. And maybe right now you’re about ready to stop reading this devotional. But before you do, let me just make one point that is so very critical:
Lack of discipline is self-inflicted suffering!
It has begun to dawn on me that since I would not stand in front of a brick wall and continually bang my head on it because I don’t like headaches, it is incredibly foolish for me to figuratively keep banging my head against the wall of lack of discipline. I suffer greatly when discipline is lax in my life.
There’s a whole book in the Bible written to teach us the importance of a disciplined life. In the first three verses of Proverbs, Solomon tells us that he wrote them so that we could attain wisdom and discipline and acquire a disciplined and prudent life. Right off that encourages me, because it says that discipline didn’t come naturally for Solomon either. It had to be attained and acquired.
Are you working at acquiring needed disciplines in your life? Or are you just going along from day to day, tossed to and fro because of lack of discipline?