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Rank: Administration
Joined: 2/17/2008
Posts: 97
Location: Washington, OK
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I want to begin a discussion about the best advice and tips for growing in personal discipline. What is your best tip or advice for being/becoming a disciplined person?
Brent Riggs - Author, teacher, mentor, online business expert riggsreport.com | brentriggsBLOG.com | brentriggs.com | seriousfaith.com | brentriggsPHOTO.com | brentriggsSTUFF.com
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Rank: Administration
Joined: 2/17/2008
Posts: 97
Location: Washington, OK
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Bill Ecton wrote to me via email: There is only one discipline that will keep you close to the Lord. That is a constant awareness of sin and a willingness to confess it before the Lord and doing it in an overall constant awareness of walking before or with the Lord. You can achieve a certain amount of discipline using self-awareness and self-discipline, but in the end you will be depending upon yourself and you will fall short or even be discouraged and fall by the way side. Your strength must come from the Lord in order to be victorious over sin in self. This means opening yourself to more temptation in the beginning but in the long run the Lord is doing the disciplining and decipling. Bill
Brent Riggs - Author, teacher, mentor, online business expert riggsreport.com | brentriggsBLOG.com | brentriggs.com | seriousfaith.com | brentriggsPHOTO.com | brentriggsSTUFF.com
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Rank: New Member
Joined: 3/10/2008
Posts: 2
Location: Missouri
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Brent, Philippians 3:10-14 is my motivation to personal discipline...
"That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
Thanks,
Dennis Myers
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Rank: Administration
Joined: 2/17/2008
Posts: 97
Location: Washington, OK
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Good stuff Dennis. One of my favorite verses. "Pressing on" is a great daily life concept that everyone should practice. We can't do ANYTHING about yesterday. PRESS ON.
Brent Riggs - Author, teacher, mentor, online business expert riggsreport.com | brentriggsBLOG.com | brentriggs.com | seriousfaith.com | brentriggsPHOTO.com | brentriggsSTUFF.com
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Rank: Regular Member
Joined: 2/21/2008
Posts: 14
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Sorry - I can't really add anything. I could give all kinds of advice about committing each week to develop a new spiritual habit (practice does make perfect); read good Christian authors and put into practice what you read ("Spiritual Disciplines for the Spiritual Life" by Donald Whitney is a good starting place); make a list of what you want to accomplish each day spiritually, then shut off the TV and do it; etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.
But the bottom line has already been said - if you don't regularly confess sin, you cannot have a relationship with God. So nothing else really matters.
If you pray regularly enough to be pure - you already know how to develop a discipline in your life - so just press on and do it.
You either love God and desire to please him by being obedient, or you don't.
However, I do want to say that spiritual disciplines, even when done purely from being obedient (rather than from a heart that overflows with love and WANTS to do it) still enrich your spiritual life, and often help you take the next step of obedience. In other words, the first step may be hard, but it gets easier, because once you "taste and see that God is good" - you want more. Come to the waters, you who are thirsty!
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Rank: Administration
Joined: 2/17/2008
Posts: 97
Location: Washington, OK
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I agree... sometimes DISCIPLINE is simply doing it because it is the BEST thing to do, regardless of whether you feel like it or not. Does this make it insincere? I don't think so. Feelings are not a good compass. I wouldn't do much of anything I do now if I waited until I "felt like" in order to be "sincere". I often say that the will (choice) is the train engine, and the caboose is our feelings. The engine determines course, speed and direction, and eventually the feelings will follow.
Brent Riggs - Author, teacher, mentor, online business expert riggsreport.com | brentriggsBLOG.com | brentriggs.com | seriousfaith.com | brentriggsPHOTO.com | brentriggsSTUFF.com
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