Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines audio video notes. Successful people set the bar high, and then all through life, they live the delayed gratification disciplined life principle. They constantly eat the cake and later enjoy the frosting. Life is sweet to disciplined people. There is constantly some frosting to eat because the cake was eaten first. The boy disciplined his allowance and later enjoyed something he really wanted. The high school student disciplined his studies and then went to the college of his choice, etc.
THE SPIRIT-FILLED LIFE
By Pastor Delbert Young
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
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Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
Scriptures: Proverbs 13:18, Proverbs 5:22-23, Hebrews 12:11, Proverbs 6:23, Proverbs 10:17, Proverbs 21:31, Proverbs 6:26, Proverbs 21:31, Hebrews 10:25, Proverbs 1:7
We are in a series called ‘The Spirit-Filled Life.’ We have talked about ‘You Da Mam.’ In that lesson we saw how the Holy Spirit will change us so that he can work through us to do what Jesus did. The second lesson was ‘Fill Er Up’ meaning we must position ourselves to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The third lesson was ‘Are You Hungry?’ showing that a Spirit-filled life will not be recognized by tongues but will include tongues.
Tongues will come from a hunger for God. The fourth lesson was ‘War!’ A person with a Spirit-Filled life realizes he or she is at war. War in the spiritual realm requires prayer. We have been praying on Wednesday nights and have had many praise reports.
Before I tell you the title of today’s lesson, I want to begin by getting us to do a word association quiz. I will give you an occupation or vocation and you answer me back with the most important tool for that vocation. Let’s begin. A carpenter would use what tool? The answer is a hammer. A dentist would use what tool? The answer would be a drill. A surgeon would use what tool? The answer is a scalpel.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
A police officer would use what tool? The answer would be his badge or weapon. What would a musician use? The answer would be the instrument. What tool would an astronomer use? The answer is a telescope. What tool would an NFL referee use? The answer is a whistle. That’s enough.
The point of this exercise is to show that specific tools are necessary to be successful.
If the hammer were taken away from the carpenter, it would become very difficult for him to do his job. He can attempt to drive that nail with the saw, but it just doesn’t get the job done like the hammer. Take the whistle away from the referee and he doesn’t have an optimum way to stop the game. Take the telescope away from the astronomer and he has no way to look into the heavens. For the spirit-filled life, there is a tool that makes our lives work. That tool is discipline. Today’s lesson is about discipline. My title is “Eating the Frosting Later.”
If we remove discipline from a person, that life is no different from any other life. In fact, an undisciplined life is a life of poverty and shame. Let’s read our scriptures for today’s lesson.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
Proverbs 13:18 He who ignores discipline comes to poverty and shame, but whoever heeds correction is honored.
Then Proverbs 5:22-23 says,
Proverbs 5:22 The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast.
Proverbs 5:23 He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly.
Hebrews 12:11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
Proverbs 6:23 For these commands are a lamp, this teaching is a light, and the corrections of discipline are the way to life,
Proverbs 10:17 He who heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray.
And,
Proverbs 21:31 The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but victory rests with the LORD.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
The word discipline can bring up some negative thoughts, such as the discipline a father does to a child with a rod. That is not exactly the discipline I am speaking about today. I am speaking about self-discipline, a discipline by which we direct our own lives. Self-discipline involves a person establishing goals and priorities in his or her life and then relentlessly moving toward those goals and priorities.
Once we grasp the truth of discipline, we realize that discipline is an ally. More than any other force in life, discipline will contribute to personal goal achievement. Lives become successful because of discipline. Lives are failures because of the lack of discipline. Discipline is the single most important force in a person’s life to achieve success. A Spirit-filled life is a life of discipline. The very word “disciple” is derived from the word discipline. Disciples of Christ live in the disciplines of Christ.
COMPONENTS OF DISCIPLINE
1. Purpose for discipline
Proverbs 13:18 He who ignores discipline comes to poverty and shame, but whoever heeds correction is honored.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
We can ignore the fact that we need self-discipline, but if we look around, we see that our lives in poverty and shame. This does not only mean monetary poverty and shame. It can also mean our marriage is a shame or our children are a shame.
A carpenter needs a hammer because he is building something. A surgeon needs a scalpel because he is cutting to heal something. A police officer needs a badge and a weapon because he is enforcing something. Those tools are necessary for success. The question is, what do you need discipline for? Where do you need success? What are your goals in life? To achieve those goals, you must have discipline. What areas of your life are in poverty, and what areas of your life bring you shame?
Let me say it another way. What areas of your life would you not want me or others to see or know about? A bar or standard should be set. A goal will motivate discipline. It is difficult to maintain discipline without a purpose behind the discipline.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
Let’s look at a few areas that require discipline. Do you want to be out of debt? Is that a goal for your life? It will require discipline. It will not just happen. My wife and I decided that we wanted to be debt-free in 1982. At that time, I was ashamed of my finances. We formulated a plan and prayed about it. However, it required much more than a plan and a prayer to accomplish our goal. It required discipline. We had to discipline our spending. Every goal requires discipline. Every time we raise the bar standard of our lives and keep it there, it will require the tool of discipline.
How about weight loss?
Do you want to lose weight? Is that a goal for your life? Guess what. You can pray and have hands laid on you and a spirit of gluttony cast out, but until you discipline your eating habits, nothing will happen. You can go on diet after diet, but until you discipline your eating habits, the weight will appear again and again. To raise the bar in that area of your life will require the tool of discipline.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
How about a habit that you want to discontinue? Is that a goal for your life? You will never get from here to there without discipline. Patches and pills and hypnotism may help, but the tool of discipline is the answer.
How about vocational success? Is that a goal for you? Are our children going to settle for a mediocre job? Or will they set the bar high and become extremely successful in their vocations? A goal should be set and discipline activated to reach it. If college is ahead, then the discipline of study must be activated. Parents must discipline themselves to set back some money. It will demand the tool of discipline.
Every person who has ever experienced a successful life has utilized the tool of discipline. The areas of our lives that are successful are because we improvised the tool of discipline. Every accomplished musician has used discipline. Every accomplished singer has used discipline, and every successful athlete has used discipline. Also, every successful leader has used discipline. Every successful person has raised the bar beyond where they were to where they wanted to go, and the tool used to get there was discipline.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
2. Delayed Gratification / Pleasure
Proverbs 5:22 The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast.
Proverbs 5:23 He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly.
Hebrews 12:11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
We are held back in life because of a lack of discipline. We can die never achieving our goals simply because we were not self disciplined. The difference between a person dying a success or dying a failure is the successful person understood discipline.
Anyone who understands discipline understands that today, discipline may cause some pain. However, later gratification and pleasure will be experienced because of the pain of discipline today. Discipline will produce a harvest in life. Let me give you a picture of how this works.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
I can remember when I was a boy. My mom would make German chocolate cakes. She put this rich, creamy frosting on them. I would approach those cakes with the delayed gratification principle. I would eat the cake first and save the frosting for last because I wanted the pleasure at the end.
Let’s take that principle and apply it throughout life.
A child comes home from school with homework. If they understand the delayed gratification principle, they will go ahead and attack that homework as soon as they get home. The homework lasso is removed from around their neck. They deal with the pain first. They can now play and do what they want. The child does not face the wrath of the parents and the teachers. They get to bed on time and are alert the next day and begin to excel in school. They went ahead and suffered the pain first so they could enjoy the pleasure later.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
That child also has a weekly allowance. Instead of spending it on candy and junk, he puts it back and saves some money for something special. The child begins giving a tithe to the Lord. He learned early to get God involved in and bless his finances.
This child becomes a self-disciplined child. A child like this will usually graduate high in his class and go on to the college of choice. They will usually be very disciplined about friendships and relationships and will marry someone who is also self-disciplined. In fact, they have problems with undisciplined people. The husband and wife become a disciplined team. They have disciplined themselves throughout life. Now, they can acquire a high-dollar job.
They will set aside 10 percent for themselves by buying stocks and investing wisely. They continue to give God his 10 percent. Upon retirement, they are able to enjoy life because they utilize the delayed gratification principle. Because their home is self-disciplined, their children are self-disciplined, and the cycle continues. Success is ensured because of delayed gratification.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
They set the bar high to begin with, and then they lived the delayed gratification principle throughout life.
They were constantly eating the cake and later enjoying the frosting. Life is sweet to disciplined people because there is constantly some frosting to eat because the cake was eaten first. The boy disciplined his allowance and later enjoyed something he really wanted. The high school student disciplined his studies and then went to the college of his choice.
The college student disciplined their study and then enjoyed the high-dollar vocation and disciplined mates. The couple was disciplined with their money to God and to themselves and later enjoyed the retirement of their dreams and successful children.
Without delayed gratification, there is no discipline. Without discipline, there is no major success. Delayed gratification is at the core of success. On the other hand, people who always want to eat the frosting first seem to be the people who never make it very far in life and die in great folly.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
3. Advanced Decision
Proverbs 6:23 For these commands are a lamp, this teaching is a light, and the corrections of discipline are the way to life,
Proverbs 10:17 He who heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray.
A third component of discipline is making advanced decisions. There is “the way to life.” There is more to life than eating and breathing. Jesus said that he came to give us life and that more abundantly. There is “the way to life.” Discipline shows the way. Discipline is like a light directing our walk through life. The lack of discipline will cause us to go astray. We become lost and never achieve that which we could have easily achieved by using the tool of discipline.
Disciplined people are programmed people. For example, disciplined people set the alarm clock. They don’t just wake up in the mornings and feel how the biorhythms are moving. They have made an advanced decision to get up and accomplish something.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
The accomplished musician made the decision in advance to practice an hour every day. The successful athlete made the decision in advance to go to practice and work in the weight room. The leader made the decision in advance to attend seminars and hone his leadership skills. The surgeon made the decision in advance to go to school all those years and study the latest techniques.
The happily retired couple made the decision to set back 10 percent of their income for retirement. Those disciplines took them the way to life. Advanced decisions today will determine my way to a good life tomorrow.
Let me talk to the parents for a moment. Some parents want to sit back and let their children develop their own habits. What you are doing is making your child toast for the devil. The word “toast” is a Hebrew expression. (I am teasing.) There is a verse that shows this.
Proverbs 6:26 for the prostitute reduces you to a loaf of bread, and the adulteress preys upon your very life.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
The Bible teaches us that we must be ready for life. The context for the above verse is a father preparing his son for life. He is instructing him to make a decision before the temptation because the temptation will come. We should prepare the horse for battle. We should prepare our children for life.
Proverbs 21:31 The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but victory rests with the LORD.
If we sit back and spin our kids out into a society like we live in today without them making advanced decisions, they will be toast—reduced to a piece of bread. Don’t expect them to be in the midst of a battle with temptation (the devil) and be victorious if they are not prepared. There is a world out there that will devour them. The only way to avoid this is to instill self-discipline within them.
They must set goals requiring discipline. They must learn delayed gratification. Also, they must learn to make advanced decisions. They need to know what they will do in this situation and what they will do in that situation. When the temptation comes, they know how they will handle that temptation. This will carry on throughout life.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
I consider myself a disciplined person. I enjoy saving the frosting till the last. My children took me to the Red Lobster in Dalton last Sunday for Father’s Day. They bought me steak and lobster. I kept back one last bite of steak and one last bite of lobster for the end. I like to think that I live life that way, and I know there is a purpose in disciplining myself.
There are areas of my life where if I do not discipline, I will eat the frosting first and have nothing sweet for later in life. I know that what I am able to do today in self-discipline will benefit me tomorrow. For example, every week, I put back more than 10 percent of my income toward my retirement. I had to make an advanced decision to do that.
We are talking about the Spirit-filled life.
The Spirit filled life is more than the ability to speak with tongues and do prophecies. It is a life that others can examine and recognize that the Spirit of God is truly in that life. It is the abundant life. If the Spirit is there, then he will draw and minister. Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but the rest of my life is a mess, there is no witness for the Spirit. A Spirit-filled life requires discipline. If I am really a disciple of Christ, then I am disciplined.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
There is one more thing I want to talk to us about. It is church attendance and church participation. The Bible talks about the discipline of assembling.
Hebrews 10:25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.
This is not a legalistic thing. The truth is that you do not know when God will show up in a very personal and powerful way to change your life. You do not know when that could happen. If we are casual about the church and get up on Sunday and say, “Well, it’s raining, and I think I will watch TV today and read the paper,” you will miss your moment, and you are playing roulette with your life and your family.
Most of us, if honest, would admit that at some event in this very building, God broke through and touched our lives in a very personal way. And it doesn’t even need to be Sunday.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
Last Thursday night, we had our school graduation.
We all marched into a full house of parents, grandparents, and friends. The colors were presented and the children did an excellent presentation. From time to time, something would well up within me as I sat there with the children. Then, we moved into the “Margaret Phillips Award” part of the ceremony.
Margaret Phillips was my mother-in-law. Judy, my wife, created a one-hundred-dollar award in her mother’s honor several years ago for the student in our school with the best penmanship. Margaret Phillips only had a fourth-grade education. She did not know when Judy had the correct answer for her schoolwork, but she did know if Judy had written the answer with good penmanship.
I was sitting at the graduation, enjoying an excellent presentation, when God touched me. The winner of the Margaret Phillips Award was a girl named Danielle Wright. When she came to our school only two years ago, in the sixth grade, she could not read and was not much more adept at arithmetic. Danielle’s mother testified to this fact during the ceremony.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
At any rate, I was sitting there when the Lord showed me it was discipline that made this all possible. All the students in our school and all the things they had learned were because I had disciplined myself somewhere back down the road to make it possible. Now here was this beautiful young woman learning discipline in penmanship and life because someone she hardly knows disciplined himself.
The point is that we do not know when God will touch us. And we don’t know what our self-discipline will do for someone else.
What are the non-negotiable aspects of my life? Where have I come to such discipline in my life where nothing will move me? Then, ask, “What areas of my life are negotiable that should not be negotiable? Where do I need discipline to make me a better person.? What disciplines need to be established in my children? What goals do I need to help the set? Where does the bar need to be placed? Don’t be a fool and miss the necessity of discipline.”
Let’s close with this scripture.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Lord, please help us. Please keep us from being fools. Let’s activate the tool of discipline and eat the frosting later.
Let’s pray.
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
Disciplined Life – How to Develop Spiritual Disciplines
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