Discipline

          Let’s face deep down most all of us hate discipline.  Doing the thing that you know you should be doing for the greater good, but hating it because there are other things that you would rather be doing that are far more pleasing to our selfish and sinful nature.  Sitting on the couch eating a stack of cookies with some milk watching your favorite television show as opposed to hitting the gym and burning off a couple hundred calories is much more fun.  So why do we try to instill discipline in our lives, but more times than not fail miserably?  It is the nature of sin in a fallen world.  We give into our sinful desires even if they are seemingly innocent when compared to greater sins as we see them.

          Obviously I speak to this from my own personal struggles and not as someone trying to inflict the law of the Word on others as if I had nothing to confess to in all of this.  In reading Proverbs 5 today along with my other readings I am hit right between the eyes with the Word of God.  I find that this happens more and more as I read and get to know and build my relationship with the Lord through all of this.  So when I read the following verses they hit home and are convicting.  I confess my weaknesses in these areas and ask the Lord for forgiveness, also for strength to uphold discipline in my life in order to glorify God and be an example to others.

          So in reading these following verses I need to keep in mind, as I hope whoever reads this will to, that the opposite side of the coin to not keeping discipline in your life is a harsh reality.

Proverbs 5:12 You will say, "How I hated discipline!
How my heart spurned correction!

Proverbs 5:13 I would not obey my teachers
or turn my ear to my instructors.

Proverbs 5:14 And I was soon in serious trouble
in the assembly of God's people."

Proverbs 5:23 For lack of discipline they will die,
led astray by their own great folly.

          My prayer is this, that these words be read, taken to heart and used as a reminder the next time we decide I really do not want to do this or that and that you see the other side where it is good in the end to be disciplined, that all this will be honoring to God and reflective upon yourself to others that they will see the good that can come from leading a disciplined life.  Either we give in to sin and temptation or we strengthen our resolve through the Holy Spirit to resist it and do what is right in the sight of God.  These are our choices.