The Wisdom of Discipline

After spending the morning unpacking and getting the house organized again, I climbed to the summit and spent much of the afternoon with the Lord.

Journaling, praying, reading the Word, meditating, dreaming, all from one of my favorite spots in the world. Overlooking a hundred miles of mountains, trees, valleys, and lakes.

Psalm 1 described my desire to be a "tree planted by the river producing fruit"...that is the craving and cry of my heart for my life. Proverbs 1 links wisdom together with discipline. Where there is true wisdom, you will find a person of discipline. A disciplined lifestyle is what lead to real prosperity in all arenas of life. It is the merging of intellectual\spiritual truth (knowledge) and personal application to life (discipline) that results in true wisdom and the resulting prosperity. This combination is what keeps the tree planted by the river so that it drinks in the sun and the water and bears abundant fruit.

I must say that I was sickened by the destruction in lives that I observed during our cruise. A lack of discipline showed up as foolishness. Manifestations: obese people with their plate stacked with ten different desserts, gamblers in the casinos sitting for hours pulling the lever of losers, partiers staggering and sick from too much alcohol, people buying so much stuff they didn't need that they had to ship it home via FedEX from the ports of call.

So Lord, I pray...give me a life of discipline...I like the saying, Be tough on yourself or life will be tough on you. I am not talking about a grit your teeth, self-flaggelating, form of life. But the kind of discipline where you do what you really want to do, not what some temporary, deceptive emotion of the flesh calls you towards. Where you trade the happiness of an impulse purchase for the joy of money saved. Where you trade the pleasure of an extra 500 calories for the joy of a few special bites and pants that fit. Where you trade the comfort of laziness for the joy of accomplishment after having walked for 30 minutes.

So God grant me the life of wisdom and discipline.