Since arriving in Guatemala, I’ve spent a lot of time sitting in plastic folding chairs with the rest of the squad. We sit, sometimes getting antsy because we have to pee. We sit, sometimes a little tired from staying up too late. But all of the time we sit in awe, learning new things about our awesome God. The staff here at Adventures Guatemala, my squad leaders, and even the other teens on my squad, are filled with immense amounts of wisdom. As I sit listening to them speak, and fill out page after page of notes, I’ve realized how amazing it is to be poured into. No matter how much time we spend studying the Bible, or going to church, or listening to famous speakers, there is always more to learn about our God! That makes me so so excited! I never want to stop learning new things! And I figured, if I’m getting to learn all of these new things, why not tell them to other people as well? So I’m starting a mini series on my blog called poured into, and I’m going to share the bits of wisdom that get passed to me with all of you.
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Discipline and Delight
My squad leader, Jackie, taught us on discipline and delight the other day. She explained how discipline should always come from a place of delight, not the other way around. It means that when you find joy in something, you want to keep doing it. For example, we delight in the Lord’s word and because of that, we choose to continue reading it.
I love thinking about discipline this way. To the world, the word discipline generally has a negative connotation. But in reality, self-discipline is a good thing. We all need self-discipline in our lives, and it should always come from a place of loving something. We spend time with the Lord because we love him so much that we are excited to spend time with him, not because we feel like we have to. If we only spend time with God because we feel obligated to, hoping that eventually we will learn to delight in that time, it will never happen. It doesn’t work that way. We will never feel motivated to do something that we don’t actually want to do. Rather we love doing something and it motivates us to do it more.
The bible says that we, the church, are the bride of Christ. The covenant between God and the church is like the bond of a husband and wife. A husband and wife don’t just spend time together because they feel obligated to, hoping that one day they will actually like to spend time together. They also don’t just love each other and then never spend time together. They spend time together and continue to pursue each other because they love each other. If we said that we accepted into this covenant with Christ, telling God we loved him, then never spent time with him, it wouldn’t make any sense. It would be like a bride saying her vows to her husband, then never talking to him again. We hear that and think of the bride as a mean person, wondering why someone would ever do that. But as Christians we sometimes do the same thing. We will simply read the bible because we have to, like it’s some kind of chore or something.
God didn’t mean it to be that way. He sent his son down to die on the cross so that there would be no barrier between us. So that we could be free to seek him out with nothing between us. So that we could be friends and spend time together. He wants to pursue us, he wants us to want a relationship with him. He wants us to love him so much that we could never imagine not spending time with him.
In this way we discipline ourselves to spend time with the Lord, because we want to. Because we delight in that time.
Discipline comes out of a place of Delight. Delight doesn’t just come out of continued Discipline.
