| 1 Corinthians 9:25–27 – “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” |
For many people, discipline is a dirty word.
In school, discipline meant a paddling. Today, if a child is sent to the principal’s office, he carries with him a “discipline slip” detailing his infraction.
But that is a shame. Even in English, you can see what the word actually means. To discipline is to create a disciple — someone who can follow a better leader.
Our tendency is to scatter. Discipline provides the banks that contain a raging river. It is the channel that makes it flow.
Few lives illustrate the cost of undisciplined talent more vividly than that of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He had an immense mind. Words flew from his pen like diamonds. And yet, much of it was wasted.
He left Cambridge University to join the army — because he refused to study. He left the army because he could not rub down a horse. He went back to Oxford, but left without a degree. He started a newspaper called The Watchman, which caught on quickly, then died for lack of attention.
Someone said of him: “Coleridge had every poetic gift but one — the gift of sustained and concentrated effort.” He began two books that were never published because they were composed entirely in his mind, and he never took the trouble to put them on paper.
He was, in short, a man of extraordinary gifts and almost no self-discipline.
Paul knew better. He looked at the athletes of his day — men who ran long distances, endured stress, and bounced back from defeat — and saw a model for the Christian life.
“Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” (1 Corinthians 9:25–27, ESV)
For life to make sense, you must govern yourself — tongue, body, moods, and emotions. When Christ controls your passions, he can use them.
Don’t let it be said of you what was said of Coleridge: so able, and yet a life largely squandered.
–Robert G. Taylor
robertgtaylor.com
