Greater Discipline

I have a confession to make.  I am struggling mightily with obedience.  If you look back in my blog, you'll see that I lost almost 100 pounds by focusing on obedience instead of dieting. It was an awesome, life-changing time.  But for the last four months, I have struggled.  And I have to say it out loud...I've gained back over 10 pounds since July!  I've been great at exercising but I have not been able to get my eating squared away again.

It's not because God has abandoned me in this journey.  Oh no.  He has been speaking to me loud and clear.  But I have been purposely and willfully ignoring him.  I say every day that this is the day that I am going to get it right.  And then my morning gets stressful.  My sweet tooth kicks in.  There is work on my desk that I want to avoid.  So off to the candy jar I go.  Again.

And speaking of work, that's another place that where I'm struggling.  I have been given a tremendous opportunity to lead a large team on a challenging, interesting project.  But I have trouble staying motivated and tend to waste a lot of time.  Then I rush to make a deadline, putting out work that is not the best it could be.

So what's the deal?  Why can't I be obedient to what I know I am supposed to do??  I found a key in Greater by Steven Furtick this week.

At the end of Chapter 2, he said, "...obedience to God's voice is the only definitive path to greater."  He was setting us up to start learning from Elisha in Chapter 3.  When we meet Elisha in 1Kings 19, he's busy plowing his field, doing his work when Elijah comes along, puts the cloak of his calling on Elisha's shoulders and invites him into the greatest adventure of his life.  Elisha was not doing anything cool or exciting.  He was doing the same work that he did everyday.  And Pastor Furtick says:

Doing the same stuff over and over again is a good thing in many instances. Routine is a vital and biblical component of our relationship with God. It's also the key to maintaining a marriage, holding down a job, staying in shape, and achieving many other desirable goals.  That's not the kind of repetition we need to be rescued from - it's the kind of discipline we should embrace.

Lightbulbs and fireworks!!  Discipline! Obedience is the attitude of the heart that is the consistent with God's character, but discipline is the action that makes it happen.  I've been frustrated by my inability to be obedient when it's really discipline that I am missing.

Proverbs has a lot to say about discipline. 

The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him, the cords of his sin hold him fast.  He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly.  Prov. 5:22-23 (NIV)

God has put me in a position to do great things.  I have been able to use my weight loss journey to inspire and minister to others.  At work, I'm an example of how you can get ahead using Biblical principles of leadership, without clawing and back-stabbing and stepping on people.  But if I lack discipline, my accomplishments will die.  My witness will die. My dreams will die.

What if Elisha had not been disciplined?  What if he had been off surfing the internet, or making his second Starbucks run of the day when Elijah came looking for him? He may have missed out on his calling.  Discipline puts me in the place I need to be to hear from God.

But HOW??  How do I live a disciplined life?  Well, Paul has the answer to that one.

For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing...What a wretched man I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord! Rom. 7:19, 24-25 (NIV)

Through Jesus.  Jesus in Me. That's the only way that I'll step away from the M&M jar and knock things off my to-do list and be obedient to what He's called me to do.  Being disciplined is Greater living for me. I find it funny that in a book all about breaking out of the routine and living a Greater life, the lesson I learned is about being disciplined and staying in my routine.  God just cracks me up sometimes!

My Rose-Colored Glasses Were Shattered!

So…this blog has been ignored and dormant for quite some time.  Off and on, I’ve thought about writing, even had some pretty profound thoughts worthy of sharing.  But I never really felt God leading me to take the time to do this.  Until now.  Until Greater.

You see, I’m studying the book Greater by Pastor Steven Furtick with Melissa Taylor’s Online Bible Studies.  So far, I’ve only read Chapter 1.  There are some mind-blowing points in there about starting small, starting with what you have, being Greater WITH Jesus,  not Greater THAN Jesus. Really good stuff.  But not what inspired me to write.

We had our first conference call, with Pastor Steven encouraging us.  He said that if we were at the point of desperation, despondence, despair and all those other “d” words, we were right where God wanted us….humbled, ready to move forward.  He told us that living Greater does not always mean changing something or starting something new.  Sometimes it means staying put and sticking it out with a new passion and God’s perspective.  Melissa was on fire in her message to us, reminding us that the Jesus in me is the same Jesus who performed all those cool miracles…..the very same one who healed people and changed lives is in me!  How awesome is that?!?!  But again, not what inspired me to write.

The inspiration came Tuesday morning, when I saw all of the comments on Melissa’s blog.  Woman after precious woman saying that she felt “adrift”, no purpose, at a cross-roads, going through transition….a husband who left, laid off from a job, children grown and left the nest, and not sure what to do next.  It broke my heart. Call me naïve, call me Pollyanna, and yes, I do have my very own pair of rose-colored glasses.  But I had no idea that so many women were walking in such defeat. 

Then I remembered that I was close to being on that same path myself.  This past summer, my own daughter got married. My son started his senior year of high school and will soon be out of the nest.  I didn’t know it, but I was facing a major crisis of identity and transition. That’s when God led me to Melissa’s Online Bible Studies.  With an increased travel load at work and the huge demands of planning the wedding of the century, I could not commit to our women’s Bible study at church, so I signed up for the OBS of Glynnis Whitwer’s book I Used to Be So Organized.  I thought that was just what I needed…my house needed some de-cluttering and I thought this would be the ticket to neatly labeled containers and stylish baskets elegantly bringing order to my mess, with a few breezy spiritual lessons thrown in.

But sisters, it was oh so much more.  The first several chapters are around understanding why we are chronically disorganized, why we have no time or ability to get our lives under control and how we need to set priorities.  It was right there in Chapter 6 Establishing Priorities that God brought a new vision to my life that I didn’t even know I needed!  Glynnis has five questions that she asks to set priorities, and she presented it in the context of being able to weed out non-priorities in your schedule to make more time for your priorities.  But God used the exercise as a vehicle to establish a framework as I faced this transitional time in my life.  It was eye-opening.  Horizon-expanding.  Inspiring.  Humbling. 

You can find more details on Glynnis’s five questions in her book, or on her blog by searching for the word “priorities” in her archives.  Check out the Oct. 10, 2012 and Jan. 13, 2012 posts (I’m not techy enough to figure out how to link directly to the posts!)  But if you are one of those women who is stuck in one of the “d’s” and craving for God to do Greater things with you, ask yourself these questions and see if they don’t help set you in the right direction:

1. What can only I do?
2. What has God entrusted to me?
3. Am I a good steward of what I already have?
4. What passion has God put in my heart?
5. What has God asked me to do that I haven’t done yet?

God does have Greater plans for us than we ever could dream for ourselves. But just having a head knowledge or even a heart knowledge of that only leads to frustration.  We know there is something better out there but we don’t know what it is or how to get to it.  The five questions gave me the clarity of a framework…a direction to head. The Greater life that God laid out for me includes more time spent on my relationship with my husband, taking better care of the resources He has given me and moving from old areas of ministry to new ones.  The following OBS of  Unglued by Lysa TerKeurst gave me the confidence to fully trust that God has prepared this path for me in advance and uniquely equipped me to walk in it. And I’m praying that Greater gives me the courage to be obedient to the vision that God gave me. The one He gave when I didn’t even know I needed one.  Amazing. Grace.

If you are facing a cross-roads or a transition and think that kind of framework would help you, leave a comment and I will give away a copy of  I Used to Be So Organized to one commenter!