“But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27).

IT’S HEALTHY TO DO SOMETHING EVERY DAY THAT WE REALLY DON’T WANT TO DO — JUST FOR THE EXERCISE. There is a great benefit in PRACTICING the art of self-discipline, that is, engaging in it regularly just for the sake of building our mental muscles.

When Paul said that he “disciplined” his body and brought it into “subjection,” he spoke of something that requires a bit of unpleasantness from time to time. By its very nature, training requires us to get out of our comfort zone. If we never call upon our “muscles” to do anything more than what they want to do, then we never gain the ability to do anything more than that. It’s just that simple. And so we ought to look for opportunities to do things that we don’t want to do. It’s one good way that we grow.

Have you ever watched someone “exercising”? Many of the bodily movements by which strength and agility are developed would be ridiculous if we did them for any reason other than training or exercise. Take sit-ups, for example. There is only one reason to do sit-ups: TO MAKE YOUR ABDOMINAL MUSCLES DO THINGS THEY DON’T WANT TO DO. No one would ever do it for any other reason except training . . . practice . . . exercise . . . discipline. When you do sit-ups, you’re demonstrating that you grasp one of life’s great principles: THERE IS VALUE IN DOING THINGS THAT DON’T WANT TO BE DONE.

Nothing is more valuable than to have our faculties — mental and spiritual, as well as physical — trained and ready to respond to important needs. But having faculties that will respond to important needs is not something that happens overnight or without any effort. When the big tests of life come along, we won’t be ready for them if we haven’t been training for them before then. So today, if there’s some unpleasant little duty that could easily be procrastinated, do it just because you don’t want to. Take that little opportunity to put the flesh in its place. Teach your body to take orders from your spirit. Someday, you’ll be mighty glad you did.

“Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. Be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points. Do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test” (William James).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

“Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).

HOLINESS IS A HIGHER PRIORITY THAN HAPPINESS. It should rank higher in our scale of values than happiness, and maintaining its presence in our lives should be a matter of more pressing concern. The pursuit of holiness should be what we’re known for.

To say that anything is more important than happiness sounds absurd to our modern ears, of course. The very idea flies in the face of popular philosophy. Even when it comes to religious philosophy, most people nowadays take it as their basic premise that God “wants us to be happy.” We even use that benchmark to decide what God’s will is in the first place. Faced with various interpretations of scriptural teaching, we choose the one that we think would make us the happiest. And if someone challenges the correctness of our decision, our reply is often predictable: “Well, I just can’t believe that God wouldn’t want me to be happy.”

But while the “pursuit of happiness” may be a social and political priority, it does not rank at the top of any scriptural list of criteria by which our conduct is to be decided. Although long-term joy, properly defined, was His objective (Hebrews 12:1,2), Jesus often chose the difficult over the easy, and the painful over the pleasant: “Not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).

None of this is meant to imply that happiness is unimportant. It certainly is important, to some extent. But to whatever extent happiness matters, the way to achieve it is not to make it the main objective in life, as many people do. Happiness comes mostly to those who are willing to be unhappy, if need be, while they work on goals of greater significance. God, our Creator, is a better manager of our happiness than we are, and in the long run, we’ll be happier if we seek Him first and let Him decide how much happiness we can handle without forgetting Him. If we had to, we could survive the loss of any amount of happiness, but no one can survive the absence of holiness. So that’s the thing most worth pursuing . . . and if we don’t do that, then death will be our doom.

“No man should desire to be happy who is not at the same time holy. He should spend his efforts in seeking to know and do the will of God, leaving to Christ the matter of how happy he shall be” (A. W. Tozer).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God” (Revelation 2:7).

IN A SENSE, THE THING WE’RE LOOKING FOR IN THIS WORLD IS THE THING THAT WAS LOST IN EDEN. And what God has in store for us beyond this world is described in terms that hark back to the original Garden: “To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.”

Beneath our longing for many other things, it is really “life” that we long for. And though we cling to biological life as if it were our most prized possession, what we really desire is something more: we long to be alive SPIRITUALLY. Jesus Christ claimed to be the Giver of life on that level. “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

When Adam and Eve sinned, desiring to know all that God knew, even if they had to disobey Him to get that knowledge, they were expelled from Eden and their access to the Tree of Life was cut off (Genesis 3:22-24). As the long years of their mortality wound down, they surely must have regretted their decision many times. And we, their heirs, should be warned: our own quest for knowledge is a poor substitute for the life that we have lost. Lord Byron’s lines were never more true than today: “Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most / Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, / The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.”

Yet through the gospel of Jesus Christ, we can have all that the word “life” was ever meant to convey. And the amazing thing is, the life that is available to us right now in Christ is, at its very best, only a foretaste of the fuller life that awaits us. That life is what we’re reaching for, straining toward it with every ounce of our strength. And the confident, powerful hope of THAT life releases us from the fear of letting go of THIS life — for to the faithful Christian, physical death has become the mere door to real life, that which is life INDEED. “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, AND RELEASE THOSE WHO THROUGH FEAR OF DEATH WERE ALL THEIR LIFETIME SUBJECT TO BONDAGE” (Hebrews 2:14,15).

“He who lives to live forever, never fears dying” (William Penn).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

“Do not say, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For you do not inquire wisely concerning this” (Ecclesiastes 7:10).

IT’S HARD TO REACH FORWARD AND BACKWARD AT THE SAME TIME. Yet I fear that’s the very thing we often try to do. We say we’re reaching forward, but the pull of nostalgia can tug at our hearts so strongly that we catch ourselves trying to make the world like it USED to be rather than the way it OUGHT to be, as if “used to be” and “ought to be” were exactly synonymous. The net effect of our exertions in life is often more backward than forward.

Nostalgia is a wonderful thing, and not many folks love it any more than I do. But nostalgia must be handled with care. If we don’t watch out, it can hinder us in our journey toward God. So here are a few tips on enjoying the past in a helpful, healthful way.

(1) WHATEVER GOOD MAY HAVE BEEN DONE PREVIOUSLY, TODAY IS THE ONLY DAY ANY NEW ACTIVITY CAN BE DONE. We can enjoy the past, and we can certainly learn from it. But yesterday’s work is already done, and that work won’t suffice for today. Thinking about the past (or anything else, for that matter) can’t be a substitute for today’s action.

(2) WE MUST LEARN TO BE GRATEFUL FOR THE PAST WITHOUT WORSHIPING IT. Having the right attitude toward past, present, and future is a matter of BALANCE. If there are good things about the days gone by, we must love those things neither too little nor too much. Maintaining that balance requires making frequent adjustments.

(3) EVEN IF THE PAST WAS BETTER THAN THE PRESENT IN SOME WAYS, IT IS FRUITLESS TO WONDER WHY. None of us — not even the philosophers — have enough information to answer the question, “Why is the world changing as it is?” The farmer must stick to seed-sowing and not worry too much why the weather’s not what it used to be.

When we get to wondering “Why were the former days better than these?” we need to understand that THE PAST WASN’T REALLY AS WONDERFUL AS WE REMEMBER IT. After all, our memories are quite selective, remembering a few pleasant things and forgetting others that weren’t so pleasant. So while the good old days may do our hearts good to ponder, they don’t serve very well as a goal for the future.

“Through the centuries the people have dreamed of a Golden Age and longed for its return, unconscious that they dream of a day that has never been” (Guy E. Shipler).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com