The Positive Power of Discipline

Proverbs 12:1
“Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid.”

Discipline is a simple idea. You or someone else applies pressure to your life in order to bring about positive change. Get discipline, it's good.

Discipline comes in three flavours.
1. Self-imposed Challenges. Example: You choose to workout at the gym.
2. Fair Consequences. Example: You speed, you get caught, you receive a fine.
3. Unjust Hardship. Example: Someone with authority over you acts badly and you pay an undeserved price.

No matter what flavour your discipline, if you eat it up, it will grow you. Just because you didn’t choose the arena and method of your hardship doesn’t mean it can’t do you any good. God-discipline is potentially even better than self-discipline.

Here are a few thoughts on how to get the most out of discipline.

Don’t refuse the ugly flavours.
All discipline has an unpleasant taste (Heb. 12:11). Even the stuff we choose, like practicing an instrument or saving up for a purchase. It has an initial pleasure price tag that we must be willing to pay. As you go down the list of flavours (from self-imposed to unjust hardship), the taste gets worse!

No one likes flavour two. Punishment is unpleasant and usually humiliating. If however I take it like a good medicine it can heal me. If I can learn, I can grow. If I can grow, I can improve and succeed in life.

The third flavour, unjust hardship, is putrid! It often tastes so bad that people cannot stomach it and they get no good from this form of discipline at all. This is understandable but disappointing. If you are able to plug your nose and swallow, this ugly, ugly flavour can yield some amazing benefit.

Why? Because all discipline has positive potential. Even the stuff you do not deserve, like copping an injustice. It can yield a good harvest of righteousness, peace, holiness, maturity and much more. You see it in people like Victor Frankel, Nelson Mandela or Helen Keller. And you see it in lesser known people if you look. (Heb 12:11, James 1:3-4)

Don’t confuse the different flavours.
Many people fail to distinguish between flavours two and three. They presume that hardship and punishment must be the same thing, especially if God is involved. This is NOT true.

Think of it this way. Hardship is like the wind. Wind blows pointlessly until you raise a sail in it and then you have the possibility of movement. Unjust hardship is the same. This pointless flood of pain becomes an opportunity for growth (and even blessing) when you open your heart to God and let him use it for good. Ask God to do something positive with your hardship. Be patient and wait for it. That’s what it means to love discipline. (Prov. 12:1)

To experience hardship as discipline (and not just pointless pain), you need to surrender control to God. Flavour number three operates much like flavour number one (but it tastes completely different!). God uses hardship the same way we do when we go to the gym and lift weights for example. God can discipline us without punishing us in the very same way that we can discipline ourselves without having done something wrong.

One reason people hate the discipline of God is they fail to understand God’s heart when justice is delayed. Discipline is how God expresses his love in the midst of a troubled world. He turns hardships into useful episodes in our maturing lives. These painful seasons are to our spiritual muscles what weights at the gym are to our physical muscles. God takes control, if we let him, and it is good.

Self-discipline is excellent. God-discipline is better. Don’t be put off by the taste. Get discipline, it's good!

Questions:

• How do you exercise self-discipline? What victories have you had? What failures?
• Do you accept that discipline is not always “punishment”? How are they different?
• Do you agree that all discipline has positive potential? Why?

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Can You Keep a Secret?

Proverbs 11:13 
“A gossip betrays a confidence but a trustworthy person keeps a secret.”

Secrets are not child's play, they are the stuff of life. At all cost, surround yourself with people who can keep secrets. But know the danger of secrets as well.

Bless you, if you can keep a secret!
I want (need) people like you in my life. Secrecy is a cocoon of opportunity. There are so many things in life that we need trustworthy people to help us address.

You can’t do any of these six things without the power of secrets:

• Process your dark stuff with a great counsellor
• Know true intimacy in a marriage
• Celebrate a special occasion for one you love and do it with genuine surprise
• Have adequate space to process a decision that will effect others
• Think through a complex problem or opportunity with a friend
• Act kindly with anonymity

Can you keep a secret? Bless you if you can because many secrets are good.

But, should you keep this or that particular secret?
Secrecy can also be a closet for sinister things.

Six secrets that don’t deserve to be kept:

• The secret that abuses
• The lie that confuses
• The covert injustice
• The clandestine affair
• The unacknowledged prejudice
• The ‘dirty little’ secret

In these situations, blow the whistle. When secrecy hides truth and fosters evil it is the responsibility of good people to shine a light in the darkness. Some secrets are bad.

You won’t have to keep secrets forever.
Secrecy is temporary. The Bible promises there will come a “day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ” (Rom. 2:16) and when we “shall see face to face” and “know fully” (1 Cor. 13:12). Good secrets won’t be needed, bad secrets won’t be tolerated.

Until then. Bless you if you can keep a secret and bless you even more if you know when not to!

Questions

• Have you experienced the hurt of betrayed confidence? Have you healed from that experience? What do you need to do to grow further or share that learning?
• Are you aware of any "secrets" that need light shed on them?
• What is gossip? How do you keep from participating in it?
• Please leave a comment.

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Who Will Help the Next Amy Winehouse?

Proverbs 9:13

“Folly sits at the door of her house … calling out to those who pass by … ‘Stolen water is sweet, food eaten in secret is delicious!’ But little do they know ...”

The news of Amy Winehouse’s death is heart breaking. Young people aren’t meant to die like this. I feel so sorry for her parents and all those who loved her. Who is next? Can anything be done to stop it?

I know she made bad choices. But that doesn’t make this tragedy any easier. Her addiction “took hold of her” and she just couldn’t shake it. Maybe you have felt a force like that too. It doesn’t have to be drugs. The bible calls this strange coercion “folly”.

The author of Proverbs pretends that both WISDOM and FOLLY are people and then writes a very penetrating poem based on that idea. Imagine if Wisdom lived on one side of the street and folly on the other. As you walk by each day they both call to you: “Are you confused about life? Don’t know what it all means? Come eat with me!” And every day, you must respond - wisdom or folly (Prov. 9:1-18).

This poem makes me think about bigger forces at work. The Apostle Paul says: “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against … the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces”. That is what Proverbs 9 depicts as well.

Of course we are all accountable. If we live stupid, we pay a price. But that is not the whole picture. There is more going on here. There is a fight for your soul. The world we live in is a spiritual place! Consider the poem.

Lady Folly’s Front Door

She sits on the front porch

   of her house on Main Street,

And as people walk by minding

   their own business, calls out,

"Are you confused about life, don't know what's going on?

   Steal off with me, I'll show you a good time!

   No one will ever know—I'll give you the time of your life."

(Prov 9:14-17 Message)

Fun, fun, fun! But once inside, once addicted, the pain begins.

Lady Folly’s House of Horrors

She says …

“Stolen water is sweet;

   Food eaten in secret is delicious!”

But little do they know that the dead are there,

   that her guests are in the depths of the grave.

(Prov. 9:17-18 NIV)

What starts as fun, ends in a house of horrors. I wish we could just board-up Folly’s front door. But we can’t. What we can do, however is stand at Wisdom’s front door and help her! We can raise our voices, we can pray.

Is there someone you should call on today? Are you meant to be someone’s voice of wisdom NOW? Are you meant to “add years to their life” (Prov. 9:11)? Ask God to prompt you. Think about “at risk” people you know (or knew). Maybe you can keep the next Amy out of tomorrow’s newspapers!

Questions

• Prov. 9:10 says: "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom". What does that mean to you?
• How would you define folly? How do you fight it?
• Please leave a comment

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My Advice for William and Kate

Proverbs 5:18

“May you rejoice in the wife of your youth.”

On Sunday Janet and I will have been married 30 years. Hoorah!

We were married the year before Charles and Diana. We watched their wedding on a 12-inch TV screen in our basement apartment. It was magical. As we all know, it did not last. And such tragedy followed.

Now, two days before we celebrate our 30th anniversary William and Kate will be married. Our candle-light evening wedding was not the sensation that either royal wedding was. But, our marriage has lasted!

If they were to ask me, and they won’t, I would have a few things to suggest to William and Kate. I would echo the wisdom of David in Proverbs 5:18-20.

Here is the poem. I have highlighted three words for comment.

May your fountain be blessed,

and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.

A loving doe, a graceful deer –

may her breasts satisfy you always,

may you ever be captivated by her love.

Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress?

Why embrace the bosom of another man’s wife?

Rejoice!

Love starts as a feeling and soon becomes very hard work! Joy is the product of many good choices. I would tell W&K to keep making those choices.

Couples who make marriage work for many years do a strange thing. According to the Gallup research organisation they tend to “find the most generous explanation for each other’s behaviour and believe it”.*

You might say: “He is so critical”, but his wife will say: “I love his straight shooting discernment”. You challenge her behaviour as loud and abrasive but her husband says: “She is the most vivacious person I know, don’t you love it!”

These choices create what Marcus Buckingham describes as an “upward spiral of love”. Choosing to see your life-partner through the lens of “positive illusions” fosters security and intimacy. It grows love.

I don’t mean that we embrace dishonesty. Janet and I have had to unpack some really hard things. We have made changes in ourselves. It costs. But on each occasion the choice we are ultimately making is more joy.

I would tell W&K to rejoice in each other. I know it works.

Breasts.

Physical attraction and satisfaction are unashamedly celebrated in the bible. Bodies are good. Sex is a gift.

I know there is nothing as gross as your parents’ sex life. But what every young couple needs to know – and the media will rarely ever tell you – is that one partner truly can satisfy you your whole life long. You don’t need several different people to have excitement. Beauty deepens and passion grows as you work at it together.

Captivated.

Love is strong. It can last a whole life time. If you give it a chance it can lock-down security and blessing. Our culture seems to fear commitment. We make “ball and chain” jokes about marriage. This is unfortunate because it misplaces the emphasis of “captive”. It is a good thing.

Long marriages are meant to be the rule not the exception. This is achieved more readily if you expect to be held captive, by each others love. Many things will change through years of marriage. Expect however to be hold your partner fast with an unchanging love.

For Janet and me, staying-power in marriage has been greatly helped by a Christian faith. We welcome God into the centre of our relationship. I won’t pretend that we are poster children for the Christian-Couple of the year. But we do two things consistently, we remember that our “ways are in full view of the LORD” (Prov. 5:21) and we keep our love for Jesus forward in our praying, talking and decision making. It matters.

Wisdom for the Royal Couple

So, here is my wisdom for William and Kate. Rejoice in the spouse of your youth, expect to be sexually satisfied by each other for at least 100 years (wink), and let costly love captivate you. Be its happy prisoner until death separates you.

Leave a Comment

• What advice would you give William and Kate?
• Leave a comment celebrating your marriage, or someone else's! 

And ...

If you want to see Kate's engagement ring (Diana's actually) and hear William talk about the engagement click here.

And, and ...

Here is what the early 80's looked like. Happy anniversary my dear!

*Taken from “The One Thing You need to Know” by Marcus Buckingham, pp. 16-26.