No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Hebrews 12:11

God has been teaching and challenging me in the area of self discipline this year. As a child, I knew if I was disobedient then the end result would be disciplinary action from my parents, which I often observed with my younger sister. Hence, I was a fairly good child and avoided much spanking and scolding. As a young adult in college and graduate school, I was quite disciplined in my studies to achieve good grades since I believe at that time it would affect my future career.

This year, I realize that as an adult I am finding it challenging to discipline myself in many areas of my life including my prayer life and quiet time. I have recently switched to having my quiet time in the mornings versus late at night because I was finding myself dozing off during my quiet times. Some mornings, the struggle starts when my alarm goes off. I am tempted to snooze a few times to sleep in longer and forget my quiet time. Even when I do get up, I am battling within myself to sit at the dining room table versus watching the morning news or the Today show. I have realized that on certain days that my sinful nature has deceived myself. On those defeated mornings, I believe that there is no overt discipline/consequence to my lack of prayer or quiet time. I also have no internal drive to discipline myself like when I was in college since I do not see instant fruit such as good grades right after quiet time or prayer. However, my mind, heart, and soul know that the Christian walk without prayer life or reading the Bible is futile.

I have been praying that God would give me greater self discipline. After a few weeks of daily quiet times due to obedience and self discipline, I have started to look forward to enjoying my early mornings. Through a period of discipline, time spent reading the Bible and in prayer is less of a duty now but more of a daily experience that I look forward to spending with my heavenly Father.

Jeannie Liu
Community Group Leader