Spiritual Self-Discipline

This past Sunday, I preached on the necessity of Biblical self-discipline. So many of us Christians just look like the rest of the world in the way that we spend our time, spend our money, sleep, what we eat, how much we eat, where we go, etc. It seems like we allow our body to rule us instead of the other way around. As I shared Sunday, Scripture is replete with calls to discipline ourselves for the glory of Christ and the advancement of His Kingdom. This morning, as I was reading Dallas Willard, he tackled the same issue and it was great clarification and follow-up for me on this past sermon. I wish I could share all the pages that he wrote on the subject, but I will just leave you with one pithy quote. Here it is:

"Reliance upon what the Spirit does to us or in us, as indispensable as it truly is, will not by itself transform character in its depths. The action of the Spirit must be accompanied by our response, which, as we have see, cannot be carried out by anyone other than ourselves."

Good stuff! You should read his whole section on Spiritual Self-Discipline from his book - The Divine Conspiracy.

If you want to hear my sermon form this past Sunday on Self-Discipline, you can find it at http://www.wvcrossroads.com under the Resource tab.

"I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize ." 1 Corinthians 9:27