Purposefully Becoming
Just like that, another week goes by. Like a train rumbling away from the station, weeks seem to pick up speed and go faster and faster. It’s all too easy nowadays to look up, take a breath and realize another month’s gone past. Time doesn’t wait for anyone – how have you been spending yours?
I’m going to spend a few minutes talking about disciplines. We need to clear the path from the weeds here a tad. Spiritual disciplines have absolutely nothing to do with your salvation, but they have everything to do with righteous living.
If you have believed in your heart and confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, then you will be saved (Romans 10:9). God is delighted to have you adopted into His family, but He doesn’t want you to just sit in the corner and remain a spiritual infant. No, He desires for you to grow and mature and step into all the fullness He has in store for you.
We may be living in the most distractable time in the history of the world. The fact that a month can slip by and we can look back unsure of what took place is proof of it. This is where spiritual disciplines come into play.
Disciplines are akin to the bumpers lining the bowling lane. When practiced, they function as guardrails to keep us moving in a specific direction. The question then becomes – what direction are your disciplines pointing you towards?
If you’ve been a Life Roots reader for a while or a Bible reader for that matter, this verse will be familiar to you, “Guard your heart above all else for it determines the course of your life” (Proverbs 4:23). We will discipline ourselves, or maybe better said spend our time towards, the thing that which our heart is after.
This short verse in Proverbs is a deep well of wisdom when it comes to the type of person we are becoming. Many times I’ve said to myself, that I’m just not ready for that next thing or once I clean up this area or progress in that area, then I’ll be ready for X, Y, or Z. And yes, disciplines do take time to produce a new product.
But here’s the interesting thing. Let’s look at a trivial example. If my heart has decided that I want to put on 10 pounds of muscle, and that’s truly what I want, then I will begin going to the gym, eating healthier foods, staking proteins, and sticking to a sleeping schedule, among other things.
Through implementation, I can put on the desired 10 pounds. But let me argue that by “simply” moving my heart to fixate on that goal, I’ve already become the type of person who will put on the muscle even though it hasn’t happened yet. I need only to protect the guardrails of my heart to remain fixed on the goal, and the way I spend my time will emulate what I’m after.
My youth pastor said this to me when I was younger, “The Christian life is the culmination of decades of following God today.” I can’t gain 10 pounds of muscle in a day, nor can I become a fully mature follower of Jesus this morning, but what I can do is make decisions like the type of person I want to become today and as the weeks and months and years fly by, I will have become much more like that person.
So, what’s the takeaway? Where are your guardrails pointing you towards? The only day you’re promised is this one. And the way you spend your time will determine the kind of person you become. It’s God’s will to see you mature (Ephesians 4:15, Philippians 3:15, Romans 12:2). By choosing to adopt the practices of prayer, Bible reading, fellowship, kindness, discipleship, etc., you will be guarding yourself towards maturity. Nobody accidentally becomes anybody, we become what we practice.
