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praise,
of pleasure, of good-eating, he has ruined your ministry."
But McCheyne has ever been known as a soldier. He knew that the Christian
life is a climb, a conflict, and first and always, a war. And our
campaign enjoys neither intermission nor discharge.
When
the slothful flesh would murmur,
Ease
would cast her spell,
Set
our face as flint till twilight's
Vesper
bell.
On
Thy brow we see a thorn-crown,
Blood-drops
in Thy track,
0
forbid that we should ever
Turn
us back.
--Amy Carmichael.
But many of my readers are
not missionaries, are not ministers, are not what we call "full time" workers.
How does this apply to them in the daily routine of the home, the business,
the school, the factory, and the farm? Here are a few of the ways
in which discipline will apply:
There is everywhere, especially
in our cities, the plague of late talking, and night lunching which has
nothing whatsoever to do with the King's business. We dare to repeat
ourselves at this point. The time for God, for His Word, and for
prayer is, as a result, cut short the next morning. Let the Cross
cut off that false habit. Don't pray about it. Quit it.
Then don't pray about getting up in the morning. Get up.
It will seem severe to some
to cut loose from an unholy affection, a fleshly attachment. Have
you had a "crush" on somebody? God hates it. You deny it.
Deny self there. That is discipline.
Others suffer from a tongue
loose at both ends. Such persons will be forced to keep a strict
watch over themselves, and cry continually, "Set a watch, 0 Lord, before
my mouth."
Others will learn to endure
under the discipline of some ever-present opposition, an opposition of
suspicion, of slander, of being wounded in the house of their friends.
Their "daily furnace" is the tongue of man. Such is their inescapable
lot. What an opportunity to get the gold of self-discipline!
Others will need to exercise
a rigid self-discipline, in order to endure that defeat, that failure,
that misunderstanding, that utter discrediting of their best efforts--patiently.
Are you providentially located?
Learn to be faithful right there. Be content. Do not wish yourself
"other-where."
Are you naturally hasty,
impetuous, and zealous? We knew one such person who never learned
to discipline himself "to be quiet." He became sour, and sick, and--dead.
A great mother in Israel
said: "There are many women who would not be entirely well for anything
in the world. No one would enquire about them."
Many parents will suffer
a painful inner crucifixion through learning to discipline their
children. Those who have not disciplined themselves--how can they
discipline their children? Children are being denied proper and godly
discipline today because the parents have not yet learned to hate their
"own flesh." Not having laid the Cross on his own flesh, the parent denies
the Cross to his child. "He that spareth his rod hateth his son."
There are still others who
are weak, sensitive, and nervous in body. One who knows says, "There
will be days when the smallest fret, a jarring noise, bustling people,
people who drum on the rail of the bed, or knock it, or drop things, a
crooked picture, wrong colors put together, a book upside down, something
perversely lost among the bed clothes will be absurdly but intensely irritating;
even common good temper will need to be prayed for then; it will not come
of itself" (Amy Carmichael).
What then is discipline?
The same author says:
When I refuse the easy thing
for love of my dear
Lord,
And when I choose the harder
thing for love of my
dear Lord,
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