By: Pastor Jarren Rogers

We can all see God in exceptional things, but it requires the culture of spiritual discipline to see God in every detail.

– Oswald Chambers

We all need more discipline. I don’t think that you can ever come to a point where you decide that you are perfectly disciplined in every area of your life.

I think that there is a Jarren that I am constantly battling. This is a Jarren that would love to just lay around and watch TV. He wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it. He never reads his Bible because it takes away from his personal time and he never spends time in prayer because that takes time too.

I feel like discipline keeps me from being that Jarren. Because that lazy, selfish Jarren is always lurking in the shadow. He’s always ready to take the forefront. And it would be so easy to let him do it. But discipline keeps him in check. It ensures that he can never take the forefront.

A huge part of any discipline, and in this case spiritual discipline, is building healthy habits. If you decide that you are going to wake up a half an hour early to spend time in God’s word, it will be difficult for the first day. Your body won’t be used to it. You’re going to feel tired. And that lazy part of yourself will be beckoning you to forget about getting into the Word. It’s too hard. It takes too much time. It’s not important.

But, if you develop that habit of waking up thirty minutes early, over a week, a month, two months, before you know it, you can’t go one day without diving into His Word, because if you do anything else, it feels unnatural. It’s all about building healthy habits and self-discipline.

While holiness is largely the work of the Holy Spirit in us, sanctifying and shaping us throughout our entire life, we still have a role to play in that relationship. I think that the other side of holiness is discipline. I don’t think that the founder of the Methodist church, John Wesley, prayed for four hours every day because He woke up one day and thought it would be fun. I think that Wesley understood the importance of Christian discipline so he began building a prayer habit that would provide the foundation for his entire life.

We need to be disciplined in our prayer life, in our devotional time, in our Sabbath day of rest. We need to build spiritual habits today that will provide lasting results into eternity. Yes, you read that right. I believe that a habit you begin building and nurturing today will have an eternal impact on your life – whether it’s a good habit or a bad habit!

Our habits shape our disciplines and our disciplines shape us! Our disciplines shape our life, they shape our family’s life, they shape our home life, our work life, our spiritual life. A lot of what we do finds its foundation in habits – good or bad.

What habits are you nurturing today that will impact you – your family, your friends, your coworkers- for eternity.