For anything that’s important for you, this is vital …

Everything that is important for you requires a vital element: Self-discipline.

Think about it …

… your relationship with God …

… your marriage …

… your relationships with others …

… your health and fitness …

… your career accomplishments …

… the development of your talents and skills …

… all of these things require a real — and sometimes significant — exercise of self-discipline to know a fullness and fruitfulness of anything (or anyone) that is important to you.

Many people who have accomplished great things have attested to the vital role of self-discipline and the great wrestling match with self …

Edmund Hilary, the first man to conquer Mount Everest, was asked by an interviewer about his passions for climbing mountains. He gave this reply: “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”

Peter the Great of Russia is quoted as saying, “I have been able to conquer an empire, but I have not been able to conquer myself.”

Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist and scholar said, “A man cannot govern a nation if he cannot govern a city, he cannot govern a city if he cannot govern himself, and he cannot govern himself unless his passions are subject to reason.”

Proverbs 25:28 states, “A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls.”

Without exercising self-discipline, we’ll never bring our best selves into our relationships, we’ll watch our health and fitness erode, and we’ll squander our God-given talents. To experience a fullness of life requires our cooperating with the Holy Spirit in crafting the best person we can be by adding a measure of self-discipline. A lack of self-discipline will limit (and possibly ruin) our capacity and experiences in all aspects of our lives.

Daniel Goleman documented the following in his book, “Emotional Intelligence” …

“The essence of emotional self-regulation is the ability to delay impulse [self-discipline] in the service of a goal. The importance of this trait to success was shown in an experiment begun in the 1960s by psychologist Walter Mischel at a preschool on the Stanford University campus. Children were told that they could have a single treat, such as a marshmallow, right now. However, if they would wait while the experimenter ran an errand, they could have two marshmallows. Some preschoolers grabbed the marshmallow immediately, but others were able to wait what, for them, must have seemed an endless 20 minutes. To sustain themselves in their struggle, they covered their eyes so they wouldn’t see the temptation, rested their heads on their arms, talked to themselves, sang, even tried to sleep. These plucky kids got the two-marshmallow reward. The interesting part of this experiment came in the follow-up. The children who as 4-year-olds had been able to wait for the two marshmallows were, as adolescents, still able to delay gratification in pursuing their goals. They were more socially competent and self-assertive, and better able to cope with life’s frustrations. In contrast, the kids who grabbed the one marshmallow were, as adolescents, more likely to be stubborn, indecisive, and stressed.”

With all that said, here’s some really good news: When we surrender our lives to Jesus Christ, self-discipline is a capacity that God specifically enables us with!

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. – 2 Timothy 1:7.

Now imagine all those things that are important for you — your relationship with God, your marriage, relationships with others, your health and fitness, your career accomplishments, the development of your talents and skills, and other things — and just imagine how much better every one of them would be if you exercised a level of self-discipline in all those areas.

Wow! What a difference self-discipline makes!

In all the key areas of life, if you’re not happy or fulfilled in one or more of those areas, chances are you’re failing to exercise the level of self-discipline you should be.

God has gifted you with life, and he wants it to be a full, rich, and satisfying experience for you (John 10:10). To fully make it so, you must exercise self-discipline. Is that what you’re doing? Or do you need to begin to exercise self-discipline in your life so that it can be all that God has for you?

Scotty