An enabling from God to help us make changes to our lives …

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Did you know many people – perhaps most? – who visit a counselor don’t come due to a mental illness, although they do come because of a mental health issue.

What’s that issue?

The morass made of our lives from irrational thinking.

It’s not just experiencing a simplistic irrational thought such as, “I’m hungry but I don’t want to get off the couch to go prepare something to eat.” People flood counseling offices when irrational thinking becomes deeply ingrained habits that finally begin reaping negative consequences.

THEN we might be willing to do something about them!

Some of those more serious distortions of rational thought include things like:

    • Wanting to enjoy robust health while maintaining a preference for bad nutrition.
    • Wanting to maintain physical fitness without exercise.
    • Wanting to have a happy marriage without giving up selfishness.
    • Wanting to have good relationships without the work of nurturing them.
    • Wanting a better position and more money without a lot of work.
    • Wanting to be able to serve without having to sacrifice.
    • Wanting blessing without obedience.
    • Wanting to know God without spending time studying the Bible and praying.

Those are just some of the more significant examples of how we want something without a willingness to do what’s necessary to accomplish it. That’s irrational, but it’s common human behavior.

Fortunately, God has blessed us with a wonderful enabling that helps us push past such irrational tendencies to make wise decisions and do the right thing. That enabling is revealed in this scripture:

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

God will handle the transforming of our lives, something which is beyond our ability. But to deal with those daily decisions that deal with our desires and actions, God has gifted us with the ability to exercise self-discipline so that we are capable of doing what we really should do.

Want to be healthy and fit? God gives you the ability to generally meet and manage these goals by practicing self-discipline with your choices for nutrition and engaging in a lifestyle of exercise.

Want a happy marriage? God gives you the self-discipline to overcome selfishness to love and serve your spouse.

Want good relationships? God gives you the self-discipline to nurture relationships …

… and on it goes.

Self-discipline is God enabling us to be able to “do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, whether you like it or not” so that you can make rational, wiser decisions become your reality. It is the application of self-discipline that expands our effort exerted to produce a fuller outcome. The Apostle Paul gave us a snapshot of how he practices self-discipline:

“Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified,” 1 Corinthians 9:24-27.

Want to hear something really irrational? Many people will decide NOT to exercise self-discipline, thereby settling for a much lesser life than what God enabled them to have.

Now that’s really irrational! Certainly it’s not something you do … right?

Scotty