2 The Problem of Self-Discipline: How to Maintain Spiritual Freshness
The Problem of Self-Discipline How to Maintain Spiritual Freshness I want to talk about the problem of self-discipline and how to maintain our spiritual freshness.
The problem is not so much discouragement as staleness, another very common problem of Christian leaders. It is easy for our vision to begin to fade and even our faith to grow small.
The glory of the gospel can become tarnished so that it no longer excites us. The sparkle goes out of our eyes, the spring goes out of our steps, and we begin to look like stagnant pools instead of like a running streams.
So here is our second problem: in the midst of all the pressures that are upon us, how can we not only overcome discouragement but maintain spiritual freshness? I have no one passage of
Problems of Christian Leadership Scripture to bring, but would like to talk from experience as well as from Scripture. In general
I want to say that I am an impenitent believer in the importance of discipline. I believe that indiscipline is often at the root of staleness.
The Discipline of Rest and Relaxation Let me talk about three kinds of discipline.
The first I'm going to call the discipline of rest and relaxation. We are extremely psycho somatic creatures. In fact we are pneumatopsychosomatic creatures, because we are body, mind and spirit. We do not find it easy to understand the interrelation between these three, but we know that the condition of any one affects the others. Especially, the condition of our body affects our spiritual life. Sometimes people come to me with a spiritual problem, and I know the solution to their spiritual problem is to take a week's vacation.
When we're tired or sick, we don't feel like reading the Scriptures. We don't feel like praying. We don't feel like witnessing to Jesus
Christ. But when we feel better physically then these things are easy. So here are some aspects of the discipline of rest.
The Problem of Self-Discipline
First is the need to take time off. Some Christian leaders are compulsive workers. They are overscrupulous, and they think there is something wrong if they are not working morning, noon and night. They claim Jesus as their patron, saying that Jesus was available to anybody at any time, but their knowledge of the Bible leaves much to be desired. Jesus was not available all the time. The text I would like to give compulsive workers is Mark 6:45. "Immediately
Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd." He dismissed the crowd in order to go away and rest and pray, so we must not feel guilty if we are taking a period of rest.
I myself am very thankful for the afternoon siesta. I could not get up early in the morning if it wasn't for the afternoon siesta. I remember very well my first visit to Latin America. I'd been right around the continent, and I was to leave from Argentina. It was my last night in Buenos
Aires and somebody asked in the public meeting if I had learned anything while I was in Latin
America. I was able to reply at once that I had learned three valuable lessons. The first was the great benefit of the afternoon siesta, the second
Problems of Christian Leadership was to repent of my particularly English vice of punctuality, and the third was to have liberty to kiss everybody within reach. I added that I would have to forget two of those lessons before I got back to London. I left them to guess which, but you will guess that it is the siesta that I have continued. So we do need adequate sleep, and of course our need varies according to our temperament. We also need to take time off to rest during the day as well as at night.
I hope those of you who are married give adequate time to your family. I've always admired my successor as rector of All Souls. His name is
Michael Baughen, and he is a wonderful family man. He and his wife are very happy, and they have three grown-up children, a fine example of Christian family life. Michael made a rule that he would always have the evening meal with his family. This was when the children were small and they had their meals fairly early, at perhaps
5:30 or 6:00. But no matter how important the business was, he would leave to have a meal with his family. The balancing was good. He had taken on this responsibility and he had to keep it.
We ought to take a day off every week. I'm afraid I am rather a hypocrite to say that to you,
The Problem of Self-Discipline
because I do not by any means always do it myself, but I believe we must keep the fourth commandment. If we don't, we're claiming greater wisdom than God. He made us in such a way that we need the rhythm of one day's rest in seven.
They tried to change it, you know, during the French Revolution. They tried again in 1917 after the revolution in Russia, but the experiment of trying to make the week of nine or ten days failed.
God knew what he was doing when he gave us one day's rest in seven, and we should not claim greater wisdom than he. So these are a few simple thoughts on having time off.
The second item that comes under rest is hobbies. While we are young, our hobbies are often sports, and that is excellent for it gives us physical exercise with our friends. But every
Christian should have a hobby even when we are too old to play sports. We ought to take an interest in some branch of natural history, for evangelical Christians have a good doctrine of redemption and a bad doctrine of creation.
I am not ashamed to recommend bird watching to you. Bird watchers seldom get nervous breakdowns. Bird watching takes you into the open air and gets you physical exercise.
Problems of Christian Leadership It takes you away into solitude or semisolitude with a friend, out of the rush of the city into the quietness of the countryside. I cannot describe the magic of the early morning after sunrise, especially in Africa or Asia, when I've gone out into the bush or into the paddy field to experience the sights and sounds and smells of nature. In addition, it preoccupies the mind, taking it away from the pressures of the office or of your ministry.
It also enables you to meditate on the intricacies and the beauties of God's creation. If possible, our hobbies should take us out into the open air.
A third aspect of rest is time with family and friends. In our family circle where we know that we are loved and accepted, we can relax, but all of us need friends outside of our family circle as well. Especially we need friends if we are single, and it is good to pray for what the old writers called a "soul friend," somebody with whom you can share deeply your spiritual experiences.
I wonder if we value enough God's good gift of friendship.
I'm going to test your knowledge of Scripture.
I'm going to quote a verse to you and I want you to complete it for me. It's written by Paul, from 2
Corinthians 7. "When we came into Macedonia,
The Problem of Self-Discipline
this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn—conflicts on the outside and fears within. But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by . . . " what? How does God comfort us when we are very near breakdown?
Now I'll tell you how superspiritual Christians would fill in the blank. They would write
"God comforted us with the assurance of his love" or "God comforted us with the presence of Jesus." But that is not how Paul goes on. He
"comforted us by the coming of Titus," with the arrival of a close friend and the news that he brought. God uses this very human need of friendship to comfort us.
Let me remind you of another example from Paul. This is in his final letter of 2 Timothy. He seems now to have been in a real prison. Many think it was the Mamertine prison in Rome, which had no windows but only a circle in the ceiling for ventilation and light. Paul was not going to escape from that prison except by exe cution. He wrote, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith" (4:7).
Here is Paul in the greatness of his maturity at the end of his life, and yet he was lonely. He was a great, mature Christian, but he was lonely. He
Problems of Christian Leadership writes about the presence of the Lord in 2 Timothy
4:17, "the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength," and he writes of the expectation of the second coming of Jesus, but neither of these satisfied his loneliness.
Then he writes to Timothy, verse 9, "Do your best to come to me quickly," and verse 21, "Do your best to get here before winter." Also Paul asks him to bring his cloak that he'd left behind because he was cold, and the scrolls and the parchments, whatever they were. Thus Paul was a great Christian but a very human person, and he was not afraid to admit his need of friends.
So there are three thoughts for you about the discipline of rest and relaxation. There is a need for adequate time off, the need for hobbies or sports, and the need for families and friends.
These are human needs. Don't ever be ashamed to admit that we have them.
The Discipline of Time Now I would like to go secondly to the discipline of time. I think you know Ephesians 5:16,
"Redeeming the time, because the days are evil"
(kjv). Time is a very precious commodity. We all have the same amount of it: sixty minutes in
The Problem of Self-Discipline
every hour and twenty-four hours in every day.
However, some make the most of the time they have, and others don't. Let me say two things under the heading of the discipline of time.
First is about our daily timetable. Christian leaders and pastors don't usually have an official routine for each day. We don't have a framework of time that is the same every day, so we have to construct our daily timetable, and each day it may be different. Personally I find it helpful to make a list of what needs to be done and to try to put these tasks for the day into a priority order. I try to allot to each task the time I think it will take in which to do it.
In the morning I find it a great help to pray through the day as it unfolds in the future. If you make a habit of doing that, you will never forget an appointment. When somebody forgets an appointment with me, I always say, "What were you praying about this morning?"
I find it a great help to pray through the day as it begins; then we face what is coming to us on our knees. It may be a heavy responsibility which we would prefer not to bear. It may be a person we're going to meet for whom we pray before we meet them. I find problems are greatly
Problems of Christian Leadership lessened if you face them in prayer before the day begins.
It seems to be a good thing to get up early if we possibly can. Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones told me once that it was a question of blood pressure.
Some people wake fresh and became progressively more tired during the day. Others wake tired and become progressively fresher during the day. They're not their best until two o'clock the next morning. I find those people intolerable because my blood pressure is the opposite. I go to bed very tired, but I wake fresh. I find it is wonderful to have two or three hours before breakfast, undisturbed by telephone, by the mail, by callers or by the family. But I recognize that we are different and we must not copy one another.
We must make some time every day for our Bible reading and prayer, and I hope we will make some time each day for reading. Let me share with you a realistic goal. There are too many pastors who never do any reading. That goal is too low. There are also seminaries that recommend that we must spend every morning in study. That goal is too high. We need a realistic goal, and I say to pastors that every pastor could manage one hour of reading a day. In addition we
The Problem of Self-Discipline
ought to manage a morning, afternoon or evening every week, that is to say, a longer period of about four hours. One hour a day and one session a week is about ten hours in the week.
We ought to be able to manage one book in ten hours, and one book a week is fifty or more a year. I really think that is a reasonable target to set for oneself. These are my only recommendations about the daily timetable.
Now secondly, let me say something about quiet days, and please forgive me if I speak a little about myself. I was appointed rector of All Souls Church in London in 1950. I was only twenty-nine years old. It was a responsibility far beyond my ability and painfully beyond my experience. The responsibilities soon got on top of me and crushed me. Events would arise that I had forgotten to prepare for; an example might have been a special service for which I had forgotten to get the service paper printed. Then I started having the "preacher's nightmare": I was halfway up the pulpit step and suddenly remembered I had forgotten to prepare a sermon. I suppose in those days I was not far from a breakdown.
Then one day I went to a conference for pastors.
Problems of Christian Leadership There were several speakers, and one speaker made a very simple suggestion. It is the only thing I remember from that conference, and I think I can honestly say it saved my life. He said every busy pastor should take a quiet day each month. He should go away from his home and his church, and seek to be drawn up into the mind of God and to look forward into the next few months to see where he's going.
It was the word of God to me. I went home and immediately marked the day once a month throughout the year. I put a little "q" for quiet, and I asked a friend a few miles out of the center of London if I could come and spend my day in their home. I would spend the whole day there.
Nobody knew where I was except my secretary for an emergency. I kept for my monthly quiet day anything that needed time and quiet and prayer: difficult letters to answer, problems to think through, an article to write, the planning of the next three to six months. All I can say is that the burden immediately lifted from me and I hardly ever had the preacher's nightmare again.
So valuable did my monthly quiet day become that for ten to fifteen years I made it a weekly quiet day. I very much recommend at least a
The Problem of Self-Discipline
monthly one to you, especially for more distant planning.
The Discipline of Devotions So we've thought of the discipline of rest and relaxation and of the discipline of time. Thirdly, let me say a few things about the discipline of devotions. I'd like to say something about Bible reading and prayer.
First, Bible reading. Christian leaders need to know the whole of the Scriptures. Most mis interpretation of the Bible is due to partial knowledge or to a selective use of the Bible. The safest of all hermeneutical principles is to know the whole of the Scriptures. Then we learn to interpret each text in the light of all and the part in the light of the whole.
It was Dr. Lloyd-Jones again who twenty-five years ago introduced me to a particular Bible reading calendar. I do not necessarily recommend it to you, but I want to tell you about it. My copy is just a very simple calendar. It has been published by different people at different times, but this one is called "Daily Bread: A Bible Reading
Calendar." It was written by Scottish minister Robert Murray McCheyne in 1842 in order to
Problems of Christian Leadership persuade his people to read the whole Bible through every year. He wanted them to read the New Testament twice and the Old Testament once in order to absorb the whole of the Bible. It is quite a taxing discipline because it involves reading four chapters a day, but this I think is the major value of it. On January 1 we do not begin with Genesis 1–4, and January 2 with Genesis 5–9.
Instead, on the first day of the year, we begin with the four great beginnings of Scripture: Genesis 1,
Ezra 1, Matthew 1 and Acts 1. Each is a birth.
Genesis 1 is the birth of the universe, Ezra 1 is the rebirth of the nation after the Babylonian exile,
Matthew 1 is the birth of Jesus, and Acts 1 is the birth of the Christian church. So we start with the four great beginnings and then follow them through in the year. Nothing has helped me more to trace the themes of Scripture, and light is thrown on one passage of Scripture by another. My practice is to read three chapters in the morning and one in the evening. In the morning I try to read just two and study the third. Of course, just the reading of three chapters would not take more than a quarter of an hour, so we need some study in addition to this general reading.
How can we keep our Bible reading fresh and
The Problem of Self-Discipline
prevent it from becoming a stale and dull routine? I think my major answer is to come to it with expectation. We should not begin to read without a few minutes of recollection. We need to remind ourselves that God speaks through what he has spoken, and he's more anxious and willing to speak than we are to listen. But the purpose of Bible reading to is to listen to the living voice of God, and we need to come to our reading with that living expectation.
Now let me say something about prayer. I guess we all find it difficult, and especially the problem of concentration. Have you ever thought of this strange paradox? On those occasions when we are granted access to God and know that we are in communion with him, nothing is more deeply satisfying to us. The clock stands still, we are in no hurry to stop, we know that this is reality and that we have come home to our Heavenly Father. It may not happen very often, but I hope and believe you have all experienced it sometime and that along with me you have found it most deeply satisfying.
That being so, you would expect us to want to pray. That, however, brings me to the other part of the paradox: that when our prayer time
Problems of Christian Leadership comes around, a strange disinclination to pray descends upon us. A hundred and one innocent alternatives present themselves to our minds: another letter to write, another chapter of the book to read, another program on television to watch. What is the reason for this illogical paradox? I have no explanation for that paradox except the devil. The devil knows that prayer is the major secret of Christian living, and he is determined to stop us praying if he can. That is the only explanation I can find for this disinclination to pray.
I would like to share with you something that I have found helpful. We need to win what I like to call "the battle of the threshold." I sometimes imagine a very high stone wall and the living
God is on the other side of the wall. In this walled garden he is waiting for me to come to him. It does seem a rather childish contrivance, but it helps me. There is only one way through the wall into the garden, a tiny little door.
Outside the door stands the devil with a drawn sword, ready to contest every inch of the way and to stop me getting through into the presence of God. Now it is at that point that we need to defeat the devil in the name of Christ, and that
The Problem of Self-Discipline
is the battle of the threshold. I think there are many of us who give up praying before we have won the battle of the threshold. The best way to win this in my experience is claiming the promises of Scripture.
I will give you one example. Funnily enough, it's another Australian example. But it is in Melbourne, not Sydney. This was also in 1958. I'd been invited to lead a mission, both in the University of Sydney and in the University of Melbourne. The Sydney one came first, and I told you how I lost my voice at the end. I was exhausted when that mission was over. Then I had to face a second mission, and I felt like nothing seemed less attractive to me than having to do another mission. I really wanted to take the next flight home. I'd had enough. Now I know it was partly physical and I should have had a holiday, but it was also a spiritual battle. I wasn't excited about the gospel, and I felt as if the Lord abandoned me.
I was staying in the home of a Christian family. It was the day before the mission began, and I'd locked myself into my bedroom to be alone with the Lord. I knew that I could not begin this mission unless and until I was re-
Problems of Christian Leadership stored to communion with him. I was reading a number of passages of Scripture, and God chose to use one particular verse to help me. It is
Psalm 145:18, "The Lord is near to all who call on him. To all who call on him in truth." I can tell you that after a time the load was lifted from me and the Lord made himself known to me again. I went into the mission refreshed and confident, and the Lord blessed.
So I recommend self-discipline in these areas of rest and relaxation, use of time, and devotions, and trust that the Lord will bless richly your life with him.