Tag Archives: Discipline

Time to Review

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The pumpkins and fall foliage remind me that the year will be over before we know it! I want to make the most of these last 2 1/2 months and in thinking about this, I knew a ‘goal review’ was in order.  What ‘unfinished’ priorities would pop off my goal list and potentially surprise me?

My goal review and reflection is too infrequent. God’s grace made this year’s reflection an encouraging one. As I contemplate, the reality of how important it is to review my goals becomes crystal clear. A review reminds, confirms and encourages.

Today, I remind my friends who join me in a scripture memorization goal that it is important to review what we have already memorized. My system uses a good bit of time to review what I have etched in my  gray matter (exercise time goes by quickly while quoting verses). In fact, I’ve been known to take a month off from new scriptures to remind, confirm and encourage myself in past scriptures. Regular scripture review is imperative even if I’m in the midst of new verses.  If too much time elapses between reviews, rust has often crept into my mind particularly on a reference or on the infamous ‘blank out’ words that often cause me a stumble.  Keeping words fresh helps me apply them more intentionally in my daily life.

We all need encouragement and support.  I love and appreciate you, my memory partners, who help spur me on in this discipline.

This year’s solid hold on memorizing scripture has been a most important goal for me. With soberness and grace it has helped me accomplish so many other goals in it’s rippling wake.  These words really are alive and active!

I pray you will join me as a partner in my journey of scripture memorization and goal setting..and regular reviews of both.

Enjoy the fall season – Madge

 

Moving Ahead – Isaiah 43:18-19

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Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Isa. 43:18-19

I love this verse as it gives me encouragement in new beginnings. We can’t live in the past even though our past effects us.  No matter what age or stage we are currently walking or running or wheeling through, there is a newness about today.  A freshness can be found even in our difficulties.

This was one of my memory verses this year – February’s first verse in 2011.  You can read about my memorization plan for the year here.

DISCIPLINE

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A car in front of us the other night had a license plate that read DSCPLNE… It was not too hard to figure out the license tag actually conveyed a message of “discipline”. Brent and I pondered who might be driving the car. Was it a Navy SEAL or a personal trainer? Or was it a drill sergeant, or a successful businessman? There was no other indication on the car that clued us in to the identity of the driver.

Oh well, it didn’t matter whose hands gripped the wheel of that car; the message’s interpretation was left up to its innocent followers. I personally pondered this license plate – enough to be writing about it right now! It made me do a little research. Discipline is both a noun and a verb (OK, I know this is simple but stay with me). Webster’s says the following about the word discipline –
noun
1. Training to act in accordance with rules; drill: military discipline.
2. Activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training: A daily stint at the typewriter is excellent discipline for a writer.
3. Punishment inflicted by way of correction and training.
4. the rigor or training effect of experience, adversity, etc.: the harsh discipline of poverty.
5. behavior in accord with rules of conduct; behavior and order maintained by training and control: good discipline in an army.
verb
6. to train by instruction and exercise; drill.
7. to bring to a state of order and obedience by training andcontrol.
8. to punish or penalize in order to train and control; correct; chastise.

The bible has at least 48 references to the word discipline. Both the noun and verb form are referenced in the bible. A few of my favorites are:

 Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is stupid. Prov. 12:1
 Listen to advice and accept discipline, and at the end you will be counted among the wise.
Prov. 19:20
 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Hebrews 12:11

No matter how you cut it, discipline is a good thing. Today so many of us have areas of our lives where we are not disciplined. Some that quickly come to my mind are eating habits, exercise habits, goal setting and follow through, prayer time…. all the way to timeliness, learning a new skill, practicing kindness and controlled communication, and giving priority to the people and purposes where we are each day and each season of our lives. The way I look at it, if we don’t have an area of discipline that we are working on, it be best to find one because there’s always an area where I lack knowledge, experience and skill, and lifetime learning and growing is a recipe for good health!

Do you have one area to work toward more discipline in your life today? Do you have a plan in the back of the journal entry or on your desk in your office? Is it something that you had on your goals for this year, but haven’t gotten to? I have a few areas that I am in the process of reviewing and reevaluating.