Discipline Yourselves

Living a disciplined life is expensive. It will cost us time and it will cost us effort. All of us are given the same number of minutes in a day, same number of days in a week and same number of weeks in a year. The reason why some people seem to progress in their maturity levels in regards to their faith is because they optimize the time that they have. Rushing past the Lord with a quick prayer and simply glancing at His Word when it’s convenient is not going to yield the same kind of spiritual progress as someone who spends quality time crying out to God in prayer and scouring through His Word as if they were looking for valuable treasure. Swimmers do not compete in the Olympics if they spend a few hours in the summer splashing around at the local public pool. Their whole lives are dedicated to just three specific activities: training, training and more training.

Some ‘experts’ claim that with diligence, commitment, study and practice you could be an expert in any given field in 10 years. Other sources said it took 10,000 hours of dedication in a subject to become an expert. So, by spending 2 hours and 45 minutes a day, one could supposedly master their subject in a short 10 years. How does that translate to becoming mature in my faith?

Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. – 1 Timothy 4:7

What if it doesn’t take 10 years and 10,000 hours to become mature in my faith? What if God honors faithfulness and commitment in our personal time with Him? Maybe there’s a way to find a healthy balance in our lives and discipline ourselves to spend one hour… or even just a half hour… alone with God. If the average reader would open their Bible at Genesis 1:1 and read to the end of the book of Revelation one sitting, they could finish in about 75 hours. That means if they read a half hour each day, they could read through the entire Bible in 150 days! In one year they could read the entire Bible twice and still have some extra days.

One thing is for sure, attaining knowledge of the Bible and growing spiritually takes hard work and dedicated time. Because the Bible contains inexhaustible riches, becoming an ‘expert’ in the Bible might be nearly impossible even if you get your 10,000 hours in. But we can be absolutely certain that if we don’t spend any time at all in it, we cannot expect to master any of it’s truths.