Don’t eat sugar. Don’t eat anything with processed wheat in it. Don’t eat more calories than I burn. Ride 30 minutes minimum on my stationary bike every night. Run/walk on my tread mill at least 30 minutes every day. Lift weights for one hour, three times each week. Read the Bible for 30 minutes every day. Work on my Bible memory program 30 minutes every day. Spend 30 minutes minimum with God in private prayer every day. Read in a good book for 30 minutes every day. Pray with Patty ten minutes, three times each week, write in my blog for one hour each day. Listen to a sermon or lecture via podcast for 30 minutes every day while bike riding or running. That is a total of about 4 and a half hours of disciplined practice every day. Those numbers are my goals, but I have successfully done all of them probably once in my lifetime. The rest of the days I get anywhere from none to most accomplished. The days that I don’t do well is usually because of a competing activity such as fishing. Every night when I write down my successes and failures, I scold myself, encourage myself, and reward myself accordingly. I have been doing this for quite a few years, and over those years have slowly, very slowly gotten more and more self-controlled. My main Bible passage is 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, and the phrase that I want to be true of me is “I discipline my body and make it my slave.” I teach this in my leadership classes and have those in the class that get almost all of the disciplines done and many who struggle a lot to get any done. These disciplines are like the practice that a piano player does each day. The more and the better they practice the better they play the piano and the more people will listen to their playing. The more we faithfully do the spiritual disciplines the better we will do living the Christian life and the more people will listen to us. One of the major keys to success is being part of an accountability group where each member encourages the others in the group and prays for their growing success.

God gives strength, self-control, and willpower, but He doesn’t give it to those who make little effort to grow, to those who do not press on to maturity.