Go... or the fast way to get there

Here's a revelation for those of you who don't know me, an perhaps the greatest "duh" statement in the history of the spoken word for those who do... I'm an extremely undisciplined person. Really (I mean really in the sense of "truly" and in the sense of "degree").

The sad reality, the absolute truth, and the undeniable fact in the whole matter is that without discipline... I am worthless. Of course of course, I'm somebody to God... He loved me enough to die for me and all that good stuff. Those are all truths that I stake my life on. But it's like my little man Jackson. I love him more than anything in the universe and there's nothing that can change that. But if he's 16 years old and hasnt' disciplined himself to walk or talk or feed himself, it'll be nothing short of mind numbingly sad. Discipline is what makes us able to grow, go deeper, find richness in life that is just below the surface... and way below the surface.

There's this war in my brain though. Part of me wants to think that discipline is the killer of joy and fun. It's like Silas in the Davinci Code - somehow God wants me to feel tremendous amounts of excruciating pain. It's good for me. Builds character.

But on the other side of my brain I realize that training and discipline is good. I used to be a college baseball player. It was hard work. I used to wake up at 5:00 in the morning to run miles after countless miles. Then I'd go to class, only to return to the west Texas sun in the afternoon to run more miles. The goal was to get on the field in crunch time, and it wasn't that the miles run made me more appealing to the coach, or made him like me better... it was that because of the miles I had run, I was in condition to get the job done. The discipline of exercise and fitness allowed me to do what I wanted to do.

One more analogy... A river without banks is a pond. If there are no banks, eventually the water will find it's own level and quit flowing. It becomes stagnant. But when you channel water in a direction, it becomes this amazing force of nature that is literally as unstoppable as any natural thing. The banks give the river its power. Discipline(s) allow me to build "banks" in my life to channel as much of God as He allows me to see and discover. Without discipline, my God experience will be and continue to be one big stagnant pond. It's water alright, but it sure isn't changing the landscape any.

So it is with discipline, or the lack of it in my life. I've spent a good deal of my journey with God waiting for the next mountaintop, or trying to suck every last minute out of it. What I've found is that the mountaintops get shorter and further between. Lately it's felt like the mountain around the Dead Sea...

So tomorrow I'm beginning a fast of Soft Drinks. Namely, no caffeinated, carbonated, or artificially sweetened beverage will not enter my gullet. If I don't die first, I'm sure this will be a great exercise.

My desire is to find God in the crucifixion of my flesh. Paul said, "I have been crucified... and the life I live in the body I live in Christ Jesus." I can quote that verse - name it and claim it and all that - but it's not true for me. It was true for Paul, and in a substitutionary sort of way it's true... but it's not really true. The life I live in the body actually resembles Christ very little sometimes. So this isn't some effort to curry favor with the Big Guy or earn some brownie points through self-mortification. My goal is to strip away something that I rely on, and hopefully to hear God in the absence of me. I read a John Piper book about fasting, and I'll probably read it again (I don't know if I love to hate John Piper or I hate to love him... it's one or the other). So tonight I'm probalby going to go on a soft drink binge... tomorrow I'll be the one with the sugar/aspartame hangover and about 4:00 I'll have the screaming headache that won't go away. We'll see how it goes.