I Discipline My Body
By Pastor Mitch
June 25, 2017
TREMENDOUS PHYSICAL DISCIPLINE
This is a picture of a group of “Haenyeo”. They are female divers from the Korean province of Jeju. According to Wikipedia, these woman divers start their training from as young as 11 years old and some of them today still continue to dive even though they are 80 years old (see above). With wetsuits, they can dive for more than 3-4 hours in one go and They can dive as deep as 30 metres without oxygen tanks. At that depth, they can dive for abalone, octopus, sea urchins, top shell etc. One amazing fact about these women divers is that they can hold their breath for up to 3 minutes. Wow! That is a long time. Most of us can hold our breath for about 1 minute or less. They have disciplined themselves through the years to go further in their breath holding. It takes tremendous concentration, conditioning and practice to achieve this.
CULTIVATING SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE
As Christians, we should cultivate more than just physical discipline. We can develop strong spiritual discipline in our life and in our service for the Lord. The apostle Paul wrote of how he disciplined himself spiritually for the sake of the gospel. He sought to live his life blamelessly and to bear witness in a dynamic way.
But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.” 1 Cor. 9:27
Paul sought to run the race of life seeking to win the prize of the imperishable crown and not just be someone who ran the race and not win anything (1 Cor. 9:24-26). As such, he sought to diligently discipline his body. He trained himself to exercise self-control in all things that he did on a daily basis. He put in much effort to discipline himself in terms of his lifestyle and his ministry. He subjected his body to become a slave to the Lord’s will. As such, whenever he preached the Lord’s word, he would be doing it by example. Young people, let’s also learn to discipline ourselves that we bring our body into subjection to God’s word. Let’s seek to run the race of life well with certainty and discipline.
