Love Discipline?

“Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but one who hates correction is stupid.”
Proverbs 12:1 CSB

Discipline – to train to obey rules or a code of behavior.

In my blog last week I talked about the value of work, which may have made me a bit unpopular, so I thought I would continue talking about difficult topics and see if I could become even more unpopular. (Not that I was popular to begin with.)
Anything that I do in life that has value and brings value to others requires some level of discipline. I am not talking about a one-off, you know what I mean, the one time I did something nice or significant. I am talking about repeatedly adding value, I am talking about when helping others, being an encouragement, and growing in wisdom is part of your character. How do I become that person ? Discipline!
There are two aspects of discipline that I want you to consider today. First, training. Training is forcing my body, mind, and will to do something that if done consistently will produce profitable characteristics in me. Training never happens quickly, always requires work, effort, and sacrifice. Training is hard. But the result of consistent training is knowledge and health. So, let me ask you the obvious question, are you in training in any area of your life? If the answer is no, why not? We should never stop training. Training results in growth, and we should never stop growing. Second is correction. Maybe this is more difficult than training, especially as we grow older. For some reason we become personally offended when we are corrected. I guess in our minds age equals perfection or a pass on our shortcomings being noticed. Correction makes our training produce the proper results. Think of this, if you are training really hard but what you are doing is wrong, then the training has no value, and that’s just “stupid” (not my word, Solomon’s, see verse at the beginning). If we truly want to grow in our life mentally, physically, and spiritually, then we should seek out correction and respond with thankfulness. So, one more question, how well do you accept correction? When was the last time you allowed yourself to be corrected?
Does how you are living your life right now show those close to you that you love discipline?

-Pastor Tim