Drifting

At the end of the 2021 baseball season, I sold my cargo van that I converted into a camper van and bought a new camper van that was built by the pros not a novice. Since we drive quite a bit to watch our son play baseball, we wanted something more comfortable, something that had a usable bathroom, and something we could make meals in, and in some cases sleep in.

The van I bought has many features that I didn’t anticipate but have really come to appreciate. For example, if you signal to turn and someone is in the lane you want to turn into the van will beep at you. Another one is what I would call “drift warning”. If the van starts to drift into another lane, or off the road, the driver’s seat will loudly and intensely vibrate, which I interpret as, “hey idiot, stay on the road!”

I thought about this quite a bit last week. Not the van, but drifting. It was one of those, “wow” moments when I concluded, drifting is never good. In any area of life, drifting is never good. In a boat, people will drop anchors to keep from drifting away from where they want to stay. Things in our life are the same way, if we do not get and stay intentional about what we want to accomplish we will drift.

One of the most important things we must stay intentional about is our thoughts, because if our thoughts drift wayward it is certain that our actions will drift off course. When traveling in the van on a 4-lane highway with very little traffic I am far less focused than I am when I am going through a construction zone with those concrete blockades on both sides creating a narrow lane. If I get lazy in those narrow lanes, if I lose focus, I will end up crashing into the concrete. The consequence of losing focus in a construction lane is far greater than an empty 4-lane highway.

When we allow our thoughts to drift into a 4-lane comfort cruise bad things happen. But if we are disciplined and have the intentionality of a narrow lane construction zone, we will not drift off course. I heard someone say something in a video once that has stuck with me ever since. He said it is not about motivation, it is about discipline. Motivation comes and goes, and if you only do what you need to do when you are motivated to do so, you will fail. Discipline is doing what you need to do even when you have no motivation to do them. Yes, motivation is great, but if you had to chose between motivation and discipline, there is no contest, you must cultivate discipline.

The world has no shortage of the “would a, could a, should a” stories. In many cases these stories find their root in excuses and undisciplined lives. People, all people, are like water in many ways, they prefer to take the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance does not require discipline. A boat that is unanchored will be pulled in the direction of the current. In the same way, if you are not disciplined and intentional about your direction, life’s “currents” will drag you in a direction you will wonder years later how you ever got here. We must make an honest assessment whether we are being pulled by the world’s currents or are we setting sail against the current and forging our own path.

It is one thing for someone to say, “BE DISCIPINED!” It is another to give strategies to cultivate discipline, so let’s look at a simple, yet powerful 5-point strategy.

1. Carefully think through exactly what you are trying to do in a particular area of your life and then write down the goal(s)
2. Under that, write down why the goal is important
3. IMPORTANT- DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THIS STEP. Read the goal(s) and the “why(s)” every morning. Although discipline is more important than motivation, motivation helps, and reminding yourself of the “whys” everyday will help keep you motivated. THE POWER IS IN THE REMINDER!
4. Make a plan of how to get to the goal and execute the plan. Be humble, and wise enough to improve the plan when needed.
5. Small goals lead to the big goals, and small goals are accomplished each day, and many times in the moments. A moment of weakness can have devastating effects. Therefore, make a daily plan of what you need to do that day and prioritize the plan. You must plan your day with the full focus, and intention of accomplishing your list. Be real about it, if the difficult things aren’t planned, the easy stuff is what we’ll do. For example, for most people it’s easier to turn on a ball game or sitcom than spend an hour reading something challenging; so, if we don’t make it a plan and priority to read something challenging, we won’t do it.

Keep this in mind as you implement this strategy:

• You will not be perfect. But do not use this reality as an excuse to be lazy, or drift off course. For example, if your goal is to not eat sweets and you ate 3 doughnuts one day, do not think, “oh, I failed, I’m done, I’ll just forget it, I’m a loser.” NO! You say, “I didn’t do great today, but I am going to do better tomorrow”, and you get back on course.
• Misery loves company and the world will fight you every step of the way. Living right, living disciplined will be a reminder to those in the world that they are not, and they will try to drag you down. It is important to surround yourself with like-minded, disciplined people. If you don’t have people like that in your life, you may have to go it alone for a while. Make it ok to be alone if that is what is best for the life you have determined is most important. You will never have any trouble finding people to go out and get drunk and carouse, but you will not have them lining up to workout at 5am.
• Make your daily task list realistic. For example, at work I have determined over time that I can accomplish about 12 things on my list. It is not that I can’t do more, but with other distractions and reacting to unplanned circumstances, on average, I can only get to about 12 things on my list. Therefore, when I plan my next day (which I do the night before) and there are 20 things on it, it is unreasonable to think I will get them all done. Therefore, I prioritize my list from 1-12, knowing that I will work down the list in order, and typically move the less crucial items to the following day.

Another example of being realistic is expectation. If you have a “big goal” to get in shape, and the “small goal” to lead to the big goal is to run 5 days a week, but at this point you are a hundred pounds overweight and haven’t exercised in a long time, don’t make your day 1 goal to run a mile. Day 1’s goal might be to walk to the stop sign and back, day 2 might be to walk to the 2nd stop sign and back. Your expectations should be challenging, but they must be realistic, find that balance.
• Discipline is as much of what not to do, as it is what “to do”. For example, if my goal is to have pure thoughts and focus on God’s will for my life, I need to protect what goes into my mind. If I know that certain shows or movies will cause a flood of wicked thoughts, I must be disciplined enough to not watch those things.

The Spiritual Side

The strategies above can certainly be applied in a secular context, but the reality is, there are many Biblical examples we can look to.

The first one that comes to mind is in 1Corinthians 9:

1Corinthians 9:24-27 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

Paul talks about being disciplined, being self-controlled, lest he be disqualified. Whether he is speaking of being disqualified from ministry or from salvation I am not certain, but what we do know is that it is crucial for us to be disciplined when it comes to “rightly” running this race of life in obedience to God’s Word if our “goal” is eternal life. I do not see any evidence in Scripture that a person can say a prayer and pronounce themselves saved, thus gaining eternal life. What I do see is, “he who is in Christ is a new creature”, in other words, a true believer is different, they live and walk by the Spirit of God, with the fruit of the Spirit manifesting itself in their life, and that Spirit includes self-control. As indicated above, we will not be perfect, but we will not use that imperfection as an excuse to laziness, as an excuse to drift. A true follower of Christ has the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, and the Holy Spirit will keep them from drifting “out of the lane”, but we must not quench the Spirit, we must be sensitive to His guidance.

Ephesians 4:30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

If your goal is not to grieve the Holy Spirit read all of Ephesians 4 and learn what grieves Him, and what pleases Him. Hebrews 1 tells us that all Truth was given to us by the Son of God, we must listen, we must follow His Word. The writer then warns:

Hebrews 2:1 Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.

Why would we drift away? Why would a person learn the Truth and drift? The answer is the same as the reason we drift from other things in our life that we have determined to be best, an undisciplined life is easier. Just as we have said that there is no effort in finding a carousing crowd to hang with, but not so much for those 5am workouts, in the same way, the broad road to destruction is loaded with others on that path, but the road that leads to life is narrow, few find it, and there aren’t many on it….why? BECAUSE IT IS HARD!!

Matthew 7:13-14 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.