Ready or Not | Crossroads Daily

Hey, I'm Chuck. I'm Kirsten. I'm Chris. I'm Alex. Welcome in. Hopefully, you've had a chance to read 1 Timothy 4, and we're just going to spend a few minutes processing that together. Paul uses the word training a lot in this. It's about discipline. You know, I think there are places in our lives where we feel stuck, but really we just lack discipline. And so we're just going to be honest and ask this question. Where in your life are you calling something a season, but it's really avoidance or a lack of discipline? Man, that word season is like a trigger word. I use it at least 30 times a day, but every time I'm like, why? So Christian-ese, you know? But immediately, so I have a three-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old at home. So easy to call it a season because I will not always have a three-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old at home. And for example, the past two nights have resulted in me getting very few hours of sleep because they have decided to just rebel against sleep completely. And they're in a room, so they just wake each other up, whatever, screaming. And to that, I wake up and I say, I deserve to not have a quiet time today. I deserve to sleep in. I need sleep to survive. It's just the season. And let me tell you, my friend, he has just been challenging me in scripture of saying like, how dare us think that we can get more rest through sleep than through the word of the Lord that promises rest. If you all know Brody, it is spit and truth. But I just woke up convicted and praying for discipline actually before bed last night, which is ironic because, spoiler, I did not have a quiet time this morning that I would have liked to have. And I don't know. I'm very convicted by that. Thanks for being honest about that. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's real. Yeah. The word season could make me. But I think it's because I use that word as an excuse. So I say kind of like you were saying, like, if I don't have a quiet time, but for me, I feel like the excuse and that word comes up with busyness. So if I'm in if I'm really, really busy and if I'm running from thing to thing and we don't have a family meal together, which is really important to us in our household, or if I'm not getting a quiet time or I don't know, there could be a number of things. I blame it on busyness and whatever the busy thing is. I say, well, the busyness is only for a season, which is just bogus. I'm always busy and I like saying yes to a lot of things. And so as soon as one busy season ends, the next one is starting up. And so I think it's important in talking about disciplines. I think it's so important to have if you have the disciplines of like, these are the things that are non-negotiable, no matter what the season is or no matter how busy you are. Like, those are the things that I don't even know. Like, I guess family meals is one of those examples. I don't know if like some of those things are disciplined enough right now to where they don't go away if I'm in a season of busyness and things are like different. I'll share one I'm on a journey with and that is around disciplined eating. You know, I have never really had difficulty exercising regularly. That's not been an issue for me. It's been my eating. And particularly as I've gotten older, I've realized like, look, it's never going to be the season. It's never going to be the season to not focus on this. And it's really hard. It takes a lot of intentionality, but I've been trying to be very choiceful around how can I build repeatable disciplines around eating into my life? Things I don't have to think about all the time, but make a set of choices and then just live by those choices. And I'm seeing progress, which is great. And I'm also still feeling the constant tension to go away from that.

And so I think, you know, I can relate to when Paul talks to Timothy and basically doesn't give him an excuse of his age. He's like, hey, you need to set an example in life and faith and love and purity and all these things. And I think that's also true in terms of like care for your physical body. Now, everybody has different metabolism and all that. I don't think I'm ever going to be, you know, 150 pounds. If I am, that's probably not good. If I get to 150 pounds, that might not be healthy. But I do think there needs to be a part of me that continues to prioritize this because there are some things that are just about discipline. In our faith and in our life and in our family. So maybe think about it this way. And you might have already named it, but is there a habit that if you do it, you know, it has the potential to change your life, but you've been putting it off and you just need to make it, the book, Atomic Habits is a really good book. And it's either that one or the Charles Duhigg book on the power of habit, but he talks about keystone habits. Like what's a keystone habit that you know, if you establish it, it has the potential to change trajectory of your life. And so for me, that habit has been, how do I approach eating? If I am disciplined about eating and sleeping, it's the keystone habits that I know are going to shape a lot of rest of my life. Eat, sleep, move and pray. It doesn't matter. Eat, sleep, move and pray. I love. That'd be a good movie. That's it. Yeah. That's a good title. Yeah. I want you guys to give me your tips on this, like genuinely, because I am, I really struggle with the word discipline. I just have always said like, oh, I don't have discipline.

I just, I'm ADHD. I love a different routine every day. If I could do something new every day, I would. And so I just, but I want, I want the habits that do that. I'm the same way. I feel like my personality is just chaotic. So I've struggled with like habits and disciplines in the past. But what I realized is some of like the disciplines or habits of things that I do every day don't have to look the same as someone who is like getting up and spending like an hour of quiet time. I am every morning. Yeah. Not to use our trigger word season again, but like I do have two young kids. So this probably isn't the season like for that specifically for me, but like one of the things that I have instituted, because I know that it's something that I can do and it's practical and something I can do every day is every day when I get out of bed, I kneel at my bed and I just pray. And sometimes it's for 30 seconds because there is a toddler there. And sometimes it's for five minutes or 10 or like whatever, however much time I have. Can I just encourage you? Yeah. First of all, I love that choice. I will be doing that. Here's the thing. I want to encourage you around. How powerful is it that your toddler sees mom's first action being on her knees praying? Yeah. That's better than an hour of quiet time in some ways, because you're taking it to the next generation. So I just want to say that's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. So, but, but that's been like a different thing for me. And I think for me, because I'm a little chaotic, like a physical thing attached to a spiritual thing has been really helpful for me. So that's one thing that I've started doing. And then one thing I would love to like aspire to do is more intentional quiet time. And I think I am just in a time where I'm still figuring out, okay, so what does maybe it's like once a week where it's, I get a couple hours to myself where I'm like really reading scripture or like having some more disciplined prayer time or whatever that is, because I know that that has been so powerful in my life in the past. And it's just one of those easy things that I think, well, I'm not in the season where that's going to work for me right now. But I don't want that to be an excuse for something that I know could transform my life. Yeah. I love that. I'm glad you brought up the prayer thing. Because to answer your question, Chuck, I'm like prayer. If I, I know if I committed myself to overhauling what prayer looks like in my life, so much would change. And it's always been this thing for me where like, I've kind of just like been like, you know, does it, does it really do anything? Like it's me asking like this prayer, like God, I pray. What an honest question. I just like, is me praying for two seconds, like God, help me to walk in your steps today, whatever that means. I'm like, does that actually do anything in the cosmos of like God's power? And I think I just have this belief that's like, well, my life won't change that much. Therefore, I don't want to waste the time doing it. And though I read scripture where Jesus is like, there's things he says were like, they

will not be done unless we pray. That's right. Like, or like, unless we have the faith and prayer. And so it's like, I know these truths. I think more often though, it feels easier to just not pray. Like I'm saving time in some way, or it feels more controlling if I just think my way through a situation. Like I just, okay, well, it's easier to stress about this because then I can control it. And prayer feels like I'm giving up that control. So that's a great, I love your tip because I'm like, I need, and just like that it can be, it can be quick, but I make it this thing where it's like, well, I got to be on my face for 30 minutes or it doesn't count. Right, right. Yeah. Or trying to like solve the problem yourself. I feel like that's an easy like trap that I fall into of like, well, I can just, prayer is not always the default for me. So that's just a habit and a discipline in general. Like even if it doesn't look like something physical, what would it look like for my discipline and habit to be, I go to prayer first versus trying to solve a problem. or address the situation on my own first. I'll share with you something. My brother is a big mentor in my life and he taught me something about discipline that I think is so powerful. So I'm gonna share it with all of you. At one point he had a goal and his goal was to do 40 pushups a week. Now the first place your mind goes is like. I can't do a pushup.

Okay, well. That's where my mind goes. That might be where your mind goes. One pushup a week for you. I can't do it. One pushup a week. So here's the thing. So most people. Most people are like. Well, what do you mean? You could do more than 40 pushups a week. But then his second question is, but how many pushups did you do last week? And if you did zero last week and you do 40 a week, you know, four a day, whatever, how you do it. You're building a small habit that increases over time. And I think that that is such a spiritual principle for us. And so the thing that I would leave us with today and you as you're watching this to think about what's the equivalent of 40 pushups a week for you and whatever the discipline is that God is calling you to. It might be, you know what? I'm gonna pray one time in the next seven days. Because how many times did you pray last week? If you didn't pray any times, then you're 100% better if you do it one time. Whatever it may be. I'm gonna read one chapter of the Bible the whole week. And I'm just gonna take a couple of verses a day

rather than trying to say, I'm gonna read a chapter a day. It's so interesting to think about discipline in that way in these small bite-sized pieces. And I think there's something that God can do and multiply in our lives when we do that. So go do your 40 pushups this week. Or one. Or one. Or one. Or one. Or one. Or one. Or one. Or one. Or one. Or one. Or one.