Practicing Discipline in Life and Faith

By Emily Clemons

Recently, after spending my college years struggling to be active without the push of high school extracurriculars, I decided to become a runner. Running is a popular sport in Chicago, where I live. The Bank of America Chicago Marathon, which winds through 29 of the city’s neighborhoods each fall, is part of the World Marathon Majors series that attracts professional, elite and everyday runners from around the world. Year-round, it seems like there’s always a runner getting in their daily miles—from a jog around the block to “long run Saturdays” on the lakefront trail.

“I can do that!” I finally thought to myself last fall as yet another neighbor jogged by. If the was goal to become a runner, I just had to take small, manageable steps to get started.

The first step was to get in the habit of running regularly. Just get out there a few days a week, didn’t matter how far I went! Then, I signed up for a Turkey Trot 5k (a 3.1-mile race on Thanksgiving morning). “I certainly can finish,” I thought, setting a low-pressure goal that I could enjoy reaching. “It doesn’t matter how fast I go!”

The Turkey Trot sealed the deal for me: I love this sport, and I want to be good at it. I next signed up for an 8k race (close to 5 miles) with the goal to simply finish, just like the 5k. But, being the perfectionist that I am, I started setting unreasonable and unattainable goals for a beginning runner. Eventually I had a whole list of goals, many of them contradicting each other! Finish the race, but finish it in less than 55 minutes. Keep a steady pace—no slowing down! Try to get negative splits (run the second half of the race faster than the first half). Smile the whole time!

In getting ahead of myself, I forgot about my original goal simply to become a person who runs and enjoys it.

Paul cautions against this mindset in 1 Corinthians 9:24-26 (CEB). “Don’t you know that all the runners in the stadium run, but only one gets the prize? So run to win. Everyone who competes practices self-discipline in everything. The runners do this to get a crown of leaves that shrivel up and die, but we do it to receive a crown that never dies. So now this is how I run—not without a clear goal in sight.”

Paul wants the Corinthians to practice their faith the way runners train for races: with diligence and discipline. But unlike runners, whose medals lose their luster and bodies lose their strength, our crown—the glory of salvation—is forever.

So how to we practice discipline in faith? For many of us, small steps are the way to get there. Maybe it’s going to church every Sunday instead of just on Christmas and Easter. Maybe it’s replacing an hour of listening to pop radio with an hour of worship music during your commute, or reading a chapter of the Bible before bed instead of responding to one last email. Regardless, the discipline Paul encourages us to have ensures not only that we reach the goal of a faithful relationship with God, but also what we do so in an enjoyable and fruitful way.

My prayer for us all is that we always remember our main goals—to know God, to finish the race—so we can stay disciplined and always give our best efforts.