How you emotionally feel about any of the commands of God is irrelevant. You may not agree with them. You may not want to do them, or you may even hate them at times. However, none of your thoughts matter. The only thing that matters is whether or not you obey through action. All that matters is whether or not you do what you know you must do.
The discipline to follow through with the commands of God is key. The ability to do what God says when we do not want to is a fundamental principle of Spartan Christianity.
No one who has undertaken that goal has enjoyed it. It is not meant to be enjoyed, that command exists for a purpose. Avoiding drugs and alcohol is not fun. These mind altering chemicals seem like they would be medicine to treat the misery of life. Alcohol could take you away from the pain, drugs could give you the best high of your life, but we cannot use them because we would be unable to be vigilant of the enemy. The command of sobriety is difficult. Few who keep that command enjoy it.
Obedience is a verb.
No one cares how you feel about it. As a man, you aren’t called to feel anything, you are only expected to act. You are only required to take action. You are not required to feel happy about it. Many of the commands are heavy and difficult, and feeling happy about them is something that will never happen. What you can guarantee is that day after day after day you will be grinding away at the discipline of obedience through action.
Mantra
Feeling is irrelevant, only obedience matters.
Application
Simple, do what God commands without getting caught up in how you feel about it. Sideline those emotions. Shut down those thoughts. Put ‘feelings’ in the trash can and focus solely on the action of obedience. You can feel any way you want, what matters is your obedience.
He who is not tempted is of no value to the devil.
This is what I think about when people brag that temptation is seemingly non-existent in their lives. In the first place, the type of person who talks about their lack of temptation is obviously not intelligent enough to be of much use to the enemy. Not being tempted is nothing to brag about. Men think they are showcasing their “natural goodness” by way of not being tempted, but the opposite is true. The devil has no need of such weak, egotistical individuals. He already owns them.
“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various temptations knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience”.
Hypothetically, Satan has a hit-list, a hierarchy of importance on which he ranks the most valuable players in the Church and plots to destroy them. If you aren’t tempted, you aren’t on the list, if you aren’t tempted, you should be worried.
If you are tempted, it is your job to destroy that temptation.
You can redirect the temptational energy, fight the temptation with willpower, or run from the temptation. Jesus was strong enough to crush temptation face to face using scripture. Are you strong enough to do that?
If you are weaker, or are worn down from temptations already, you will need to use the escape method to remove yourself from the presence of the temptations. Use the redirect method when the temptation is so strong that it causes huge surges of energy in your system. Take that energy and turn your focus onto something productive. Build. Create. Work.
Be aware of your weaknesses. The devil and his demons are cowardly, they will never hit you where you are strongest – they will always look for the chink in the armor. Any little crevice they can worm their way into in order to destroy you. Be aware of your weaknesses, and what sins you are inclined to commit based on your personality. Awareness is key in all aspects of dealing with temptation. Be aware of yourself. Be aware of the enemy, and use temptation to strengthen yourself for the future.
Temptation is the stress that produces growth of the mind, if you allow yourself to be trained by it. The willpower muscle must be used in order for it to grow. Temptation will either crush a man or make him more powerful, and you have to decide today which one it is going to be.
Mantra
I crush the temptation before me at all times.
Application
Awareness is always the first step in solving any problem. Becoming aware of the temptation is key, then you can analyze how the temptation is attacking you and how you can most easily destroy it. Or you can decide that it is too powerful for you and you can run away.
Make no mistake, the way of escape is a useful tool, but it requires you to have humility and accept that you are not strong enough to overcome temptation and must therefore flee from it. So when you are tempted, look in the immediate environment, there is a way of escape there somewhere.
Stockpile the mind with scripture. The Word of God is the Sword of the Spirit, making it both useful for defensive measures and offensive maneuvers. This was the tactic used by Christ when He was tempted in the wilderness, and undoubtedly the tactic He used all the other times He was tempted which are not recorded.
Use temptation for growth.
Every time you resist temptations, you increase your experience in dealing with temptation, making it more likely that you will be able to resist temptation in the future as long as you don’t get comfortable and lazy.
There are many reasons for anxiety to corrupt the mind of man. Biochemical reasons in the brain, external reasons at the workplace, internal reasons because of personality or whatever it may be. I won’t tell you that anxiety is curable, but that is never an excuse for us to avoid making an attempt to improve.
This is the Spartan way: to work to improve our state, even if there is no hope for a cure.
Negative anxiety can be from chemical imbalances or some other anxiety inducing source and has negative effects on our minds. It cripples us and slows us down, preventing our best work. It makes us live in constant fear of death, and in fear of the Judgement Day; any Christian who says we should not fear Judgement Day is ignorant of the standard by which we will be judged. It is a weakness, a chink in the armor of the mind.
Positive anxiety is a force that can drive us on. We are anxious about our death, therefore we do not waste any of our time. We are anxious about money, therefore we work harder and spend less time in vegetative-state laziness.
The difference between positive and negative anxiety is the result it pushes us to produce.
We must change our mind about anxiety and use it as a tool to improve rather than letting it beat us down. Anxiety can be channeled into constructive pursuits just like our anger if we are willing to practice controlling it and make it work for us.
Mantra
Anxiety is fuel and power.
Application
The difference between negative and positive anxiety is extremely small, so it can be difficult to tell which one you are being driven by without examining the results you produce. When you feel the physiological effects of anxiety (Increased heart rate, increased breathing, “feeling” in your gut from reduced blood flow) become conscious of yourself, notice the feelings with your conscious mind, and smile. Smile because you found the energy source, now all you have to do is bend it to your will.
Shift your thoughts to constructive pursuits. The mind will try to resist, it wants you to go into fight-or-flight mode because thinking is too difficult, but you need to harness it and make it obey your voice. Turn your mind to the positive, and start taking action. A great cure for any anxiety is action, especially if that action is aimed towards completing the task/job that is causing the anxiety. The majority of your fear lives in the few moments before taking action.
If your anxiety is the fear of death and judgement day, use that anxiety to drive your decision to do what is right.
KEY: No one who sinks hours of his life into rest and comfort feels rested or comforted. When was the last time you felt rested or comforted by a Netflix binge?
Comfort is the enemy of progress.
“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”
Comfort tells you that where you currently are is “good enough”.
Only the weak use the phrase “good enough”. Comfort is deception. Comfort is the weakness of Man telling him that he has no need to work. We should not seek comfort, for it provides no growth of character. It provides no increase to the strength of the mind, it only breaks man down, weakening him and his foundation.
We typically seek comfort after a long day as a respite from what we think is the brutality of the world. Are we as men too weak to face up to the day? Are we children, that we should be driven about by emotion? Or are we Men who are able to bear the whole world on our shoulders?
Comfort is for the weak, do not chase after it. Not only is comfort for the weak, but it is an illusion.
KEY: No one who sinks hours of his life into rest and comfort feels rested or comforted.
When was the last time you felt rested or comforted by a Netflix binge? Does watching football for six hours on Saturday make you feel better in the long run? Or are these just temporary fixes to the immediate problems in your life. You come out of these “comforts” feeling worse than before, groggy, and like you wasted a chunk of your life. This comfort seeking mechanism is a disgrace to mankind.
Learn to make your work the thing that comforts you. The Spartan Christian needs no rest.
Mantra
My work is my comfort.
Application
Get a productive hobby. This is the best way to combine genuine rest with the type of productivity that actually improves your life instead of wasting it. Get a musical instrument and learn to play it. Buy some tools and build furniture. Get some weights and train your mind and body simultaneously.
Physical training is one of the best options you have. It provides you a break from your work while also giving you the benefits of a sharper mind and fitter physical body. There are ways to rest and recover without going into a vegetative state. Find those ways and make them happen.
The morning hours are the most valuable of the day. Don’t waste them.
“Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first-fruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.”
Every morning of a new day is the beginning of the time we will receive for the day. If we live through the day, we receive 24 hours to do everything we need to do. Whether or not we are good stewards of that time is up to us. Many people plop in front of the television first thing in the morning. They watch the news and fill their mind with garbage. The news is not even a proper reflection of reality, yet people watch it anyways.
You waste your morning self-medicating with mindless shows. You hate your job, hate most of your life, so you choose to distract yourself with television. How is this man better than a drug addict? Both waste time, money, health and life pursuing a moment of medication induced pleasure. Is your life so horrible that you must distract yourself from it constantly?
Or you can be among the 99th percentile of men who reject this waste of the prime morning hours.
You can be the man who uses the morning to get work done, to get ahead on disciplines, to become better. This can be done regardless of whether you are a “morning” or an “evening” person. Discipline supersedes personality. Use the morning to get ahead on reading your Bible, whatever your allotted reading length is. I always recommend starting with anywhere from 10 verses to one chapter. No, it is not a lot, but it beats everyone who is reading zero chapters or verses a day.
Stop wasting your morning. The morning hour is a chance to get ahead of the competition. While they are in their warm beds, all snuggled up, you are improving. You are working and focusing on the things that matter in life.
You start making every morning effective and you start winning.
Yes, the first mornings are difficult. It is hard to change from instant comfort and self-medication in the morning to discipline and work right out of the gate. However, the power you gain from the continued discipline, and the satisfaction you feel from taking action outweigh that difficulty ten to one.
After the first few days, it becomes easier to string days together, it becomes easier to get out of bed, the discipline takes over your mind. Eventually, you string together enough effective days to notice that you are changing in small ways.
Your general Bible knowledge is a tiny bit better.
Your attitude is a tiny bit better.
That cornerstone of success, your mental state is a tiny bit better.
Ignore every individual who reports massive change in life and attitude, that is hyperbole and emotionalism. Improvement always comes one infinitesimally small brick at a time. Add up enough of those bricks over a long enough time, and you have built a structure of character that is impressive to behold. Everyone will think it was “one moment” or that you were an “overnight success”, but you know the truth. You are the cumulative result of every action you have taken up to this point in your life.
As hertical as it is to say, just reading the Bible won’t “change your life”. This isn’t some mom-blog built on a foundation of emotionalism. God gave you all the tools to change your life in His word, but YOU still have to do the work. Nothing changes that. So make it happen first thing in the morning, every morning, and become better. Become a man.
Mantra
The first hour of the day does not belong to me.
Application
Give the morning to the Lord every day, this is simple. You don’t have to feel like doing it, you don’t have to want to do it, you just have to do it.
Read a chapter of the Old Testament, and Chapter of the new testament, and repeat a Verse ten times for memory. Do this every single day. Is it a ton of reading? No. Is it doable? Yes. And it is infinitely more than the “Christians” who are doing no reading, which turns out to be about 80% of them³. You must do this every day. No one is asking you to move a mountain. Wake up a little earlier and give those first fruits to God.
If you cannot manage that much reading, aim for 10 verses from each old and new testaments, and repeat a verse for 10 repetitions. Once you become comfortable with that habit, then add more reading. That is how you win.
