Spartan Christianity

Prime The Machine – Morning Hours

Prime the machine in the morning hours so that your entire day is a win. Victory begin in the morning.

“but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.”
Psalm 1:2

“Above all, be strong and very courageous. Be careful to observe all the law My servant Moses commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may prosper wherever you go. This Book of the Law must not depart from your mouth; you are to recite it day and night, so that you may carefully observe everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in all you do.”
Joshua 1:7-8

The morning is the most important time of the day. In the morning you set the tone for how the rest of the day will go. You can either waste your morning or you can use it to get the edge. You can hit the snooze button ten times or you can get up and get after the day. When you wake up you can make your bed right away, or you can leave the sheets in a pile until you stagger home that night. You can eat donuts for breakfast or you can cook some eggs. You can read books, train and work on your disciplines in the morning, or you can mindlessly watch television as your ability to think for yourself slowly fades into oblivion.

Most people take the easier path every morning.

They want to eat whatever food is tastiest and do whatever is most convenient and requires the least amount of work. People want the path of pleasure, but that path never rewards you. The path of pleasure never builds your character or discipline. The path of enjoyment does not make you more successful or put more money in your pocket. However, the path of discomfort and pain is the only one that produces the growth of character you want.

Every day you look in the mirror and you are not where you want to be in your life. You do not have the money, character or discipline you want. Worse than that, you are not even progressing towards those goals. You wake up every day, look at yourself and realize that you have made no progress towards those desired end state goals since you started them. You never prime the machine. You have never gotten the edge first thing in the morning and you waste every morning with activities that bring you no profit, neither monetarily nor in character. Today is the day that ends.

This is the day that you stop wasting your time every morning and start investing in your future.

Start writing your book in the morning hours before anyone is awake. Start training the body in the morning. Start eating better, if only for breakfast. Over time your morning victories will compound and spread to midday and then to the afternoon. Discipline produces more discipline. Effective mornings produce effective afternoons. Do not waste your morning hours. Prime the machine for a day of victory and growth.

Mantra

Crush the morning, crush the day. Prime the Machine.

Application

You must stop wasting yours mornings.They may be the only blocks of time you have in your day to truly make progress on yourself and your goals. If you can have a productive morning, you can have a productive day. Even if you do not have a productive day, you still have the satisfaction that results from having a productive morning.

Take all the disciplines you want to start and compress them into the morning.

Do not put them off until the afternoon or you will talk yourself out of being disciplined. Put your reading, writing and thinking work at the beginning of the day and do it instantly upon waking. Do this consistently for several days and you will establish it as a habit. Once it is a habit, you gain momentum and maintaining the discipline becomes easier. The only time you will have to make massive effort is on the days you do not feel like priming the machine and doing your work. On these days you must work even harder. You must obliterate your disciplines and teach your mind that you do not stop working for anything. Teach the mind that it has no say over whether or not you will be disciplined.

If you can be disciplined on the days that you do not feel like being disciplined, then you will make true progress on your character.

We only improve when we do what is right when it is uncomfortable and inconvenient to do so. Stop wasting your mornings and start making them the most productive time of your day.

Arm your mind with strength.

Bring your thoughts into submission to you.

Gather all strength to your mind.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Defeat – The Foundation for Success

You must be mentally prepared to suffer defeat.

“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
2 Corinthians 12:9-10

“More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Romans 5:3-5

It will not matter how you conduct yourself while you are winning, it only matters how you act after you have lost.

Defeat is where the true personality of man shows its ugliness to the world.

Have you ever seen a young child lose at a game and then proceed to embarrass his parents with his behavior? It happens very often. What is even more unfortunate is that fact that many of the kids never grow out of this behavior. They take their weak mentalities onto the sports field and display just how immature they are after they lose.

Then they grow up and take that mentality into the workplace. They never take responsibility for their failures and always pass the blame. Everyone knows one of these men, and they were created by their parents who failed to teach them to accept defeat graciously and with strong character.

We often fail to act righteously and we sin. Sometimes we are caught and our sin is publicized. This is public humiliation and defeat. How do we conduct ourselves during this defeat? Do we exhibit grace, humility and repentance? Or do we manifest anger, ego and further rebelliousness? Answer these questions and you will discover everything about yourself that you will ever need to know. How you behave in defeat is an open window into your character. So you must prepare yourself not only for defeat, but also to conduct yourself like a man when you find yourself defeated.

Defeat is inevitable, but acting like an idiot while we are defeated is something we can control and avoid.

By acting graciously we show that we are men of character and add bricks to our reputation. We can convert a defeat into a great victory simply by conducting ourselves like men while we are defeated. All failures have the potential to profit us if we learn to use humility and build our character. Defeat is the foundation of victory.

Mantra

Train until virtue is automated.

Application

In every victory you should be mentally preparing yourself for defeat. Just as in the moments of happiness you must prepare yourself for depression. You have to stockpile supplies in your mind to outlast defeat. Decide how you will conduct yourself during defeat before you are ever defeated. Have your programmed behavior ready to go so that when you suffer a defeat you do not have to think about what to do, you can fall back on your plans and training and conduct yourself well. Many vices can be cured by this simple method: train. Train yourself to have the actions you want without having to think about. Then when you are in the situation you trained for, you can shift your mind to autopilot and shut down the ego immediately.

“We do not rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training”
Archilochus

Stockpile your actions and practice them as a musician practices scales until they can be performed unconsciously.

Keep your mind vigilant and prepared.

Focus your mind on being a man of character.

Annihilate the adversary.

Remember who you represent.

Conduct yourself like men.

Sorrow – How to Think About It

You do not have to lose a family member or end a relationship to feel sorrow.

“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit”.
Psalm 34:18

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God”
2 Corinthians 1:3-4

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
Psalm 73:26

The biggest misconceptions about sorrow or depression is the idea that they are dependent on circumstances. There is a difference between having tragic events happen to you and being “formally” or clinically depressed and sorrowful. Sorrow pervades the heart on good days as well as on bad ones. Sorrow is an emotion that is the product of our thoughts. What we meditate on in our thoughts will determine what kinds of emotions are produced in our mind.

Sorrow is independent of circumstances, and can be a function of personality.

The Proverb writer says, “even in laughter, the heart may sorrow” (Proverbs 14:13). Even when we laugh, our mind returns to what troubles us. Sorrow originates and exists in our minds, and this is what separates it from mourning or grief which are caused by external circumstances.

The second misconception revolves around the idea that it is wrong to feel sorrow. it is not wrong to feel sorrow just as it is not wrong to feel happiness. Weak people tend to think that emotions that feel bad are evil and emotions that are pleasurable are good. This is absurdity, emotions are emotions, how they make us feel is insignificant. Emotions are chemical reactions in the brain, many of which are guided by our thoughts. We as Men must master all of our emotions, positive and negative. Positive emotions can blind us to the truth by making us certain of what we already know, negative emotions disillusion us to reality by painting a neutral reality in a pessimistic light. We must remain in control of all emotions, never allowing them to catch us off guard or affect our thoughts while we are unaware of them.

Sorrow is natural and occurs regularly in the mind of man.

There is more than enough pain on the earth to trigger sorrow in our mind. We should not think poorly of ourselves because we experience sorrow often, as this will only cause us additional sorrow. We as men must simply outlast the sorrow, and it does go away.

Mantra

From the pain of sorrow arises the goodness of growth.

Application

Accept and do not repress your sorrow. Repression never leads to a cure. Avoidance of pain never leads to the resolving of that pain.

Search for the source of your sorrow. What are the doubts, questions or fears living in your mind that are causing you sorrow? Is life itself causing you sorrow? Most Christians avoid making statements like that because life is supposed to be a “gift”.

Once you find the source of your sorrow, you must defeat it by slowly working out each and every doubt and fear through logic and reason. In time you slowly untie the massive knot of doubt and it becomes smaller and smaller as you move to the center. You untie it by asking questions about your questions:

Is the fear rational?

What childhood pain is the root cause of this fear I am experiencing?

Identification of the problem is a major blow to the fear you are suffering.

Through the process of logic you reduce fear and sorrow to nothingness. And if sorrow returns periodically or during your episode of depression, you already know how to outlast it. This is a key strategy: endurance. At times you will simply have to outlast your discomfort. Prepare your mind for the siege by stockpiling supplies: positive role models, stories of inspiration about men who overcame the odds or defeated their sorrow, and the understanding that this sorrow will pass.

Do not complain about your sorrow, that is for the weak. Deal with your pain and master it yourself. By doing this you strengthen your character and make yourself the kind of man who could help someone else with their sorrow.

Cast aside your fear and sorrow.

Defeat the demons that live in your mind.

Endure every attack of the enemy.

Build a fortress of logic around your mind.

Conduct yourselves like men.

The Whole Nine Yards

The Whole Nine Yards is a War term. Some World War II fighter planes would be manned by two men, one pilot and one gunner. The pilot is in charge of the maneuvers of the plane and giving tips for shooting while the gunner’s job is to shoot down enemy planes. While flying in combat, the pilot would look for enemy planes, and if he saw one, he would shout instructions to the gunner. These instructions were about how many rounds to fire at the opposition forces, and he would shout these instructions in terms of various lengths of distance, usually yards.

So instead of shouting “fire fifty rounds at that plane”, he would shout “give em’ two yards”. The gunner would then fire two yards from the belt of ammo. The entire length of one ammunition belt was nine yards. In dire circumstances, life or death situations, the pilot would shout to the gunner, “Give them the whole nine yards”. Fire every round on the belt because our plane could be shot down.

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men”
Colossians 3:23

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going”
Ecclesiastes 9:10

“Training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age”
Titus 2:12

How many men in the religious world have that type of mentality about their faith, family or career?

Few, if any. Most men are content to warm a pew for a few hours each week. Most men are fine with thinking about faith once or twice a week, more often than most of them have sex with their wives. Where are the men who are willing to put forth an extreme effort to preserve what is valuable to them?

There are very few men left who are willing to fire the whole nine yards at anything in life. If men refuse to give extreme effort in their faith, then they will be unwilling to give extreme effort anywhere. The man whose faith is so worthless to him that he would not sacrifice life and limb for it will not sacrifice for anything lesser such as career, property or even family.

We as men must be willing to fire every single round in the belt in the name of faith, family and life. Only through tremendous effort can anything of value be built, protected and preserved. The Christian faith requires a Spartan-like intensity to defend, and it is a faith that requires the whole nine yards of our character to maintain until death.

Mantra

Hit the enemy with the whole nine yards.

Application

Start getting comfortable with discomfort. Tell your mind that you enjoy discomfort because it is getting you closer to your goals. Giving the whole nine yards is not glamorous or fun in the same way that military boot camp is not glamorous or fun for those who served.

Stop chasing dramatized ideals that populate the highlight reels in worldly endeavors.

Highlights are exactly that: mere strands of time that are forgotten. Highlights are almost instantly replaced with new highlights and the old hero is forgotten. Don’t chase the type of glory that doesn’t last.

Condition yourself to give more and more effort over time. With practice, you learn to generate more and more horsepower and your power of will grows ever stronger. This strength originates in the mind.

You must believe that you have the ability to exhibit Spartan-esque toughness and soundness of mind.

You must practice giving the whole nine yards in the small events in life. If you cannot take small situations or jobs seriously and give them your maximum effort, you will never be able to give the maximum effort when it counts. Maximum effort is a habit.

Be faithful in little in order to be considered worthy to have the opportunity to be faithful in much (Luke 16:10). Every great work of architecture started with single bricks and planks of wood that were laid one piece at a time. Your character is that great structure, so do the work now that will allow you to have a tremendous character later in life.

Give the nine yards at all times.

Do not let the small events pass you by, others will notice if you cut corners or think you are above the small tasks.

Work like men.

Conduct yourselves like men.

David – Warlord – Warrior – Writer

We typically think of King David as the peaceful writer of the Psalms. He was the man who expressed his emotions so nobly and sincerely in his writing that most people picture him as emotional or as a “big softie”. I think this is a mistake and a result of only looking at David at the surface level. Sure, if you judge David by the Psalms alone, you will see his emotional being, but you must also look at his actions.

This brief article is dedicated to giving you an additional perspective on David so that you may think of his as the Warlord he was. David was a servant of God and a King inside his walls, but he was also a barbarian filled with bloodlust when it came time to step on the battlefield.

“And as the women danced, they sang out: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.” And Saul was furious and resented this song. “They have ascribed tens of thousands to David,” he said, “but only thousands to me. What more can he have but the kingdom?”
1 Samuel 18:7-8

What type of man has it in him to kills tens of thousands of people? Answer: A man with a barbaric will to kill. Modern soldiers today talk about traits that would be important in recruits who are looking to join the military. Jocko Willink says the two foundational characteristics of a soldier are “The will to kill and the will to die”. Without these a man cannot be a true warrior who performs to the best of his ability.

To put David’s number of kills in perspective, let’s think about not only the quantity but also the type of kills that David was accumulating.

These weren’t long distance kills with a gun from far away, these were face-to-face, hand-to-hand kills.

We would never disrespect or downplay the importance of modern military men, but these guys are not even having to look at the men they are killing much of the time, and they still get PTSD when they come home. Now imagine having to kill men face to face and what that must do to the psyche of a human being.

If shooting a man can give you PTSD, what would decapitating a man do to your mind? How would your mind handle impaling enemies or severing arms and legs and getting covered in their blood? What would splitting the skull of an enemy do to your mental state? This was the state of the old school warfare that David was engaging in, yet we still think of him primarily as peaceful and emotional.

May I suggest to you that a man capable of killing ten thousand men is an absolute warlord.

This man was a master of compartmentalization. Nothing could phase him. Still, the mental burden David carried must have been so tremendous that it would crush many of us men who are accustomed to the soft, modern world.

David was a man of war even from his youth. There was obviously some sort of warrior spirit in him before he ever even saw the field of combat. The Bible speaks about David:

“But David said to Saul, “Your servant used to keep his father’s sheep, and when a lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock,I went out after it and struck it, and delivered the lamb from its mouth; and when it arose against me, I caught it by its beard, and struck and killed it.Your servant has killed both lion and bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God.” Moreover David said, “The Lord, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”
1 Samuel 17:34-37

Anyone who has ever killed an animal, even a small one knows that taking life changes a man in specific ways. A man who has the fortitude to kill a bear by hand is a warrior.

The man who grabs a lion by the beard and kills it is able to channel his inner darkness into the craft of war.

David was killing animals from his youth and would eventually progress to the battlefield and take his first human life, as far as we know based on what was recorded. This is the account of David and Goliath. David would throw a stone directly into Goliath’s Forehead and then chop off his head with his own sword.

Now maybe it was somewhat of a cultural thing to chop heads and take them around, but that was still barbaric. Only a man of war could do such a thing. Even in socially acceptable animal kills like deer, men still get sick to their stomach the first time they gut the deer. Now imagine chopping off a human head, that is something that would be difficult to stomach. But it would nevertheless be fair play on the field of war.

So it was, when the Philistine arose and came and drew near to meet David, that David hurried and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine.Then David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone; and he slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead, so that the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the earth.So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. But there was no sword in the hand of David.Therefore David ran and stood over the Philistine, took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him, and cut off his head with it.
1 Samuel 17:48-51

David would then go on to live his life waging wars and killing men and yet simultaneously writing some of the most heartfelt songs and prayers ever recorded. How did he do this?

Extreme Compartmentalization

There is no doubt that David had to put his warlike nature in a box. This is necessary even today, and most men cannot do it. Many men engage in warfare and are damaged in their minds. They cannot bear the great burden of war and its consequences.

It could be that David also had forms of PTSD. No doubt there were nights when he would sit straight up in bed, awoken by a vivid dream recounting some of his battlefield kills. He likely dreamed he was being chased by men he had personally killed on the battlefield. Those types of dreams would have been a common side effect of such a large number of kills. David may have slept with Bathsheba to comfort his own mind because of how it was tormented from war. Or perhaps he was perfectly fine. Perhaps the mind of David was untroubled by all of the war he had engaged in, knowing it was righteous. Or perhaps David was not bothered because he had the very nature and spirit of a warlord.

Whatever the answer may be, you must begin to look at King David in a different light. He is not simply a mild-mannered writer of psalms. He is a man with blood on his hands. So much blood that God would not allow him to build the temple (2 Chronicles 22:5-10). You must also embody a warrior spirit in your own life by attacking your own weakness with warlike ferocity. You must compartmentalize your life so you are in command of your emotions. Attack everything with aggression and crush your enemies.

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