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Developing the Inner Drill Sergeant

Developing the Inner Drill Sergeant

“Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.”
2 Timothy 2:3 & 4

One of the problems with most men is the fact that they have negative self-talk and do not demand enough from themselves. We fail ourselves often because our standards are not high enough. In fact, most men cannot even reach low standards, much less the maximum standard that is required of a Christian man. What men need to do to combat this is to develop their inner drill sergeant.

A drill sergeant is a man who pushes army recruits through the army boot camp. A drill instructor is one who pushes marine recruits through the marine boot camp. You can watch a handful of videos online and see that these instructors seem like they are totally insane, but what they are doing to the men is completely controlled and calculated. Let us examine a few of the purposes of a drill instructor or sergeant and then learn why we must develop our own drill instructor in our minds.

A Drill Instructor Simulates the Panic of War

One of the purposes of boot camp is to get men used to the mayhem and chaos that they will experience in combat scenarios. Drill Instructors cannot give the men the actual experience of launching live fire (i.e. real bullets) at them, but they can give them the next best thing. Battle sounds, screaming, smoke and hard training can give men a basic introduction to combat.

A Drill Instructor Simulates Stresses and Hyper-Stimulates the Senses

Combat is no place for Zen meditation. Calmness and coolness under pressure are learned by being put under pressure, not by meditating on a soft pillow in a cool room with nature sounds coming from a noise machine. A drill instructor has to make sure that men are adapting and adjusting to combat sounds and stress. Men need to learn how to be calm during dangerous scenarios. The ability to be cool when you are in imminent danger is the type of skill that saves lives.

A Drill Instructor Accepts No Excuses

Blood could be dripping off your face. You could be vomiting on the ground or you could pass out from heat or dehydration, but it does not matter. You are expected to finish the job, training scenario or drill. Because even if you are bleeding, puking or passing out, the enemy will not call a “time out” and fan you back to consciousness while squirting water in your mouth. Men must learn to handle the physical demands of war or die. Drill instructors know this and will accept no excuses.

A Drill Sergeant Pushes Men Beyond the Limits of Their Limits

It is one thing to “go to the limit”, as if any of us truly knows what that is. But it is a completely different scenario to be pushed so far beyond your current “limitations” that you wonder how you could have been holding yourself back all these years. A drill sergeant will do just that for you. He will show you that the point where you thought you could do no more was just the beginning. He does not do this to torture you, he does this to show you that your limits are far beyond where you think they are now.

A Drill Sergeant is Brutal on The Men

Men are never physically assaulted by their drill sergeants, but that does not mean that they are given mental rest. The sergeant speaks to the men like dogs and trains them to ignore any outside stimulation. The only way the recruits can become hard is if they are treated brutally.

A Drill Sergeant Makes the Men Tougher

No one comes out of bootcamp as soft as they were before. That is the whole point of the training. You do not want to send men to war in the mental and physical condition that were in as civilians. Men must get tough if they are going to kill other men.

Recommended Reading: The Masculine Desire For War

Mantra

I will never accept “Good Enough” from myself.

Application

Even if you are like me and have never served in the military, it is still easy to appreciate everything these men endure for the greater good. It is easier to be grateful for the military now that we have countless documentaries that have recorded what these men went through and accomplished in their lives. You will find that thankfulness comes much easier after you watch a few video clips of men going through boot camp and being screamed at and trained at high levels. When you gain knowledge of the difficulties that others face in their lives, then it is much easier to be thankful for your own life and its luxury.

What you must do today is work to develop your own drill sergeant in your mind.

It does not matter what you think you are capable of now, you need a voice in your head that will always tell you the following truths:

You are not working hard enough, you can do more.
You have not reached your limitations; there is more effort left in your tank.
Whatever your current work output is, you should double it.
There is no honor in being weak and apathetic.
You have the responsibility to lead other men; would you follow yourself?
Your character is not good enough, work harder.
Your strength is not enough, train harder.
You must contribute more value to the world, learn and apply yourself.

The second you begin to feel yourself getting weak, you should imagine your sergeant is in your head and examining your current effort. Is he impressed by your intensity or embarrassed by your weakness?

The easiest place to learn to apply this principle is in your physical training. You are performing your exercise of choice and it begins to be painful. You reach your “limit” and consider stopping for the day.

Pull Out the Mental Drill Sergeant

That voice in your head should be screaming at you by this point. “This current level of effort is completely unacceptable. Is this how you take advantage of your freedom, by quitting like a pantywaist? No. You are better and stronger than that. Keep moving.”

Note: this is not negative self-talk. You are not telling yourself what a failure you are. You are telling yourself how much more you are capable of and expect of yourself. By telling yourself that there is more that you can achieve and that you are capable of working harder, you learn to tap into that extra work ethic you have buried in your mind.

You can eventually apply the same techniques to your spiritual life.

The minute you feel yourself slacking in your spiritual disciplines, unleash the sergeant. “Do you really think reading one single Bible verse is making you more spiritual? You are better than that. Do not excuse yourself by saying that you ‘don’t have time’ because you have plenty of time. You would not expect to improve your body by training for one minute, so do not expect to improve your soul by reading for 8 seconds. Work harder. You are capable of more”.

Apply the same principle to other areas of your life. If you find yourself losing control over yourself (Note Galatians 5:22) then you should be hearing the voice in your head: “No real man loses control over himself. You are capable of commanding your emotions. If you want a better life, then you better start controlling yourself. Have some character and improve because this current behavior is unacceptable”. You get the picture for how to apply this. It does not really matter what you are saying to yourself in your mind as long as it drives you to work harder.

Learning to push yourself in this way does not happen instantaneously. The biggest mistake so many people make when beginning any new technique or habit like this is that they expect instant, massive results in exchange for minimal effort. What you should aim for is small amounts of progress each day.

If you pushed yourself farther and harder than yesterday, then consider the day a success.

If you got your mental drill sergeant to yell at you a little and drive you harder, then consider the day a success.

By making small progress every day, you will eventually look up and notice that you have completely left your peer group behind. Now you need a new peer group of men who want to perform better and achieve more in their personal lives and careers. So, get moving now and leave your peer group behind. You do not want your life to be limited by their influence on you.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Lay the Ax to The Root

Jesus talks in His sermon on the mount about how we should sever body parts if they cause us to sin. “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it out and cast it from you” and “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you” citing that “it is better to enter into heaven lame, maimed or blind than to enter into hell with a whole body.

This seems a little extreme if we were to take it literally.

It would be painful to cut off our hand, and inconvenient to cut out our eye just because it is causing us to stumble here and there. What does Jesus mean? Surely He does not mean that we are literally supposed to cut off pieces of ourselves. That would be damaging the body He designed and the body that is supposed to be the temple of the Spirit.

Christ is using hyperbole to illustrate how we must lay our ax to the root of sin and cut it off at its most basic source.

You look at pornography and lust after the images, does that mean you should cut out your eyes? No. Does that mean you should get rid of your computer and replace your smart phone with a flip phone? Yes. This is extreme, but it is necessary for you, since you are a “hopeless” addict. Lax your ax to the root of the problem.

Anxiety is causing you to sin, what do you do? Find the root. Are you watching the news, becoming entangled with world politics that mean nothing on the eternal scale? If this is the source of your anxiety, cut it off.

Cut cable TV.
Block news sites on your computer. News sites are almost as toxic as porn sites. Cut the unnecessary events that are causing you anxiety. Lay your ax to the root.

Do you impose jealousy and envy on yourself? Cut your social media.

Not only is media a waste of time that does not improve you one bit, but it is the source of the majority of envy we see today.

Same with People Magazine or any other moronic media outlet. Cut these off, your envy will subside. Lay your ax to the root.

All of our evil must be attacked at the core, at the very root. If we do not cut off our behavior at the very root, it will spring back up given enough time. Many trees can regrow after being cut down to a stump. New branches and leaves grow out of the stump and the tree starts over because the root system is still intact. However, No tree can survive being cut off from its source of nourishment. For this reason we lay an ax to the root of our evil.

Fully remove evil from yourself. Remove every possible entrance of sin. This is inconvenient and uncomfortable, but it is necessary. Better to enter into heaven having lived your whole life without social media or television than to enter into hell because your worldly interests and negative habits eventually led you away form the faith.

We must kill sin at the root everywhere we can.

It may be hard to throw a computer out a window because we “need” it for work. So we must Install software that isolates the function of your computer to a few select applications. This guarantees that you use your computer for work only.

Set up programs that do not allow News media, social media and porn. This is a simple equation, but few have the guts to make it happen. We are too attached to our comforts. Men must learn how to exist outside the comfort zone. We must cut every unnecessary outlet from our lives. You must be productive and focused. You do not want to look back on your life and realize you spent all of it on social media, politics and lust of the flesh. We have to focus on our true work, living a meaningful life of righteousness.

The Problem of Profanity

This is the Thesis of the problem of cursing: The problem with cursing is NOT THE WORDS THEMSELVES, it is the hatred behind the words. Curse words are the verbal manifestation of hatred towards our fellow humans.

Language Warning

Some modern curse words/profanity will be written. This is in order to examine them in context.

Words are words. Why are certain arrangements of syllables and sound frequencies sinful while others are fine?

Break it down to the most simple elements. Are some elements of sound sinful and if so, who gets to decide which ones are evil?

This is the Thesis of the problem of cursing: The problem with cursing is NOT THE WORDS THEMSELVES, it is the hatred behind the words.

Curse words are the verbal manifestation of hatred towards our fellow humans. If love is concern for the well-being of someone else, then hate is indifference or the desire for evil to befall another person.

Curse words are simply that, words that manifests our desire for a curse to befall someone else. Seems obvious.

“F*** That guy” – Manifestation of negative emotion targeted at another human being. That’s all these words are, and they are good for nothing.

That is cursing with regards to mankind, but what about swearing out of frustration?

Most Christian arguments on curse words are weak. Which is why I’m not fully convinced of the sinful nature of words alone or what makes them sinful based on those arguments.

“Don’t say bad words sonny, they are bad” is the way most arguments go. That is a stupid argument. Christians, especially right-leaning conservatives, tend to focus on the words alone, rather than what is behind the words. They are always worried about the symptoms of sin, rarely ever do they track sin to the root.

Yes, taking heroine is bad, but what takes a person so deep into the abyss that they need heroine to begin with? Those are the questions conservatives miss out on. Yes, we are told to not use coarse jesting or language, but who decides what is sinful?

Yes we are not supposed to let any curse come out of our mouth. But how do we know what a curse is? Unfortunately, I don’t see where the Bible explicitly defines that for us. Besides some Old Testament examples where prophets were literally asked to curse people, such as in the case of Balaam.

Yes, we are not supposed to speak idle words, but what in the world is an idle word?

All these questions are difficult to answer, and I am not convinced they can be answered. At least without some level of personal opinion being injected into them. So I will not try to answer them for you.

You can’t say some curses are sinful, and then use some other unknown curse or euphemism that society has not decided is bad and say, “I have not sinned!”. If you are speaking hateful words to a brother then you are manifesting the same hatred towards him that you would if you were using a socially deemed curse word.

You do not have to use curse words to express hatred towards someone else. Speaking in an ungodly way towards a brother, that is the problem. You are manifesting hatred towards the mankind that God wants to be saved, that is the problem. When you use a word or euphemism or alternate curse word, it’s all the same as cursing if the intent behind the word is hatred.

Societal implication

The Christian argument against cursing that claims we align ourselves with the world when we use profanity. When we use profanity, we are in the world and of the world. Instead of in the world but NOT of the world. There is no distinction between us and the world when we curse. This is a problem. We are meant to be odd. Avoiding profanity is exceedingly odd in a modern day society.

Not to mention that profanity is simply socially unsavory. No one wants to be around the guy that swears like a sailor all day. It’s annoying. Don’t give me that nonsense of “Oh I’m a passionate person, I have to curse”. So what? I’m passionate. That doesn’t mean I go around having sex with with every woman I can find to express that “passion”.

When Peter was denying Christ, one of the things he did to show he could not possibly have been a disciple was to curse.

What better way to separate oneself from righteousness in the eyes of others than to use profanity. Cursing is verbal worldliness.

If some words are bad when used in frustration, then all are bad if used in surprise or frustration. It does not matter whether or not society deems them profane. Exclaiming “Rats” upon hearing bad news is just as sinful as exclaiming “Shit”. Maybe these are what constitute “idle words”. Words that are a waste of time. Ones that don’t serve any purpose. Words that are empty and fill nothing are as good as curse words and we will be held accountable for them.

Context Matters

How are words used? What are their context? This seems to be the defining characteristic between a curse word and just a regular word. A preacher states from the pulpit that, “Sin will damn you to hell”. To say that is fine, but to say to an actual person “damn you to hell” is wrong. The logic comes across as shaky. But it seems that the difference here is targeting curse words at another individual rather than making a statement.

*Most popular words society uses:

Fuck – Adj. To have sexual intercourse with

Shit – excrement

Ass – buttocks

Hell – home of the devil and his angels

Damn – to suggest that someone/something be sent to hell

Cunt/twat/Pussy – Vagina

Dick – Penis

Definitely not an exhaustive list, but what do these have in common?

Society has deemed them bad.

People use them to curse each other with.

Why are these words bad? Because society or the Church says so? It’s circular logic. You could argue that some of those are bad based on definition alone, but the others are only bad because of societal implications. I really think that it doesn’t matter what words you use. If you are using them with the intention to curse another man or manifest hate towards him, then you are cursing. Otherwise we can just change letters in these words and they are “okay”, as we have done with euphemisms.

This is the restated point: the problem with curse words is not the words themselves, but the hatred behind the words.

Hateful words targeted towards fellow humans are curse words. The secondary reason is that curse words cause us to be associated with the world, which we are not to be apart of.

At the end of the day, it’s safer to just avoid using these words all together. They are a waste of time, and using them reflects our lack of discipline over our mouth.

“The tongue can no man tame. It is an unruly evil, filled with deadly poison” – James 3:8

Discipline

-There is no better fitting characteristic of a disciple than discipline. Discipline says, “I will do what I must without wavering. Regardless of convenience, regardless of how I feel in the present moment”.

-For some reason Christians have it in their head that they have to ‘feel’ a certain way in order to do something. They think they have to feel a certain way in order for their worship to be good or acceptable.

Last time I checked, the quality of our worship is not based on how we feel emotionally in the present moment.

Jesus said that those who would worship Him would do so in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). Not spirit and emotion. Not emotion and truth. Spirit and Truth.

Spirit. Truth. These are the disciplines that comprise meaningful worship. Emotion may sometimes be useful, but it is not required. Emotion would be an extremely insecure and unstable foundation on which to base anything, yet for some reason we try to base our worship on these emotions. Jesus said that people would honor Him with their lips but have their hearts far from Him (Matt 15:8). When we focus on our own emotions in worship, we aren’t focusing on God, we are honoring Him with lips while our heart is focused on ourselves. That is undisciplined worship.

The quality of discipline is the ability to force yourself to do something good even when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you don’t feel like it.

There is no ‘when I feel like it’, there is only discipline. No ‘feeling’ like showing up to community outreach day is required, there is only showing up. There is no ‘feeling’ like singing “I’ll fly away” for the eight hundredth time, there is only singing it. You don’t have to be emotional to have a good attitude and to have discipline.

It is for this reason that when God commands us to do things, he doesn’t add caveats that require us to feel a certain way when doing them.

It would be a living nightmare if every time we had to do something we were required to feel emotion. Emotions are just chemical reaction in the brain anyways.

God made us, and He knew we wouldn’t get a dopamine rush every time we do what is right. He knew we wouldn’t be happy every time we sing “In Christ Alone”.

Because that’s what emotion is, a biochemical cocktail in the brain, and it’s not consistent.

We cannot guarantee that chemical mixture every single time we do something, that doesn’t work biochemically.

Sure, there are times when we do what is right and everything lines up perfectly. We feel like doing something, we want to do it and it goes well. Then we feel good afterwards and feel satisfied with what we did. But that doesn’t happen every single time. Sometimes we have to do what’s right simply because it’s what God said. And we must force ourselves to do it with discipline.

We aren’t going to feel like keeping a lot of the commands, and that is why they are commands.

They go against what our flesh wants, they go against what we desire emotionally. This is why we have to deny ourselves. We have to avoid things that are otherwise desirable to our primal instincts.

We are commanded to avoid sexual immorality even though we really want sex with multiple partners. We are commanded to love our enemy, even though we feel like destroying him. We are commanded love our neighbor when we really would rather just ignore him. We are commanded to keep pure speech even though we would rather say every single thing we think.

Think about this: God gives a command that you don’t feel like keeping, but you keep it anyways through discipline.

That is the ideal. This is virtue: To know what’s right and do it even though you don’t want to and even in the face of massive temptation. This is also discipline.

If I feel like keeping the command, then so what if I keep it? I didn’t have to resist or force huge effort into being righteous, therefore I didn’t grow. There is no growth possible in anything without some form of discomfort. There is no discipline in doing what’s right merely when we feel like it. It’s what we do when we don’t feel like it that defines us.

Discipline keeps us faithful even when rationality runs dry.

Discipline keeps us on the straight and narrow. Discipline will outlast logic and reasoning and emotion.

-You aren’t always going to feel like reading your Bible. You won’t feel like singing, praying or being grateful. You won’t feel joyous, calm or enjoy listening to the sermon. Sometimes the only thing you have is discipline.

Discipline yourself to find meaning in the lyrics of the hymn you have sung thousands of times.

The Discipline to focus on the prayer when God “feels” absent from your life.

Discipline to read the Bible every single day without fail, without excuse.

The Discipline to hide the Word of God in our hearts every single day.

Discipline to be grateful even in times of lack.

The Discipline to be joyous in times of suffering.

These aren’t feel good statements, they are what we must do consistently. Every day even when and especially when we do not feel like it. This is discipline.

Endure The Pain of Change

The pain barrier breaks us down every time. The pain barrier makes us stop writing when we have 500 more words in our mind. It makes us stop running when we can go faster. It makes us stop lifting when there are a dozen more potential reps. Pain makes us binge watch on Netflix or eat sugar when we are emotional. It makes us fall back into comfortable addiction of sloth and lust.

It makes us do these things because we let it.

The pain embodies itself in the darkness, and in the isolation of quiet thought it attacks. When there are no other thoughts in the mind, the darkness will rush to fill it. Pain crashes upon the mind with an onslaught of vicious lies. It gags the mouth of positive reason and gouges out the eyes of hope in an instant. Pain slays the rational mind. Darkness tells you that the end result is not worth the renovation of character.

Still, most pain only exists in the mind. We suffer primarily in our imaginations, not in reality. The fear of pain is itself a pain so great that it shuts down any movement towards growth.

1 – The process of change is painful. The first instance of pain is the blow dealt to the ego that is the result of acknowledging a wrong. Change cannot begin until one realizes that some portion of his current character is insufficient. Humility must come into the mind before any change can begin. The ego is injured, it must take a seat.

To begin the change, you must suffer the pain of humility

2 – The second part of pain is beginning to shift away from ingrained behaviors that are the results of thousands of mindless actions. Mindless eating, video games, television and social media reading. The Mindless chatter of small talk. Mindless laziness and lies. All these things become automatized and take on a mind of their own in the unconscious and subconscious.

The automaton of habit is alive, and to engage it in battle is painful. You sustain injuries. The automaton was built by your actions over time. To destroy it is to destroy a part of yourself, this is painful.

Many stop fighting right here. When you stop fighting, you die.

Eventually you see the light at the end of the tunnel, if you persevere. The tables turn and the process of change swings to your favor. The automaton weakens and shrinks. His energy source is your personal weakness and it begins to vanish away. You see the value of perseverance and discipline. You begin to see the fruits of all your labor.

To defeat yourself, you must endure the pain of repeated failure and perseverance.

3 – If you destroy the old habit, you have to build a new one through conscious effort and discipline. Consistent Discipline over long periods of time. Actions should be consciously taken until they can be done without thought, this is habit. You are the New Being of character.

Building this character requires that you suffer the pain of patience.

4 – Even though the new character trait you have build is automatic, it still must be maintained. Joints must be lubricated and cleaned. Energy sources must be maintained. Parts and pieces must be adjusted, upgraded or replaced. The new character must never be left totally unsupervised. Because at any instant, one small action can send you spiraling back to the original behavior that you worked so hard to change. Character and habit have to be sustained over the lifespan.

To do this you must suffer the pain of endurance.

The pain of a change is for a moment, and maintaining a new habit requires much less effort. The benefits of positive change last a lifetime, and are worth the pain it took to build it from the ground.

Change is not the inspirational quote from a cheap devotional book. You cannot buy discipline from a devo book that roots itself in emotionalism. Emotions will not maintain your change for the long term. This is why mankind lacks the character refinement of the past.

There is no refinement without fire, and there is no fire in society today.

We have minimal persecution, non-existent problems. We have everything we need and still think we have it hard. There is no fire, so we have to provide our own. The fire is going to burn out the impurities of character, but it is also going to hurt us.

However, do not let the pain or the fear of pain scare you away from the gigantic potential for personal growth. Walk through the fire of change today if you want to know the peace of character tomorrow.

Spartan Christianity

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