focus Archives - Spartan Christianity

Vigilance

Vigilance is a variation on consciousness. While consciousness aims to be more aware in life in general, vigilance aims to be more conscious and aware of the enemy and his position on the battlefield.

Vigilance is commonly thought of as a defensive position, but it is also offensive.

“Be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil roams about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour”.
1 Peter 5:8

Be watchful of the enemy, for the enemy is watchful of you. He is patiently waiting for you to show signs of weakness, for you to show just one chink in your armor or one moment where you are tired so he can destroy you. The enemy lies in wait to shed blood. He waits for your focus to waiver.

If you are not watchful, you will be utterly destroyed.

You examine the battlefield and examine the enemy, so that when you notice a situation is odd, you can destroy the temptation before it can even start.

“If I think an enemy is going to attack me – I’m going to attack them first.
If I think they are going to seize a piece of terrain – I am going to be there waiting for them.
If I think the enemy is going to flank me – too late – I’m already flanking them”
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual

Weak men are never aware of their surroundings and are destroyed. Their destruction may not be apparent to them because it is a slow developing disease that manifests itself in the lack of progression and growth of the individual. “Maintenance” is just modulated decay.

A person can be consumed by the enemy and still walk around thinking everything is fine. It is a pain free, symptomless disease. The enemy lives a parasitic existence feeding on the host – the beta male. The enemy does not need to ruin your career, marriage and perfect church attendance streak to destroy you, instead he just needs to keep you from moving forward and improving.

“It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Be vigilant so that you can recognize the signs, and avoid the trap of the weak minded boys in the Church. Improvement is the best way to fend off evil, and vigilance manifests itself in the flexibility of the individual, and his willingness to change all his current plans to crush the enemy.

Mantra

I am aware, I am vigilant

Application

Co-workers gossiping by the water cooler? Trap.

Alone with your girlfriend? Trap.

Alone with your computer? Trap.

These traps must be planned for in advance because you want to crush them when they appear.

Avoid the water cooler.

Double date.

Install filters.

The tactics are not difficult to understand. Application is difficult. Crush the enemy and utterly drive him from the face of the earth.

Conduct Yourselves like Men.

Concentration

The ability to concentrate is exceedingly rare. So rare that it is incredibly impressive when you find someone who can concentrate consistently. So impressive is the concentrated man that he is invited to give public speeches just to talk about this rare “gift” he has. It is no gift, it is a skill built over time.

Developing the skill of concentration will immediately improve your value to society.

“Concentrate your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”
Colossians 3:2

You walk out of the church building. You didn’t hear a word of the sermon, can’t remember a single thing that was said the whole morning. Why? You couldn’t stop thinking about football. You couldn’t stop thinking about sex. Maybe you were thinking about eating lunch, taking a nap and playing video games later. You have no concentration.

Inability to concentrate is one of the hallmarks of a beta.

Literally, beta brain waves are associated with awakeness and alertness, but they are also rapid and unfocused. Alpha brain waves are present when you are asleep, or practicing meditation or mindfulness. This is the difference: Alpha waves represent a more mindful and focused state of mind while beta waves represent the complete lack of focus that most men have. Beta waves are jittery like a rabbit, just like the majority of weak men. This is also why mindful meditation is incredibly important.

The inability to concentrate is the cumulative effect of years of not even trying to concentrate.

A person with concentration has done the opposite if this. His focus is the cumulative effect of years of practice and dedication to the art of concentration.

You too can build this level of concentration.

Make concentration a priority for the sake of your worship.

Build your focus so that when time calls for it you can work and destroy any task at hand, or so you can worship in spirit and in truth.

Mantra

Complete Concentration

Application

Research the idea of “Access Concentration”. (Try this). The exercises are simple, but they build focus. One exercise is to lightly pinch your index and thumb, and concentrate completely on the sensation between the fingers. The pressure is very light, very difficult to stay focused on, but it builds the concentration skill.

Apply concentration to your work. Whatever the task at hand is, concentrate completely on it until it is finished. Your concentration muscle will be weak, so build it. Don’t be discouraged by your complete lack of concentration at first. Most men fail at building any habit just because they want results too quickly. This is the state of society. Earn it. Work for it. Do not be the pathetic man who wants overnight results, be willing to put the effort in to building concentration, or to building any habit you want.

Another tool for building concentration is to eliminate distraction. Everyone knows this, but so few apply this tactic. It is simple, remove every unnecessary, distracting item from your workspace. Make it so you have nothing to do but work when you are in your work area. Set up some filters on your computer to block social media between various work hours of the day. (Try getcoldturkey.com).

If you eliminate distraction, you can accomplish in 3 hours what used to take you 9.

Use that efficiency to be successful.

Set small time goals for concentration before you attempt long spans of time. If you cannot concentrate for 15 minutes, then trying to concentrate for an hour is going to get you nowhere. You have to build up to those numbers through training. When you do your concentration exercises, make the first goals very small and achievable.

Aim for 1-2 minutes at first. Only when you can complete those 1-2 minutes with perfect focus (no intruding thoughts, pure mind control) should you move up and attempt 3-5 minutes. Slowly level up your training and don’t expect immediate results. Improvement always takes time. Endure the pain of change.

Conduct yourselves like men

Focus

No time to read? Listen to “Focus” on Youtube:

Proverbs 4:25 – “Let your eyes look straight ahead, And your eyelids look right before you.”

Colossians 3:2 – “Set your focus on things above, not on things of the earth.”

You are already second guessing that new year’s resolution you made, or are going to make, even if it isn’t the new year. Why? Because you assumed that after years of eating like a pig, or having a rubbish marriage, being lazy, or avoiding any work outside your soul-crushing 9-5 that suddenly the sky would open up and God Himself would deliver unto thee the willpower to change unsatisfactory habits you have cultivated for years. That is a recipe for failure.

Whether you start this book on January 1st or the middle of the year, either way this is day one, and it’s time to resolve yourself to change. To make a resolution is to decide to be resolute, meaning set in purpose, firm in determination. Having purpose and firmness and being grounded in why you want to change.

You must lay before yourself the ideal of whom you wish to be and contemplate it fully, every day. This focused vision creates the drive to endure the pain of change and fix your problems. Fix your weaknesses. Fix the inconsistencies that make you less of the man that you know you can be.

Mantra

I am focused. I will focus. I am the embodiment of focus.

Application

Choose one task that you will solely and completely focus on for two minutes. Pure focus, no distractions. Repeat this daily until you can manage the two minutes with relative ease, then increase it to three minutes. Adding focus to your skillset will increase your workplace market value by ten dollars per hour instantly, and it will give the the firm and most fundamental skill you will need to become a better man.

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.