Discipline

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Saturday morning, the 13th of September, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. We go to 1 Corinthians 9:27: ” But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.” I want to say to you, my dear friend, today, and this applies to me equally, as believers and followers of Jesus Christ, we have to live disciplined lives. Undeserved loving kindness, unmerited favour, that’s what grace is. We have been saved by grace through faith and that not of ourselves, for it was a gift from God. (Ephesians 2:8) but the Lord requires us to be good examples. Do not drop the ball, so to speak, by being a poor example to other believers and leading them astray. The other night, I was watching an interview on television for an upcoming international rugby match, a really important one between the All Blacks of New Zealand and the Springboks of South Africa. It was a very serious and intense discussion by rugby experts, and it was a panel of New Zealanders. The one interviewer asked one of the great All Black players, ”What is it that you think the team needs to concentrate on, when the Springboks come across to New Zealand because it’s going to be a very critical match?” I was quite interested to hear what this man said. He said one word, ”Discipline.” He said,“We’ve got the players, the talent, but if we do not discipline ourselves we can lose the match.” Because when you get a yellow card, the player has to go off the field for ten minutes, and if you get two players off the field, you are now down from fifteen to thirteen players and the opposition has a distinct advantage and you can lose the match just by the lack of discipline. I want to say to you today as believers, we need to watch how we are living because we can give the opposition, I’m talking about the devil, a chance to get the upper hand in our lives. We need to get up in the morning. We need to eat correctly. We need to exercise. We need to spend time in the Word. We need to pray. This is Paul speaking when he says, ”I discipline my body and bring it into subjection.” It means it must come into submission, so that you become a good example of what a Christian should be like. Today, let’s go out and discipline ourselves, and we will enjoy life a lot more as well. Jesus bless you and goodbye.