Spiritual Discipline
(Another spiritual attribute for the new creature’s foundation in you).

• An attribute that the new creature in you that must be a part of your spiritual foundation as well as being displayed in the earth is spiritual discipline.
• As a new creature in Christ, you manifest and display the quality or characteristics of Jesus in the measure of His perfection in you as He reaches His full stature in you.
• According to the dictionary discipline is the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience; train (someone) to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience; a system of rules of conduct; control; regulation; direction; order; rule; authority.
The King James Bible dictionary definition is:
• To instruct or educate; to inform the mind; to prepare by instructing in correct principles and habits; as, to discipline youth for a profession, or for future usefulness. 2. To instruct and govern; to teach rules and practice, and accustomed to order and subordination; as, to discipline troops or an army. 3. To correct; to chastise; to punish. 4. To execute the laws of the church on offenders, with a view to bringing them to repentance and reformation of life. 5. To advance and prepare by instruction.
• Disciplining is instructing; educating; subjecting to order and subordination; correcting; chastising; admonishing; punishing.
• Let’s not misunderstand leaders and believers when the scripture teaches us in Hebrews 13:17-18 to 17 “obey those that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you. 18 Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly.
• Many leaders have taken these verses of scripture to use for their own selfish, prideful, and greedy reasoning to manipulate, deceive, and even chastise God’s people when in fact they are not spiritual leaders but selfish hirelings.
• Their authority must be the Spirit of God over you and not the spirit of their flesh activated through their feelings.
• God did not give us Pastors according to His feelings or their feelings but according to His heart which shall feed the flock of God with the spiritual knowledge, understanding, and wisdom of God and God’s heart to lead them to Him and to feed them of Him.
• If Pastors don’t do according to the heart and Will of God it is impossible for them to watch over your soul and guard your spiritual welfare, though they try to function as and perform as a Pastor but based upon tradition and religion man’s way.
• Many Pastors and leaders don’t have a clear or clean conscience that will enable them to walk upright before God, be in right standing with God, and live a life that is noble, honorable, and honest before God and His people.
• Psalm 24:4 KJV Amplified says He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted himself up to falsehood or to what is false, nor sworn deceitfully.
• This is spiritual ruling, not fleshly ruling that is practical, natural, or physical with threats although this is how many operate, and function then call it the Spirit of God.
• In Job 36:10 KJV Amplified refers to moral discipline, the strenuous cultivation of the new life being transformed into a righteous life and righteous lifestyle in earth.
36.10 He also opens their ears to instruction and discipline, and commands that they return from iniquity.
36.11 If they obey and serve Him, they shall spend their days in prosperity and their years in pleasantness and joy.
36.12 But if they obey not, they shall perish by the sword [of God’s destructive judgments], and they shall die in ignorance of true knowledge.
• Many people that have made their confession to Salvation die this way in their form of godliness and even those that continue to reject God and His righteousness.
• God created us in His own image meaning we have His Spirit nature which is the spirit of man, and we have His moral character which is the soul of Man; and we were made in His likeness meaning we have “the ability to function like Him”. (Genesis 1:26-27).
• Spiritual discipline is an admonishing or calling to soundness or to self-control.
• 2 Timothy 1:7KJV Amplified For God did not give us a spirit of timidity (of cowardice, of craven and cringing and fawning fear), but [He has given us a spirit] of power and of love and of calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control.
• Self-control is part of the fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23 known as temperance (abstinence, the quality of moderation or self-restraint).
• Temperance is a characteristic of Christ used to restrain through self-control the Will of your flesh once crucified or as it is being crucified.
• To be of sound mind is to have the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5).
• To be of a sound mind is to have a proper faculty of reason or rationality in faith and not fear.
• Spiritual discipline is God’s discipline as is compared to that of a loving Father. It is a sign of His love and care for His children. He delights in this the same as it pleased Him to bruise His Son Jesus.
• Isaiah 53:10 KJV Amplified Yet it was the Will of the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief and made Him sick. When you and He make His life an offering for sin [and He has risen from the dead, in time to come]. He shall see His [spiritual] offspring, He shall prolong His days, and the Will and pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
• We are the spiritual offsprings of Jesus Christ born of the seed of God.
• We are the product of God’s reproduction through His Son Jesus.
• Hebrews 12:5-11 KJV Amplified encourages us to not lose heart under God’s discipline that comes with your Salvation.
12.5 And have you [completely] forgotten the divine word of appeal and encouragement in which you are reasoned with and addressed as sons? My son, do not think lightly or scorn to submit to the correction and discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage and give up and faint when you are reproved or corrected by Him;
12.6 For the Lord corrects and disciplines everyone whom He loves, and He punishes, even scourges, every son whom He accepts and welcomes to His heart and cherishes.
12.7 You must submit to and endure [correction] for discipline; God is dealing with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not [thus] train and correct and discipline?
12.8 Now if you are exempt from correction and left without discipline in which all [of God’s children] share, then you are illegitimate offspring (bastards) and not true sons [at all].
12.9 Moreover, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we yielded [to them] and respected [them for training us]. Shall we not much more cheerfully submit to the Father of Spirits and so [truly] live?
12.10 For [our earthly fathers] disciplined us for only a short period of time and chastised us as seemed proper and good to them; but he disciplines us for our certain good, that we may become sharers in His own holiness.
12.11 For the time being no discipline brings joy, but seems grievous and painful; but afterwards it yields a peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it [a harvest of fruit which consists in righteousness – in conformity to God’s Will in purpose, thought, and action, resulting in right living and right standing with God].
• We all as new creatures in Christ must learn self-discipline, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 KJV Amplified.
• Paul refers to an athlete in training to win a crown and how he exercises self-control and discipline in life.
9.24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but [only] one receives the prize? So run [your race] that you may lay hold [of the prize] and make it yours.
9.25 Now every athlete who goes into training conducts himself temperately and restricts himself in all things. They do it to win a wreath that will soon wither, but we [do it to receive a crown of eternal blessedness] that cannot wither.
9.26 Therefore I do not run uncertainly (without definite aim). I do not box like one beating the air and striking without an adversary. (Note: this is why you must know your positioned called into).
9.27 But [like a boxer] I buffet my body [handle it roughly, discipline it by hardships] and subdue it, for fear that after proclaiming to others the Gospel and things pertaining to it, I myself should become unfit [not stand the test, be unapproved and rejected as a counterfeit].
• Spiritual disciplined is God’s way of preparing us for eternity.
• Suffering and sacrificing for the namesake of Jesus Christ is the crown in the earth while you are living not when you die.
• Romans 8:18 KJV Amplified [But what of that?] For I consider that the sufferings of this present time (this present life) are not worth being compared with the glory that is about to be revealed to us and in us and for us and conferred on us!
• James 1:12 KJV Amplified Blessed (happy, to be envied) is the man who is patient under trial and stands up under temptation, for when he has stood the test and been approved, he will receive [the victor’s] crown of life which God has promised to those who love Him.
• This is a spiritual view of your success in Christ is the earth not carnal or natural!
• The Word of God is our encouragement to love God and His discipline He uses to get rid of your flesh, its lust, habits, desires, behavior, and practices that has you in bondage and servitude to it.
• Being spiritually disciplined begins with being delivered from your old nature.
• Spiritual discipline is the reason many believers lack spirituality God’s Way because they are still ensnared or entangled in their confession of Salvation that made them free from sin and death to stop their in their race and failing to allow the Spirit of God and His Word to build their spiritual foundation in Christ.
• The flesh is primarily earthly and materialistic. It is carnal, sensual, and worldly.
• Your flesh job is to make it hard and impossible for you to surrender your whole self (heart, mind, spirit, soul, body, and strength) over to the Will of God because we want to keep our bodies with the flesh to ourselves.
To be disciplined in the Spirit
• Spiritual disciplines are biblical practices that all believers born-again must engage in to grow spiritually in Christ.
• To be disciplined in the Spirit is to have a clean heart created in you by God the Father.
• To be disciplined in the Spirit is to rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him and His command, not your feelings.
• To be disciplined in the Spirit is to delight yourself in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart which will be His desires also.
• These spiritual practices will help us to draw closer to God through Jesus, understand His Will for our lives, and live according to His pleasure and desires for you, and not what you feel or want to do for Him.
• Praying in the Will of God; meditating on the scriptures; fasting; praising and worshipping God, and serving others are examples of spiritual disciplines that will cause you to be in sync and aligned with the Spirit of God in Heaven so as it is in the earth.
• With spiritual discipline there will be no presumptuous prophecies, inappropriate prayers, not knowing what to feed His flock, basing things upon your feelings and what someone did to you. You will have peace and order that is in His Will.
• To be disciplined in the Spirit is to obey the Holy Spirit dwelling in you who has the rule over you, and you will govern yourself spiritually and according to the Spirit.
• To be disciplined in the Spirit is your spiritual mark of being a good soldier in the Army of the Lord; to endure the hardness of the dying of your flesh and Will as a good soldier.
• Your spiritual warfare begins with taking the dominion back over you and your Will to be like Jesus first.
• It is made easy once you are spiritually disciplined by the Spirit of God in your spiritual transformation into a new creature in Christ.

Amen

Wednesday, May 15, 2024, Apostle Tracey Robinson