becoming too comfortable

It's been a long time since I have posted anything. This past week was incredibly busy as will be this coming week. We only have 2 weeks of classes and a week of finals left for this school year. Everything is beginning to wind down and because of that everything gets that much busier. Funny how that works. It always seems that those last few weeks before school is out are so hard that they really make you ready for a break whether you were ready or not before!

Today my pastor gave a really great sermon that seemed to apply to my life as well as anyone else who is busy at this time. It was about being "trained in Godliness". He got it from the verse in I Timothy 4:7 that says,

"Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives' tales: rather, train yourself to be godly."

Our pastor talked about what it meant to train. He said there must be effort, focus, discipline and pain. I especially liked the points he made on the 2 last words: discipline and pain. For discipline he said that is daily choosing the best in the midst of all the good that can be and that it is not when we choose the easy path, but the best path. So often I only see the easy path, because it's, well...easy. But this is not right. We should always aim to choose the best, because in the best is God's will.

For the point of pain he said that we live in a culture that teaches our greatest prize is convenience and comfort. This value, he said, is what is killing us. Pain is more about the idea of discomfort and inconvenience. We've begin to grow too comfortable and quit "training". He used the example of when a person goes to the gym. They can walk on a treadmill and lift weights, but until they push themselves and feel pain they are never going to fully train themselves. We can do all the right stuff like pray, go to church and read our Bible, but until we push ourselves we will never train.

One of his final points he made that I really like was this:

"The problem with mankind is not that we desire too much, but that we are satisfied with too little. God wants us to have it all."