The Will To Sustain A Gift.

Understanding Your Will Power and Spiritual Discipline.

Introduction

Have you ever become a master at something and then you go through the experience of losing the Midas touch? I’m sure you can relate to this so let me tell you about one of the most recent times it has happened to me. One gift that God has given me is the gift of encouragement but at some point it felt like it disappeared. He has called me not just to encourage people with my words but encourage people with the life that I live.

Three years ago I felt a strong desire to delete all of my pictures from my instagram page. I didn’t know why at the time, but I simply went ahead and did it. My page was a reflection of my lifestyle; innocently playful on the surface but the man behind the pictures was sick both mentally and physically. It was a projection of the good life, nothing sinful or disruptive but an honest picture of my lifestyle. A young man "having a good time” and documenting it for his friends to see. When I decided to get rid of all the pictures on my page, it left some people confused. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand the reason behind it either. All I knew was that I was battling illness and depression with a smile on my face and a drink in my hand. When things started to get better, my number one priority was to get fit and strong once again.

From Monday to Saturday I would be in the gym and while I was there I would take photos and videos of myself to document my progress. A year down the line, I had a bunch of pictures and videos on my phone and an empty instagram page; then it clicked. God wanted me to share what I had been doing with my life. With no reasoning behind it, I simply followed the instructions. My life became seemingly boring; and all I did was go to the gym, go on walks and read my Bible. I would constantly think to myself, “there is nothing for people to see here, but my lifestyle is keeping me alive and I just thank God to be alive”. But on the 25th March 2022, I mustered up the courage to share my first post on instagram in almost 2 years. It was a video of my early morning walks which became a regular part of my routine. Then I started sharing posts of my fitness journey over the last year and I began to understand what the gift of encouragement truly was. A stimulant that inspires people to be better from the life that one lives. As I began to share my self improvement journey; friends, family and even strangers began to take a look at their lives and embark on the journey themselves.

This eventually led to the birth of The Back To Square One Podcast where I shared my story, the lessons I learnt and the practical things I was doing to make my life better. One of the practices I spoke about was the 5am morning routine. A life changing practice that increased productivity and mental clarity in my life. It started off as a nudge from God to start my days early and in his solitary presence. Over time it became a habit that was deeply planted into my everyday lifestyle. It became so natural to me that I no longer had to set an alarm to wake up. Therefore, I believed I became a master at consistently keeping the routines and practices that saved my life. However things took a sharp turn leading into this year. As I was about to start recording the second season of the podcast, keeping up with the lifestyle I preached became harder and harder. I would no longer wake up early, my schedule was in disarray, and I had a whole host of people looking to me to teach them how to get their lives in order. Initially I couldn’t understand why this was the case. I was genuinely trying my best to be disciplined but things continually failed to work in my favour. My lifestyle went from a routine that gave me peace to a routine that stripped all the peace away as I had to strived to maintain it.

In recent months, things have gotten better, or gone back to square one shall I say. However I have finally come to the realisation of the most important lesson in my life. God gave me the vision for my life and God also provided the routine. But I reached a point where I believed in my own efforts to sustain what was given to me freely. In order for me to understand this, God had to temporarily take me out of my pattern of living so that I won't make the mistake of teaching you that your self discipline and consistency is maintained through your limited human capacity. Whatever has been given to you by the grace of God is also sustained by the grace of God. Have you ever found yourself in a rhythm of operating with great ease and success; and then all of a sudden it becomes such a chore to maintain? You need to understand that self-reliance is equal to self-sustenance and it is human pride that subtly pulls God out of the equation.

Your Willpower is NOT Spiritual Discipline

If you happen to be struggling in getting things right and parts of your life seem like a constant battle, you might need to take yourself out of the way. Using your will power will not get you very far especially if you are submitted to the will of God. Will power can simply be defined as the power of your will. The problem with your will isn’t just its power, but its inclination to self-destruct (Proverbs 14:12). The omniscient nature of the divine understands that your will can destroy you, the omnipotent nature of the divine will therefore stop you, and the omnibenevolent nature of the divine is the reason why you have been stopped. The point I am trying to make to you is that the love of God combined with the power and knowledge of God might be the reason behind the disruption of your actions and desires. If I was able to successfully record the podcast through my willpower, the only seed that would have grown within me would have been the seed of pride. God doesn’t show in the areas that pride grows. This root of pride lies in the confidence you may be putting in your own abilities to sustain something that was given to you by God (Philippians 3:3-4).

The key to true consistency lies in understanding and yielding to spiritual discipline as you forego the power of your will. Spiritual discipline looks like coming to the throne of God’s grace every time you hit a roadblock and understanding that the empowerment to persevere should never be self-developed. Otherwise your perseverance will only be empowered by pride. Therefore personal development with God takes the repurposing of trust from your ways to his ways. It develops the understanding of discipline as the evidence of God’s love so when something isn’t working out, your perspective changes from looking at man's rejection to understanding God’s protection (Hebrews 12:5-6). Ultimately, spiritual discipline is understanding that everything in your life worth acknowledging has a spiritual root; which means God has a part to play in it. So your mindset has to be one that is all encompassing of an earthly submission to its heavenly authority. Therefore it is the grace of God that sustains your business, your relationship, your health and the list goes on. If you ever make the mistake of exalting yourself to the position of a sustainer just as I did, don’t be surprised when God forces you to turn back to his grace before you get a chance to overcome it!

True Success Is Overcoming Through Grace

There are many hurdles in life that you can overcome through your own will power but nothing compares to overcoming through the grace of God. When you are stuck in the mud, your willpower will keep you there. When you are fighting sickness your willpower might kill you faster than the ailment you’re trying to defeat. When you are serving to change peoples lives, your willpower will blind you from the fact that it is God who does the changing. But the grace of God is the only force that can empower you to do the impossible, something that no man could ever boast about. The gifts you have are just like the breath in your lungs; neither was given nor sustained by you.

The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honour at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven.

Hebrews 1:3 NLT

My challenge for you this week is to meditate on this verse. Know that the almighty God sustains absolutely everything in his will and if you have chosen to submit to his perfect will, then you can be assured that he will sustain everything in your life accordingly. The times you forget this truth, his unconditional love will correct you. It might seem painful or confusing at the moment, but the reward comes after the correction. You will always fail to design your life better than the designer of your life.

In my personal case, God temporarily stopped me from living the life he initially called me to live. This was so that I didn't develop pride in a bid to adopt the sustenance of the gifts that he gave to me. In doing so, he was also protecting you from becoming a victim of my human ignorance empowered by my destructive will, to teach you how to live a life that I couldn’t live without the grace of God. We must collectively understand that the moment we begin to rely on our good works to maintain the good things, the good things will no longer have the same effect as the good things empowered by the grace of God.

Thank you for reading,

Have a great day!