Our society is all about instant gratification. We have download a new album the moment it comes out without having to take the time and energy to drive to the store. We can instantly read books on devices like the Kindle and others. We can have instant face to face conversations with web cams without the need to go and see someone. We can send instant messages, emails, text messages, facebook messages, twitter messages, etc. and know that most of them arrive to the person that moment without need to wait for them to read it later. We are a society obsessed with having the things we want, and having them the moment that we think we want them.

So, where does this leave us spiritually? I think it brings us to a place of asking God for something and expecting the answer before we finish asking. I think it makes us impatient with God and therefore it makes us more reliant on ourselves. I think it makes us spiritually weak. And, I think that for far too long the Church has bent itself and its teaching to suit this type of mentality.

When is the last time that you heard a teaching on fasting? When is the last time that you were asked by the other people in your church body to fast together in order to see God do great things. Fasting is the most basic form of delayed gratification (self denial), it is Biblical and arguably expected of all those who follow Jesus. And yet, Christians rarely talk about it and practice it even less.

Here’s the rub, God acts on His timetable, not ours. Therefore, there are times in life that we need to realize that we are not going to be immediately rewarded for our faithfulness. In fact, I would argue that often there will be long times of waiting on the Lord to bring us into the things that He has for us. Those times may be long, suspenseful, and even painful, but there is purpose in it all.

If we are constantly looking to have our needs met the moment we realize there is a need, and if God delays, we are likely to stop waiting on God to meet that need all together. This is where we get into trouble, by getting ahead of God and His plan by flailing ahead with our own.

So, here is my encouragement. Learn to deny yourself, to delay gratification. Maybe that means fasting from food for a day, maybe it means fasting from something else, like TV or facebook. But, whatever it is, it is imperative that we all learn to deny ourselves so that when God’s call to us goes against our natural inclinations (as it often does) we will be ready to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow.

I’m about to head out to day 2 of Evolve, the churchplanters.com conference in Cumming, GA. Yesterday after writing briefly about how keeping a calendar and being disciplined was a spiritual matter I got my back side handed to me by Shawn Lovejoy as he talked about the need for leaders to be healthy, which means being disciplined.

He said that if we want to lead healthy churches that we have to be healthy leaders first. And then he talked about being healthy spiritually, emotionally, relationally, and physically.

God had already been working on my heart about my own discipline, or lack of it, but yesterday really sealed the deal for me. So, this morning I was up at 5am and taking care of myself spiritually, and it was a great feeling (by about 5:15am, the first few minutes were ROUGH).

Today I’m sure that God is going to kick my butt around some more. You might see a mobile blog post or two…

Is God kicking anyone else around on the issue of discipline? I would love for you to share you story with us here…