“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on His law day and night.” — Psalm 1:2
Discipline Leads To Delight
To delight in something is an emotion or a feeling, but many of us often overlook that it is also a decision. To delight in something implies that you make it a priority. This means that you can delight in something even when the feelings of delight are not necessarily present.
Unfortunately, many people fail to read the Bible because they don’t feel the excitement or the delight that they assume you’re supposed to feel every time you read it. But sometimes we just need to go ahead and make reading it a priority and trust that the right feelings will eventually follow. Discipline can lead to delight.
For a while, my son, Asher, didn’t like doing some of the drills that I would have him do for baseball practice. He just wanted to play the game. However, the more he stuck with these drills, he began to experience how they made him a better player, which led him to begin enjoying the drills. Now, he’s asking if we can do the drills almost every day.
If we want to experience the blessed life full of meaningful happiness that God wants us to experience, then we must first embrace the discipline of learning from the Lord’s instruction every day, and trust that the feelings of excitement and delight will soon follow. The better we begin to know who God is and the purpose for which He has created us, the more we will want to listen to Him and experience Him every day.
— Terry Evans, Atlanta Braves chaplain
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