Disciplining Our Lives

UV 4191/10000 Disciplining Our Lives If your eye causes you to stumble and sin, pluck it out and throw it away from you ( that is, remove yourself from the source of temptation); it is better for you to enter life with only one eye, than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fiery hell. Matthew 18 v 9 In this uni-verse, Jesus teaches us to have an uncompromising attitude when it comes to sin and temptation. We should distance ourselves from the source of sin and temptation instead of making it a part of our lives like an important organ like the eye or limbs. It is a metaphor that Jesus is using for it is not the eye or the limb that causes a man to sin but the heart and mind of the man. That said, what we feed our minds and hearts through what we see with our eyes has a decisive influence and impact on what we desire in our lives. Lust is fed for instance if we are used to watching pornography in any form. Pride is fed if we are always thinking highly of ourselves and consider ourselves superior to any others. The uni-verse is a plea for extreme disciplining of our thoughts and habits so that we do not err in the sight of God. Even a single wayward thought can throw us off track. A single temptation can ruin our testimony of faith. We should be always aware of the presence of sin and its precursor, temptation and take active steps to preempt or prevent or avoid it. Sometimes it needs us to take ruthless actions to end a relationship or a particular habit that distracts or diverts us from the path of the Lord. An awareness of the end result of a life of deliberate and unrepentant yielding to sin, namely, the consequences of sin- death and eternal judgement has a deterrent effect in reducing the attractiveness of sin in our lives. Consequential thinking or thinking what each action of ours will bring to us in terms of reward or punishment in the eternal realm can help to keep us consistently on the straight and narrow path without any detours. Another way to keep ourselves from sin and temptation is to studiously follow the example of Jesus, the early apostles and other contemporary men and women of God who chose the difficult over the easy, the eternal over short term pleasures.