Discipline
To be disciplined, one must know where the rails are, what rules one must follow.
Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed. Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God. Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. For “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever.” That word is the good news that was announced to you. - Peter 1:13-25
Peter makes it clear that Christ was a teacher and we, his disciples, were and are his students.
What Jesus taught us was how to live with and love one another.
We were shown how the life we were living is wrong, and this new life we were given in Christ is what makes life worth living. Through Christ, all things are made new.
So, why would we choose to go back to a life that was dead?
Once we are no longer ignorant, we cannot go back to being so again, can we? If we know the truth, we cannot pretend not to know it.
It is part of us now, so we have to acknowledge it, accept it and live it.
Peter knows the struggle. He was the kind of student I think many of us are, wanting to show the teacher that he gets the message but then fails to execute properly, stumbling forward from ignorance into wisdom.
Like Peter, we need the constant reassurances that Christ gives.
We need the moments when we are chastised and the moments where we walk on the water.
Discipline is what keeps us steady, holds us up and allows us to move forward, like a walker or stair rail. It is there to give us a clear picture of the path we are on.
To be a disciple, we must manage our fear and go.
And we can do that when we trust that Jesus is with us all the way.
More to come...