It’s taken 56 years to begin to understand how necessary it is to bring discipline into our lives. This may sound naïve and even stupid to some, but when I talk about discipline, I’m really talking about the principles of Mussar. Mussar is the Hebrew word for “discipline”. Here is an example of the word in its context from the book of Proverbs (Mishlei).
My son, heed the discipline (Mussar) of your father, and do not abandon the teaching (Torah) of your mother; (Proverbs 1:8)
This is the sort of discipline that is really required.
We can have a discipline that is external but it does not necessarily address the internal habits and changes that we need to make in our lives that bring us to a point of change.
Soldiers can be extremely disciplined, but they can also be morally bankrupt because as soon as they come out of the disciplined environment that they are used to, they realise that their purpose has been removed from their lives and has now cut them adrift. This just leads to resentment. It does not just apply to those in the armed forces. It is the same for those of us who have had ordinary jobs and have given our whole lives over to the cause of the company or organisation that we have been part of for so long, but then we get to retirement and we find ourselves cut adrift. The company continues without us but does not miss a beat as a result of our absence. That then leaves us feeling resentful and needing to find a new identity or purpose that we can throw ourselves into. But what does it mean to our souls.
Ethics 1:14 makes the following statement:
“He was accustomed to say: If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
This is brilliant! It gets right to the heart of the issue.
The following is an extract from the book by R. Twerski – Vision of the Fathers on the above statement.
‘In order for a person to have a meaningful, constructive identity, it should be one which he gives to himself. If a person has no identity, other than that given to him by others, he really has no identity at all. He must change like a chameleon, being one thing to his wife, another to his parents, another to his children, another to his employer, another to his friend, and yet another to a different friend. A person must have a valid awareness of his abilities and character traits,’
The church has done us a disservice on one level when it defines all of our negative character traits as sin. It is going against the tenet that we find in Romans 8.
Therefore, there is no longer any condemnation awaiting those who are in union with the Messiah Yeshua. Why? Because the Torah of the Spirit, which produces this life in union with Messiah Yeshua, has set me free from the “Torah” of sin and death. For what the Torah could not do by itself, because it lacked the power to make the old nature cooperate, God did by sending his own Son as a human being with a nature like our own sinful one [but without sin]. God did this in order to deal with sin, and in so doing he executed the punishment against sin in human nature, so that the just requirement of the Torah might be fulfilled in us who do not run our lives according to what our old nature wants but according to what the Spirit wants. For those who identify with their old nature set their minds on the things of the old nature, but those who identify with the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. Having one’s mind controlled by the old nature is death, but having one’s mind controlled by the Spirit is life and shalom. For the mind controlled by the old nature is hostile to God, because it does not submit itself to God’s Torah — indeed, it cannot. Thus, those who identify with their old nature cannot please God. (Romans 8:1-8)
The transformation that we undertake is to understand that we will see and identify negative character traits in our lives. More than that, that our identities found in our old lives are no longer conducive to life at all; they are just part of the social conditioning that we have experienced in this world. It does not mean that we throw everything up in the air and regard it all as useless, but it does mean that we discern and ask our Abba, the Creator of the Universe to show us and guide us through His Spirit toward the things that are good and set apart for His glory and our well-being. That will mean things like:
- Getting to bed on time and sleeping well
- Having a good and healthy diet and removing the things that do us harm. This can be applied spiritually, physically and emotionally
- Seeking the face of our Father, in prayer and in His word.
- Enjoying all of our life and using it to His glory by removing our negative character traits and replacing them with positive ones in faith, trust and discipline (mussar).
MBM UK Family 