on track for victory: disciplined for greatness
What if you fully believed in God’s promise over your life? How would you think, speak, and take action?
There’s a quote at my gym by an ancient Roman philosopher, Seneca, that says, “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” Put more spiritually, in Godly reverence, I remind myself that “Faith is when preparation meets God’s favor and miraculous blessing.”
While the Bible tells us that it’s by grace, not works that we are saved, the Biblical Hebrew word for work, avodah, does emphasize a divine relationship between work and worship. I am a big proponent of the belief that how you do one thing is how you do everything. How you work is how you worship. If you are committed to your work, you are committed to your worship. If you look to grow in your work, you’ll look to grow spiritually. Your heart, mind, and hands are integrated. The ability to integrate and translate that heart posture is communicated in the service you give through your hands. Avodah characterizes the Hebrew spirit of the interplay between work, service, and worship.
At reclaiming abundance, we stress the importance of personal care + wellness so much because we know very well that you can only continue to pour if you are also drinking for yourself. For our go-getter readers, breaking through for balance is an intentional discipline for choosing to honor and love yourself in the way that He would.
Discipline is a practice of preparation and its effectiveness is best proven in the fruits of provision. And it’s those fruits of provision that are meant to be shared as a blessing to others.
In 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Apostle Paul encourages with:
"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified of the prize."
At the time, the Corinthians would hold Olympic style games to honor the divine and Paul used these games as an analogy to liken our discipline to athletes who train for competition. When you are disciplined about your personal goals, you are in the flow of prioritizing your future rewards and accomplishments over momentary pleasures. This is in the capacity for demonstrating self-control against fleeting impulses, feelings, and hasteful actions. When you are disciplined about your personal goals, you are in the flow of prioritizing your future rewards and accomplishments over momentary pleasures.
1 Corinthians encourages us to identify gospel-driven solutions to problems and situations we encounter. These verses are about integrity. Paul encourages us to live a life driven by values and to schedule and set life according to those values. In order to serve as a blessing to others, Paul was committed to surrendering his life to the gospel. In order to empower others and transform their lives, Paul understood he had to surrender his will and serve in submission to those he was looking to bless.
When you get in the water, you have to keep cycling your legs to stay afloat. When you want to stay warm in the wilderness, you have to keep rubbing your hands together for warmth. When you go fishing, you have to keep waiting for something to bite. Discipline and the willpower to persevere in the midst of challenges is what keeps you alive, joyful, and abundant.
In yoga, discipline is a core principle and teaching known as tapas. When you show up to your mat, you’re honoring your yoga practice and where you are in the journey by taking the most crucial step: showing up and to keep showing up time and time again. More than that, tapas is also about having the discernment to determine when your yoga practice needs to process the weight of your current experience and when it is meant to give priority to what you are building. (At this moment, do you need to take it slow + recover or do you need to build new strength + technique to grow your practice?)
When I think of tapas, I see a bright orange flame and slow burn and I believe that channeling the Holy Spirit for tapas is about honoring the process of purification and refinement over your life that is coming from God’s hands. It’s something you can feel when you choose to breathe through long holds in yoga poses before the teacher cues the next pose. It’s something you can practice when you’re working up to a pose you didn’t think your body was capable of creating. And it’s a way you can live by when you’re off of your mat when you incorporate all that into your sadhana, or your daily living practices for care + wellness. Just as steel is forged under fire, who you are + what you were called for is purified, refined, and polished here too.
So how can you begin to refocus + center yourself in prioritizing discipline in an elevated way?
Here are 3 P’s for unlocking your promise:
Practice - Practice builds a character of humility. When you give yourself space to practice, you make room for creativity, growth, and failure too. Failure humbles the spirit and facilitates a continued appetite for learning. A character of humility fosters the ability to grasp life as a continuous cycle of giving and receiving. We are all students and teachers. The student becomes the teacher to learn from the student once again.
Process - Process builds a muscle for wisdom. The more time, energy, and attention you are able to invest in your seasons of practice, the greater your discernment. Life asks you to recognize when to take on the role of student and when to take on the role of teacher. Being able to make space + time for reflection allows you to process the thoughts + feelings that come up throughout the journey. Process works in mental preparation + planning and gets you thinking about how to speak towards your abundance with love, faith, and conviction.
Presentation - Presentation builds a platform for sharing experience. The peak of your hard work of practice and process opens new uncharted paths + opportunities to touch the lives of others. It enables the capacity to share so that others can also learn, grow, and transform alongside you. What you’re disciplined about shows who and what you care about most.
As always, this is an intentionally broad and big picture framework to use + apply for your own circumstances and situations. Your specific experience is unique to you and God has an equally if not greater path to match that energy.
If you’re ready to get disciplined for greatness, you can schedule a 1:1 complimentary consultation here.
Kim Yamasaki is a Christian wellness coach who supports her clients in cultivating space + stillness in the mind, body, and Spirit through collaborative processes of co-creation. She provides services that create space _ stillness for deeper connection: spiritual wellness coaching for burnout, home organizing, and yoga. Her methods are affirming, grounding, and nurturing – all interlaced with playful creativity. She is a native Angeleno with Japanese and Chinese roots.
This article was originally published for the “selah space” newsletter, reclaiming abundance’s care package for go-getters. “Selah space” offers content to support readers looking to break the cycle of stress + burnout by living, loving, and learning deeply to be their most calm, confident, and complete selves. In the Bible, selah means “to pause or to reflect.” It appears most heavily in the Book of Psalms and Habakkuk as musical notations at the end of verses to draw attention back to what was previously expressed.
References:
Hillsong Church. (2020, March 8). Shake It Off | Christine Caine | Hillsong Church [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H64MvVMfFu4
Maxwell, J. C. (2000). The 21 Most Powerful Minutes In A Leader’s Day: Revitalize Your Spirit and Empower Your Leadership. Thomas Nelson.
Yoga With Adriene. (2018, February 4). Yoga For Self Discipline | Yoga With Adriene [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ki_-GM_5Ec
Miller D. (2018, July 23). Work and Worship Blend in One Hebrew Word. Darrow Miller and Friends. http://darrowmillerandfriends.com/2018/07/23/work-worship-go-together/
Maxwell, J. C. (2022). The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You. HarperCollins Leadership.
Burkhart A. (2015, March 3). ’Avodah’: What It Means to Live a Seamless Life of Work, Worship, and Service. Institute for Faith, Work & Economics. https://tifwe.org/avodah-a-life-of-work-worship-and-service/
The Mind, Explained. (2019). [Docuseries]. Vox Media.
Brown, B. (2022). Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience. National Geographic Books.