A discipline that yields great rewards

This weekend I was talking with a friend about "the runner's high" - the moment, after many days of practice, when pushing through a long mile, that the runner (or me - wink) feels she is soaring and could keep the pace endlessly with ease.  I would suggest that a third of this high is established by the thrill of success.  YES!  I finally made it.  Another third is surprise or disbelief.  Did I just do that?  The final third is the body settling into a powerful position, like a sigh of relief intermixed with the fervor of pep.  It doesn't have to work at it anymore; instead it can just be what it is. 

To reach this moment takes discipline, sometimes a painful drill of training and routine.  Yet it is this effort that makes the celebrated high.  Hebrews 12:11 kind of captures this: "For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."  Of course, this verse isn't about running.  Rather, it is encouraging the reader to endure against sin and immorality and to know that successful struggle brings great rewards.  A lack of discipline, on the other hand, leads one astray.  Proverbs 5:23 states, "[A man] dies for lack of discipline."

Asa from 2 Chronicles is a good example; in chapters 14 to 16 we have this story of an upstanding guy's epic fall.  Asa begins by recognizing God.  He declares, "Lord, there is none like you" and asks for God's help in his battles (14:11).  When Azariah the prophet directs Asa to remove the "detestable idols," Asa takes courage and does what many before him did not do.  He puts the idols away and repairs the Lord's altar (15:8), and it is noted, "there was no more war," until Asa's 35th year (16:19).  But... then in Asa's 36th year, he trips up... pretty thoroughly.  Without checking in with God like he used to, Asa takes silver and gold from the Lord's house and spends it on an alliance with the Syrian king in order to conquer all of Judah, and then when Hanani the seer confronts him, Asa put Hanani in the prison stocks (16:10).  In one last hurrah of stupidity, he acquires a severe disease in his foot, doesn't seek help from God, and dies (16:12-13). 

One pictures Asa having experienced a "runner's high" and then becoming complacent.  Well, I got it made; time to kick back and relax... to his death bed.  Psalm 119:109 expertly says, "I hold my life in my hand continually."  This is probably why Deuteronomy states, "Take care less you forget..." (8:11) and "Take care less your heart be deceived..." (11:16).  See, discipline is about more than "arriving"; it is about making the next steps easier, more automatic. There is a reason for the saying, "If you don't use it, you lose it."  While "a runner's high" might be a pretty sweet place, it is not "the end".  Think of all the work one loses if calling quits then and there.  So "lift up your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees... strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord" (12:12-14).  We should be so committed that instead of lasting for that one kind moment of helping a single neighbor, we are, with familiarity, able to help many neighbors, to show in daily practice who God is.  That is the ultimate "runner's high."  Instead of it lasting for a fleeting moment, it pulses on, for a good long time.