“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. ”
Anyone who plays an instrument or a sport knows the temptation: no one ever wants to spend any time learning the fundamentals, we just want to go straight into learning all the cool tricks that the pros use (even if we aren’t ready). We want to learn how to shred on the guitar like Eddie Van Halen before learning any scales, or how to dunk like Shaq before knowing our team’s playbook. It’s simply a natural tendency to want the flashy stuff before we are ready for it.
I started playing the acoustic guitar right before my freshman year of high school, a time in everyone’s lives notoriously known for a lack of self-discipline. The infamous video game, Guitar Hero 3, had just come out, and I wanted nothing more than to play guitar like Slash, the guitarist of Guns n’ Roses, and all the other greats as quickly as possible.
Something that some budding guitarists like to forget is that all of the guitar greats like Jimi Hendrix (from The Jimi Hendrix Experience), Eddie Van Halen (from Van Halen), and Jimmy Page (from Led Zeppelin) rigorously learned their fundamentals and gained experience before they got famous. Even Slash was known to practice 12 hours a day when he first started playing. On average, I practiced 0.1 hours a day and learned just enough from my lessons to get by before I could move on to playing the fun stuff.
Long story short: I still can’t play guitar like Slash.
In Hebrews 11, the author lists off all of the great heroes of the Jewish and Christian faith and states the reasons why they are great. Folks like Abraham, Moses, Rahab, and King David are all included in this list to inspire the reader to strive to be like them! However, in Hebrews 12, the author takes a slightly different tone. To paraphrase Hebrews 12:1-3: “Do you want to be like these heroes? Then you’ve got to train and persevere like a marathon runner toward your goal of being like Christ.” It’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon.
I still can’t play guitar like Slash, but now that I have a little bit more time and space, I am getting back into learning fundamentals and am actually improving at guitar. It’s funny what a little bit of discipline and intentionality can do when applied to our goals.
We cannot do anything well without a good bit of practice and learning, whether we strive toward being like a great guitarist or like the heroes of the faith. God disciplines us because he loves us, because he knows we will benefit from it, and because he knows that a “harvest of righteousness and peace” comes from the discipline.
-Travis Morrill
Communications and Facilities Administrator at Friends Community Church