Beginnings!!!

Beginnings are so fun aren't they? they are the start of something fresh something new! I love a great beginning!!!! Yet so many times in life we have great beginnings but very unsuccessful finishes. Why is that, why is it that we have not followed through in so many of our responsibilities. I know that many of our beginnings are well intentioned, thought out and often very well planed, but yet why is it that our beginnings do not become endings. I can honestly say that I have started many project, well intentioned, ready to tackle a new song or a track, read my bible or do my HOMEWORK...*gasp*, but I never finish. If you look at the hard drive of my computer right now I have close to 30 songs that are labeled -unfinished. These are the songs that started off as a great idea, but some where along the line became to tedious of to hard to finish. often while starting these p[project my mind set was this..."well i think i can crank this one our in about and hour to an hour and a half. HA!! Then one that hour becomes two and those two become three and then the whole day is spent working on something, its easy to just say..."you know what Im goin' to finish this later." But that later never comes, and our well intentioned beaning really reaches no ending. So we have established the fact that we as humans often do not follow through with many of the tasks that we start, but what is the cause?

The Cause:
A lack of discipline!!!

thats right, this might seem a little hard but the fact is that our inconsistency come from a lack of discipline. Know when I say discipline im not talking about getting groundings, or being on punishment, or getting "a spanking." What I am referring to here is the lack of discipline of our minds. We let so many things take up time in our lifes that we don't give the truly important things the attention they need. Check out this quote from Lanny Bassham an Olympic Gold Medalist.

"Lanny Bassham, Olympic gold-medalist in small-bore rifle competition, tells what concentration does for his marksmanship: “Our sport is controlled nonmovement. We are shooting from 50 meters—over half a football field—at a bull’s eye three-quarters the size of a dime. If the angle of error at the point of the barrel is more than .005 of a millimeter (that is five one-thousandths), you drop into the next circle and lose a point.

So we have to learn how to make everything stop. I stop my breathing. I stop my digestion by not eating for 12 hours before the competition. I train by running to keep my pulse around 60, so I have a full second between beats—I have gotten it lower, but found that the stroke-volume increased so much that each beat really jolted me. You do all of this and you have the technical control. But you have to have some years of experience in reading conditions: the wind, the mirage. Then you have the other 80% of the problems—the mind."

Sports Illustrated, August 2, 1976, pp. 31-35, quoted in How to Profit from Bible Reading, I. L. Jensen, Moody Press, p. 80

hmmm....80% of the problem is in the mind. Interesting!!! I truly think that many of our minds our weak. Why is it that we resolve to read our bibles everyday from at least 30 mins, yet a month, two months into the process we are missing days and being inconsistent. It because our minds are weak. We have not full discipled our selves to stay focused and finish the job at hand.

There is a solution though!!! and I will share that solution with you in my next post, tomorrow morning!!! OK, so do not fret there is a solution!!!
I'll give you a hint, its a five letter word!!! the First letter is J, the last 4 letters are ESUS. We'll talk about it tomorrow....for right now, I have to go to class.