Keep Calm & Tuesday On - Self-Discipline

Oh, how I do so love school!  ....Wait, whaaa?? .... OK, maybe that's not entirely true all the time, but I have loved getting some sort of rhythm back to my life once again.  For my last year of High School, I've slowed down some on my "normal" subjects and have been able to focus more on College Plus and just finishing up last High School requirements like language, math, and writing, which I'm a bit behind on.  

But besides getting back into the groove and learning a bunch academically, God has also been teaching me the importance of self discipline, and I've already started to feel and reap the benefits.  There are at least 5 areas in which I have really been working on for the last three months or so, and they are:

Exercising daily

Getting up by 6:00 every morning

Reading a book a week

 Blogging every Tuesday . . . {well, either Tuesday or Wednesday :P}

and Memorizing Bible verses by topic weekly

Exercising and getting up earlier are pretty much self explanatory - you can guess why I've found those to be so beneficial.  :)

 But reading a book a week, what's up with that???  Well in talking to different people and just some general observation, I've found that the people who read a lot are usually the well-spoken, easy conversationalists because of all the knowledge they've gained from avid reading! . . . and I'm not just talking about one particular genera of books over another, I'm talking about reading in general.  As a wise person once said, 

"Reading Begets Reading" 

{and that is oh, so true!}

Then of course, there's blogging on Tuesdays (and sometimes Wednesdays...)

aaaaanndd.... in order to discipline myself further in this area, I'm going to try to post a picture a week to try to help keep me motivated to TAKE MORE PICTURES!  :D

(We'll see how that goes...)

POW (Picture of the week) :

{In case you are wondering what this is, it's a picture of Bob-da-Log.  My dear brother cut him down and brought him home from work for me to keep in my room - face carved, a name and everything!} 

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Lastly, memorizing Scripture by topic every week has been one of the best things I've done in a while.  

One day a while back, Dad, half kidding - half serious, asked me, 

"can you quote more lines from a movie than verses in the Bible?" 

I kinda laughed at first, but when I actually thought about it, tons of quotes from different movies immediately came to mind, while I could only think of 2 or 3 Bible verses off the top of my head.  Point Taken.  

But that's not how it's supposed to be!

Thus started my goal to take 1 topic a week (i.e. patience, beauty, unbelief, pride....etc.) and memorize a passage of Scripture based on that so that eventually I would have more verses in my arsenal than anything else. 

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So anyways - self discipline is definitely not on the easy list of character development, and that is why I don't have any right to brag about anything that I've been able to accomplish lately.  

It is by God's strength alone that anyone is able to discipline themselves to do something that they would not otherwise want to do in the first place.  

Philippians 4:13

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.