How To Develop Disciplines | Ron + Hope: Unfiltered

Hey, guys. I want to welcome you to Ron and Hope Unfiltered, real, raw and relevant. And this one, I'm flying solo today, and I don't want you to change it because she's not here. You've been weathering her ins and outs lately while she's doing a lot of her book tour stuff. And. But I also don't want you to change because of the subject matter. When I get these ones by myself, I really enjoy them because when we're together, we want to hit a topic that can be a serious topic. But we have our banter. We go back and forth, and we try to do it in such a way that's not preachy but, you know, casual and enjoyable and conversational. And plus, you're going to get mine and her perspective on things. But this is something where I just, you know, I have a topic I want to talk about and I would love for you to hit me back. So go ahead and subscribe. If this is YouTube, hit that notification. Come on. I want you to text somebody, do what you got to do to let somebody know that we're on here today and that we're talking about how to develop disciplines. Yeah, I'm sure you got real excited when I said that. But, folks, I've never known anybody that succeeded at anything that had not learned how to develop a certain set, not of skill sets, a certain set of disciplines. There was a set of disciplines that had been built around their life, and those disciplines enabled them to have a pathway to achieve whatever it was that was in their heart to achieve. And the fact of the matter is, I want to talk about how to develop some of those things. And I'm going to come at it not from a, you know, a Tony Robbins or a motivational speech guy. And I don't have no problem with any of that. They say lot of good things, a lot of good principles. But I want to come at you from truth, and I want to come at you from Bible examples, because one of the things I love to do so much is I love to talk about leadership from biblical perspective, because I think Jesus, the greatest leader, is one where 2,000 years later, he's still impacting lives. And we had 563 people got saved here through redemption and everything that we do this past Sunday. So 2000 some years later, he's impacting lives on a daily basis. Buddy. That's leadership. That is leadership. So we're still talking about him. We're still being impacted by him. He is still active and everything. He said. And everything he has done is still active in today's life. So I don't think there's any greater perspective to come at talking about these topics, like the disciplines that every person who's going to be a leader will have to develop. I want to talk about some of them today. So tell somebody who you know needs this and don't cut us off. You never know, it might help you in setting a few new disciplines yourself. I know that I have Let me hit you with several things I heard Mike Tyson say. I never thought I'd be quoting Jesus and Mike Tyson in the same conversation. I don't know a lot about Mike Tyson. I've never met him. But I do think the gentleman has been through so many different seasons of life that he's learned a few things. And I heard him say the other. He said, discipline is when you have learned to do the things you don't like with the same passion and intensity that you do the things you do like. And when he said that, I sat there for a minute and I said, you know what? That's not bad. That's not bad. I don't know that you'd find that definition in Webster's, but doing the things I don't like with the same tenacity, passion, and intent of the things that I do like. I've always also said this. Your life will never be consisting of things you like all the time. And it's me learning how to do the things I don't like that allows me every once in a while to get to do the things I do like. I don't like financial meetings, but I had one for an hour and 45 minutes yesterday. Okay, I don't really care about the marketing and strategy meetings, but I just had another one for an hour and a half right before I came in to do this podcast. I don't really care for planning meetings, but I had four of them yesterday. Those things don't excite me. I drink my cup of coffee, I get myself full of caffeine, and I go in and I do those meetings and I'm dialed in. Even though I got a touch of add, I'm dialed in. I'm focused, I'm present. I do everything I can. If I find a problem, what can we do to make it better? If there needs to be, if there needs to be adjustments, that's not something say, wow, I get to make tweaks today. Nobody does that. But now Sunday, I get to preach. And I straight up love preaching. I love Getting in front of people and preaching the word of God, teaching the word of God and seeing the lights come on, and then getting that email four or five weeks later said, you know what? What you have been teaching us from the word has so impacted our life that we've been changed in such a way that we're experienc. Things we have never experienced before. See, when I hear that, I live for that. So I do all of those things I don't like with intention and try to do them with some level of passion and have been now for almost 35 years been doing those things so that I get those brief moments where I get to be on a podcast and I get to talk to you. This is only 30 minutes of my day. And all the preparation that it took that nobody probably really liked, pulling wires and lighting lights and getting microphones ready, moving furniture and everything that we had to do, they had to go up there and put powder all over my oily face. I sure don't like having powder on my face. But the fact of the matter is, why do we do all those things? Because I get this brief 30 minutes with you where I get to hopefully share something that can alter your life in a positive way. That's my goal. So I did everything that I didn't really enjoy to do the thing I get to love. Such is life, and such is life with successful people. I got some things here that I typed down. It's not just discipline. I want to talk about self imposed discipline. The Bible says that one of the developmental fruits of the spirit, what is self control in the Greek? The ability to control yourself. Why? Because when it comes to success, self is the biggest enemy. I don't believe Satan is the biggest enemy. I believe passions and desires that take you outside of the boundaries that you have set to help you be successful. Those are the biggest things we have to war and we have to fight against. Romans chapter seven, Paul said, we war within our members. That means the members of our body. That means that inside of this flesh there's things that want to take Ron's life off the rails. There's things that want to take his calling off the rails. And I have to make sure that the proper disciplines have been put in place that I can control myself. I didn't say control everybody else. I didn't say control your husband. I didn't say control your wife. But can you control yourself? That is not a gift. That is a fruit. A fruit has to be born, a fruit has to be developed, and a fruit has to grow. And as you grow in life, you should be growing in the ability to have self control. So it's not just the broad word discipline I want to talk about. It's self discipline. People that are successful don't need many outside boundaries imposed on them. Why do we have people in jail? We have people in jail because they had no internal boundaries. So society had to put a boundary on them. Whoa, that's good. I'm going to let you think about that a minute. Okay. Why do we have divorces? Divorces is putting a grand canyon between you and what would have been your spouse but is now an ex. Big canyon. Why do I believe that big canyon is driven between a man and a woman in a thing called divorce? It's because a thousand little boundaries have been violated. And so when a thousand little boundaries have been violated or never put in place, I draw a great big one. And that's usually what people do in life. They don't draw the little ones or they don't keep the little ones. So they end up getting to a place they have to draw a big one. I didn't keep my desires reined in and passioned in and controlled myself. So society had to lock me up. Why? Because I'm not only a harm to myself, I'm a harm to others. Because I have no internal disciplines within my own self. Okay. Discipline is probably the key ingredient for anyone who has succeeded in anything. And it is probably the least talked about. I looked at one person who is a teacher that I love and have loved for years, and I was looking over a lot of their messages. 365,000 views. 218,000 views. You know, 1.1 million views. 733,000 view. And they had one called the power of Discipline. And it had 16,000 views, you know, a million views. 700,000 views. 300,000. 500,000 views. 16,000. Nobody wants to hear about that. But I guarantee you what's killing people right now is not a lack of talent and not a lack of skill and not even a lack of intelligence. What's killing people right now is a lack of discipline. What's killing marriages is a lack of discipline. What is sabotaging success is a lack of discipline. You look at the people who get recruited to go play ball at these colleges and they are known as five star talents. And then a year from then they end up being off the team and then you never really hear from them again. What was it they lacked? Well, they didn't show up on time and they didn't do the extra things that were needed. And they didn't have their passions reined in. And when they were not at practice, they were getting in trouble. It was the lack of discipline that sabotaged everything else. All of the raw ingredients were there to be famous and be a multimillionaire, but the lack of discipline sabotaged and compromised all of it. And you can be the most talented person in the world, and you can have the greatest skill set in the world, but if you live an undisciplined life, nobody wants to come listen to me if they know that I don't do anything that I preach. So let me tell you what Paul said. Paul said, I bring my body under subjection, lest when I preach, I become disqualified. Disqualified preachers. What does that mean? I rein my body in and I make it obey my calling. The Bible says, live a life worthy of the calling you have received. So my lifestyle has to be brought under supplication so that my calling has legitimacy. So whatever it is you want to accomplish in your life, you have to have a lifestyle that accompanies it. I've said this before, and I think I've said it on the podcast. There are things that are not morally wrong, but we've got. If you're going. If you want to be successful in life, you're going to have to get above. Is it right and wrong? You're going to have to get to. Is it wise? You don't need. That's lower level. Is it right and wrong? You got to go to the next level. Because the Bible says all things are permissible for me to do. I can go out and do anything I want to do, but not all things benefit me. Not all things are beneficial. So the fact that I can do it does not mean that it benefits me and where I want to go and what I want to do in my life. Ooh, this is good preaching, Ron. And I ain't even preaching. This is just podcast. You need to text somebody and tell them to get on here, because I ain't even got to the good stuff yet, so hang in here with me. Discipline earns trust. When people see folks that are disciplined, it brings admiration and it causes them to trust. Why are so many athletes the spokesperson for so many products and advertising? Because when we see a person that is an MVP or Hall of Fame athlete, we immediately admire the disciplines that it took over a long period of time to achieve that kind of success. And so I automatically have some level of trust in them that their life is not wild. Their life is not permissive and their life is not all over the place because you can't live any old way and achieve what they've achieved. They have put self implosed disciplines on themselves that make sure they could achieve at a high level because you cannot do any old thing you want. The Bible says, broad is the way that leads to destruction. Narrow is the way. Everybody that's going to go to success is going to walk through a narrow road. I heard John Maxwell say a while back, he said, I had somebody come up me and said, I want to do what you do. You know, 100,000, 200,000. I would think probably a speaking engagement for him to go speak to top business, Fortune 500 company executives. I can't imagine what he knocks down, going and developing those people and discipling them and motivating them. It's amazing. And he said, somebody said, I want to do what you do. And he said, that's great. He said, but do you want to do what I did? He didn't just become the goat of leadership. Do you know he's written how many did he say? I can't even remember how many books he said he'd written. I've written two. Do you know the discipline it takes to write a book? And there's a guy who's splattered the earth with best sellers for four or five decades. Okay, you want to do what he does. You want to be rich, you want to have everybody buy your books and you want to stand on stages and develop top executives all over the world. Okay, that doesn't just happen. Do you want to do what he did to be able to do what he does? I have people that all the time, you know, I see myself doing what you do, Pastor Ron. I feel the same way. They're like, would you lay your hands on me and impart that to me? I'm like, what I did for God to use me on this level, I can't lay hands on and give it to you. You have to walk through what I walk through. You'll have to respond like I responded. You'll have to suffer through what I suffer through. You'll have to get up and preach through. You preach when the last thing you felt like doing in the whole world was preaching. You'll have to be disciplined when you want to just turn it loose. You'll have to smile when you want to cry. Do you want to do all those things? Because those are the things that allow me to do the things that you see and that you desire. I'm coming back to the things that you need to do to put these disciplines in your life. But first, I want to talk about song Finch. I really do. Song finch, you know when you're listening to a song on the radio and you get that profound feeling that the song playing was written about you. Now imagine having the power to give that gift and that incredible feeling to someone you love with an original song from songfinch that is actually written for them. Songfinch lets you create an original radio quality song inspired by your own life and the people that you love. It's completely unique, personal, and lasts forever. Whether the song is for father's day coming up or an upcoming graduation, a wedding or an anniversary, or even just a gift to show your loved ones how much you love them. Right now, you need to lock in to one of song Finch's top artists. I know that Hope did this for me a while back and she had a song created just for me. And I'm not the most sentimental guy in the world, but I remember even for a guy, it seemed like a girl thing, but it was deeply meaningful, deeply meaningful that she went through that trouble and there was a song out there customized that encapsulated her feelings for me. Well, I want to give you this call to action. This is what you need to do. For a limited time, songfinch is letting our listeners upload their song to Spotify for free. So you and a lucky person you gift to it can listen to it anywhere, anytime. Go to songfich.com ronandhope I'm going to say that again. Songfinch.com ronandhope you got to tell them. Ron and Hope was the promotional through which you heard this. So we get credit for it. And start your song. After you purchase, you'll be prompted to add sponsorship streaming to your original song for free. A $50 value. Again, my URL is songfinch.com ronandhope don't forget to share your song with us too. Songfinch.com RonAndHope it is a really cool gift and we just passed mother's day coming up on father's day and graduations and I think June is the wedding month. Lot of ways you could do something very meaningful to some people. Now let me get back to what I want to talk about. Where does vision, I mean, where does discipline come from? I just gave. I gave it to you. Vision. The bible says where there is no vision, people perish. That word perish don't mean people who lack vision. Fall over and die and quit breathing. That's not what that says. Where there is no vision, people perish, meaning this. The word perish means to cast off restraint and run wild. Okay? There's probably no telling how many times my vision has saved me. Times when I wanted to quit, but the vision has saved me. Sometime where I'd given up on things, sometimes where I'd given up on people, but my vision has saved me. Times when I felt depleted, times when you tired of living so tight and you want to go do something stupid. And the vision saved me. So if the lack of vision makes you cast off restraint and run wild, then the vision brings restraint. Okay? Now, the vision helps you know what to do. The vision helps you know what to say yes to. The vision helps you know what to say no to. I know what I am trying to do through redemption on the east coast and on the west coast and virtually around the world. I know what I feel like. God has called me to accomplish that. He wants his message of the kingdom preached to the whole earth. And so he's located me now on both sides of this nation, and I'm trying to go from there, move in between, and spread it all over the world and even translate it into other known languages. The message of the kingdom, that's what I'm about. All right? Now, people come to me with this, this, and this. And I'm like, does it align with the vision? Okay. Then the vision said no. Does it align with the vision? Then the vision says yes. The vision tells you who to let in your life. The vision tells you who don't belong in your life. The vision tells you what activities you can participate in. The vision tells you what activities you cannot participate in. If you want to be an offensive lineman and you're 290 and they tell you you got away 310, then you can go to Burger King. And you can go to Burger King every night. And when you get through there, you can go eat a pizza, okay? Because the vision is driving that activity. But if you want to be a bodybuilder and you're trying to be less than 5% body fat on the day of your competition, the activities are going to be driven to a different place. You're going to be eating a high protein content, high vegetable content. You're not going to have any salt because they don't want you to hold any water. You're not going to be having any sugar, and you're going to be having barely enough carbs to have the energy to Keep you going. Why? Because you are trying to be as lean as possible. Two totally different visions which are driving two totally different activities. Remember, we admire people who are disciplined and who are disciplined enough to achieve. Because discipline allows me to trust you on some level. That you have some structure to your life that would benefit me and probably not harm me. Okay. Where there is no vision, people cast off restraint and run wild. Give me a person that just lives any old way and I'll show you a person with no vision. Show me a person with no discipline and I'll show you a person with no vision. Show me a girl who will date anybody. I'll show you somebody with no vision for her life. Show me a guy who has no time to get up and no time to go to bed and don't care what he does in between. And no personal disciplines. I'll tell you a guy, not bad guy, he just has no vision. He doesn't know where he's going. Okay, what got me up this morning? I have a vision. What has made me go through my daily routine? I have a vision. What made me get home late last night? I have a vision. Why do I work five to six days every week? I have a vision. I have things that I'm trying to accomplish. So you've got to understand, there are things that I can't do, not because they are morally wrong, but because they're not beneficial in keeping with where I'm trying to go. You can't go there and do what I want to do. You can't do that and do what I want to do. You can't have that habit and do what I want to do. You can't be in those atmospheres and do what I want to do. You can't run with those people and do what I want to do. So the vision of what I want to do in my life is answering atmospheres, answering activities, answering people, answering languages, conversations I can and can't have. The vision is driving it. The vision tells you how to spend your money. I have a vision right now where I've done my best to try to set up things for my kids. And now my kids are adults. And now I have just put together trusts for my grandchildren. I just can't go out and buy anything I want to buy. I just can't go out and spend on anything I want to spend. Why? Because I have something wherewith I have envisioned. By the time my grandkids become adults, something that I want to do is in place for them. So I have to be very self imposed. Discipline about my money. This is good stuff. Do you see clearly enough about your future that you know what's necessary and what's not? We, too many of us, we. We live life under assumptions. Jesus went to Martha and Mary's house and Mary was encumbered about many things. I think she was cleaning, I think she was cooking, I think she was fluffing pillows, I think she was sweeping floors, I think she was dusting, I think she was fixing tea. And I'm, you know, putting it in modern terms. And the Bible says that Mary was postured at his feet, listening to every word he said, hanging on to every word he said and postured in worship. Martha gets mad because nobody will help her operate under her assumptions. She assumed Jesus cared about the clean house. I guess she assumed Jesus was hungry. Jesus didn't say anything about a house being sleepy, tired, wanting to sit down or hungry. He said, you are encumbered by many things. He said, but only one thing is needful. Only one thing is necessary. And Mary has chosen the greater portion. When I walked in this room, there were things that were important and there were things that were not important. And you are spending all of your energy in things that do not matter to me. Do you know what matters? Have you written down what? Write the vision and make it plain that they who read it may run with it. So nobody can run until the vision is made plain. There must be clarity. Everything is on hold until the vision is made plain. Everything. But when the vision becomes clear, everybody can run the race with diligence, laying aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets us. That's good preaching, Ron. Man, you need to tell them, say Ron and hope unfiltered. Ron got into preach mode today. Okay. Only one thing is needful. People who want to succeed have to fill their life with the things that are necessary. Discipline and forget the things that we assume. She was living under many assumptions and throwing her energy into things that were not necessary to what Jesus was wanting to accomplish in that moment and mad because other people wouldn't help her. Living under assumptions. Ezekiel 47, one of my favorite scriptures. It's a prophetic scripture. Its primary meaning is not what I'm talking about. Its primary meaning is to be prophetic. It's about the river of God flowing out of the throne of God. But there's something inside of it that is a principle. I want to extract from the prophetic picture. And I'll close with these last statements about discipline. The Bible Says that there was a river flowing out of the throne of God. It went to the ankles, then it went to the knees, it went to the waist, it went to the neck, then it became so deep no man could cross it. Okay, there's a lot of Holy Spirit prophetic imagery there. I'm not here to talk about that. But he said, and the river flowed through the banks, and on the banks of the river were the trees, and the leaves on those trees were for the healing of the nations. So on the banks were the things that produced healing. Now I've been to churches and we talk about the river. I've seen churches that are named the river. Nothing wrong with that. I've known. We talk about the river, sing about the river and river, river, river, river. But the fruit was not in the river. The fruit was on the bank. What kind of fruit was it? It healed lives. The fruit was not in the river. The fruit was on the boundaries that kept the river in check. You have a river of the Spirit of God flowing in you, but one of the things the river wants to do is build banks. And the fruitfulness of your life is not going to come out of the river that's flowing. The fruitfulness is going to come out of the boundaries you put in place. And those boundaries will save your life and heal your life many times over. This is a powerful word. And then it goes on to say, but the swamp, nothing can live in the swamp. And I thought to myself, what is the difference? Ezekiel 47 doesn't talk about it, but I thought to myself, what is the difference between a river and a swamp? A river has banks, so it's flowing and it has life and it has direction and it's going somewhere. What is a swamp? It is water with no banks. So the boundaries produce fruit and life. The water that had no boundaries, it had a stench and it said there was no life there. You show me a life that is healthy and fruitful, I'll show you a life that has banks. There are things they will and won't say, places they will and won't go. And there are self imposed disciplines that nobody from the outside needs to call them out. They do it because it's in them. You let me show you somebody whose life is a train wreck. There are outside forces that can come in and mess up a person's life. I'm not saying that. But by far and away we are victims of our own, of our own consequences that we have created. Show me a life that is just a mess. There's no fruit in their life. They're not bearing anything, they're not being fruitful. Multiplying, filling the earth, subduing, having. None of those things are happening. Then I'll show you somebody where anything goes, any conversation goes. Anybody can come into their life. They'll run with anybody, they'll go anywhere, they'll do anything, they'll sleep with anybody. They'll get you. Let anybody be a friend, Let anybody take advantage of it. They don't qualify people, they don't have people of value in their life. They bring value to nothing. Those are the difference between the river that flows out of the throne of God and a swamp that's full of death. There's only one difference. Banks, boundaries, Self imposed disciplines. They say it takes 21 days to start a habit. You got to do something 21 days in a row and it become a habit. And anybody who has good habits, a lot of times we call them religious. But there are things in the Bible that are not, you know, super spiritual. They're just holy habits forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as some are in the habit of doing. So Covid happened and they missed more than 21 days. And it become a habit not to assemble together with God's people anymore. So when you take a part of the body and chop it off right here at the arm and disassociate it from the body, it begins to deteriorate and die. And then five years later, somebody that used to be the. Used to be on the front line in the church, the life of God flowing through them, God using them. And then you hear something. Catastrophe has happened in their life and they've landed here and landed there. Why? Because a bad habit got started. But just like you create bad ones, you can create good ones. And so I want to challenge and charge you today. Do you want to be the river that has banks that's healed? I want a healed life. I don't want a swamp stench filled deathly life. And I have realized, and I'm still even reevaluating all the time at new disciplines that I need to impose upon myself to make sure that everything God has put me here to do, that I achieve those things in my lifetime. I hope that you've enjoyed this. I never mean this to turn into another sermon. I really don't. I want this to be a different venue and I hope that it's very meaningful. Get back with me. Make some comments right down here if you're watching by YouTube, if you're on the Spotify platform. Make sure you download and subscribe because we need feedback. We need to know how we're doing, and we want to make sure that the topics we're talking, talking about are beneficial to you in some way. I think it will be next week. Yeah, it will be next week when Hope will be back with me, and you'll see her smiling face and we'll go at each other again the way we always do. I miss her. I know you do, too. And I'm better when she's here, and I know it's better for you when she's here. So we'll have her back inside or right over here with us next week. But until next time, this is Ron and Hope, although just Ron today. Unfiltered, real raw and relevant. I hope this has been a blessing. God bless you. We'll see you real soon.