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No man will get anywhere in life without discipline—and growth in godliness is no exception. Seasoned pastor R. Kent Hughes's inspiring and bestselling book Disciplines of a Godly Man—now updated with fresh references and suggested resources—is filled with godly advice aimed at helping men grow in the disciplines of prayer, integrity, marriage, leadership, worship, purity, and more. With biblical wisdom, memorable illustrations, and engaging study questions, this practical guide will empower men to take seriously the call to godliness and direct their energy toward the things that matter most.
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“I am so weary of the peculiar therapeutic atmosphere in which we live today that is scared stiff to tell anybody to do anything or to warn anybody of dangerous consequences of failing to take responsibility for his or her life. So to find someone taking seriously the biblical call for ‘agonizing to enter the kingdom’ and striving like a gymnast to become godly and boxing and sweating like a champion to get victory over sin is the most refreshing thing I could have set my eyes on.”
John Piper, Founder and Teacher, desiringGod.org; Chancellor, Bethlehem College & Seminary; author, Desiring God
“Every Christian man, whether a new believer or a mature Christian, will be challenged again and again by this remarkably wise and fascinating book. Kent Hughes skillfully weaves together the teachings of Scripture with real-life examples as he powerfully teaches us what true Christian manhood looks like in the ordinary details of our lives. I highly recommend this update of a book that is becoming a Christian classic.”
Wayne Grudem, Distinguished Research Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies, Phoenix Seminary; author, Christian Ethics
“Discipline is a subject about which the Scriptures say much—but contemporary authors have been peculiarly silent. Kent Hughes fills a gaping void with this superb volume. You’ll be challenged and encouraged as you read. And if there is a spark of spiritual desire in your soul, this book will surely kindle it into a blazing passion for godly discipline.”
John MacArthur, Pastor, Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, California; President, The Master’s University and Seminary
“There are some books, though very few, that remain ‘evergreen’—that through the years remain as useful and challenging as the day they were written. There’s little doubt that Disciplines of a Godly Man is one of these. For that reason, I’m delighted to see it just so slightly refreshed as it’s prepared to challenge a whole new generation of men with its biblical principles and timeless wisdom. I trust it will prove itself as edifying to them as it has to me and so many others.”
Tim Challies, blogger, Challies.com
“The best contemporary book of spiritual guidance I’ve read in a long time. Usually for this type of food I have to look for a book that is at least seventy-five years old. This book is a surprising exception. And it has the added advantage of being very relevant to specific needs in today’s world.”
Ajith Fernando, Teaching Director, Youth for Christ, Sri Lanka; author, Discipling in a Multicultural World
“This is one of the best books I’ve read. What an outstanding volume. I guarantee: Digest this book and you will bid the blahs farewell.”
Charles Swindoll, pastor; best-selling author
Disciplines of a Godly Man
Disciplines of a Godly Man
Updated Edition
R. Kent Hughes
Disciplines of a Godly Man
Copyright © 1991, 2001, 2019 by R. Kent Hughes
Published by Crossway 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.
Cover design: Jordan Singer
First printing, original edition, 1991; first printing with study questions, 1995
First printing, 10th anniversary edition, revised edition, 2001
First printing, trade paperback edition, 2006
First printing, updated edition, 2019
Printed in the United States of America
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture quotations marked NASB are from The New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.
Scripture references marked PHILLIPS are from The New Testament in Modern English, translated by J. B. Phillips ©1972 by J. B. Phillips. Published by Macmillan.
All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.
Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-6130-6 Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-6904-3ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-6133-7 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-6131-3 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-6132-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hughes, R. Kent, 1942– author.
Title: Disciplines of a godly man / R. Kent Hughes.
Description: Updated Edition. | Wheaton: Crossway, 2019. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018052585 (print) | LCCN 2019005932 (ebook) | ISBN
9781433561313 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433561320 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433561337
(epub) | ISBN 9781433561306 (tp)
Subjects: LCSH: Discipline—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Spiritual
Life—Christianity. | Christian men—Religious life.
Classification: LCC BV4647.D58 (ebook) | LCC BV4647.D58 H84 2019 (print) |
DDC 248.8/42—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018052585
Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
2022-05-20 11:55:41 AM
For my sons,
Richard Kent Hughes II
and
William Carey Hughes
Contents
Acknowledgments
Part 1: Introduction
1 Discipline for Godliness
Part 2: Relationships
2 Discipline of Purity
3 Discipline of Marriage
4 Discipline of Fatherhood
5 Discipline of Friendship
Part 3: Soul
6 Discipline of Mind
7 Discipline of Devotion
8 Discipline of Prayer
9 Discipline of Worship
Part 4: Character
10 Discipline of Integrity
11 Discipline of Tongue
12 Discipline of Work
13 Discipline of Perseverance
Part 5: Ministry
14 Discipline of Church
15 Discipline of Leadership
16 Discipline of Giving
17 Discipline of Witness
18 Discipline of Ministry
Part 6: Discipline
19 Grace of Discipline
Resources
A Resources for Spiritual Growth
B James and Deby Fellowes’s Witness to Their Faith
C Personal Reading Survey
D Selected Proverbs Regarding the Tongue
E Hymns for Personal Adoration and Praise
F Choruses and Scripture Songs for Personal Adoration and Praise
G Praise Psalms Especially Appropriate for Personal Worship
General Index
Scripture Index
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my secretary, Mrs. Sharon Fritz, for her care and pride of workmanship in typing the multiple revisions of the manuscript; Mr. Herbert Carlburg for weekly proofreading and many suggested improvements; Mr. George Grant for his expert editing though busy in far-off England; Mr. Ted Griffin, for his discerning eye, which made clear the incomprehensible, and for the preparation of the study questions; and my wife, Barbara, who possesses the gracious wisdom to cut through the irrelevant and get to the heart of things with the perpetual James-like question, “So what difference does this make in the way we live?”
And now I must thank Mr. Sheldon Nordhues, for his cheerful dedication in bringing this edition up to date, and, of course, Mr. Greg Bailey, editorial director for Crossway, for his masterful editing—for which future readers will surely be thankful.
Part 1
Introduction
1
Discipline for Godliness
Sometime in the early summer before entering the seventh grade, I wandered over from the baseball field and picked up a tennis racket for the first time—and I was hooked! It was not long before I became a ten-year-old tennis bum. My passion for the sport became so intense, I would idly hold a tennis ball and just sniff it. The pssst and the rubbery fragrance upon opening a can of new tennis balls became intoxicating. The whop, whop and the lingering ring of a sweetly hit ball, especially in the quietness of early morning, was to me symphonic. My memories of that summer and the one that followed are of blistering black tennis courts, hot feet, salty sweat, long drafts of delicious rubbery, tepid water from an empty ball can, and the short shadows of midday heading slowly toward the east, followed by the stadium “daylight” of the court’s lights and the ubiquitous eerie night bats dive-bombing our lobs.
That fall, I determined to become a tennis player. I spent my hoarded savings on one of those old beautifully laminated Davis Imperial tennis rackets—a treasure that I actually took to bed with me. I was disciplined! I played every day after school (except during basketball season) and every weekend. When spring came, I biked to the courts where the local high school team practiced and longingly watched until they finally gave in and let me play with them. The next two summers I took lessons, played some tournaments, and practiced about six to eight hours a day—coming home only when they turned off the lights.
And I became good. I was good enough, in fact, that as a twelve-and-a-half-year-old, 110-pound freshman, I was second man on the varsity tennis team of my large three thousand-student California high school.
Not only did I play at a high level, I learned that personal discipline is the indispensable key for accomplishing anything in this life. I have since come to understand even more that it is, in fact, the mother and handmaiden of what we call genius.
Examples
Those who watched Mike Singletary1 “play” football and observed his wide-eyed intensity and his churning, crunching samurai hits are usually surprised when they meet him. He is not an imposing hulk. He is barely six feet tall and weighs maybe 220. Whence the greatness? Discipline. Singletary was as disciplined a student of the game as any who have ever played it. In his autobiography, Calling the Shots, he says that in watching game films, he would often run a single play fifty to sixty times, and that it took him three hours to watch half a football game, which is only twenty to thirty plays!2 Because he watched every player, because he knew the opposition’s tendencies—given the down, distance, hash mark, and time remaining—and because he read the opposition’s minds through their stances, he was often moving toward the ball’s preplanned destination before the play developed. Singletary’s legendary success was a testimony to his remarkably disciplined life.
The legendary Jack Nicklaus, the most successful professional golfer of all time, once quipped, “The more I practice, the luckier I get.” Michael Phelps’s eight (yes, you read it correctly—eight!) gold medals at the 2009 Olympics in Beijing were the result of thousands of hours and miles in the pool of disciplined boredom. The glory of a Steph Curry three-point shot that wins a basketball game at the buzzer is the apex of a life of inglorious discipline! It is common knowledge that Curry practices in the offseason for three hours a day, six days a week in the summer. It is also well known that after elaborate preparation he will shoot between six hundred and seven hundred baskets, counting only the ones he makes. On intense shooting days, the number increases to at least a thousand.
Matthew Sayed, in his international bestseller Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success, observes that British soccer superstar David Beckham’s trademark free kick—his “bend it like Beckham” trajectory—began when, as a boy, he would go to an East London park and kick his ball from the same spot for hours on end, perfecting the topspin that gave his kick its devastating dip. “My secret is practice. I have always believed that if you want to achieve anything special in life you have to work, work, and then work some more.”3Canadian icon Wayne Gretsky, regarded as the greatest ice hockey player ever, became what he was because early on he disciplined both his mind and his body for the rough-and-tumble game. As a boy, he systematically charted the angles of the ricocheting puck so that he came to anticipate what was going to happen on the ice better than any player in the game. The “Great Gretsky” was there when the puck arrived. Listen to how Gretsky describes himself: “I wasn’t naturally gifted in terms of size and speed; everything I did in hockey I worked for.” And then later, “The highest compliment that you can pay me is to say that I worked hard every day. . . . That’s how I came to know where the puck was going before it even got there.4
We are accustomed to thinking of Ernest Hemingway as a boozy, undisciplined genius who got through a quart of whiskey a day for the last twenty years of his life but nevertheless had the muse upon him. He was indeed an alcoholic driven by complex passions.5 But when it came to writing, he was the quintessence of discipline! His early writing was characterized by obsessive literary perfectionism as he labored to develop his economy of style, spending hours polishing a sentence or searching for the mot juste—the right word. It is a well-known fact that he rewrote the conclusion to his novel A Farewell to Arms seventeen times in an effort to get it right. This is characteristic of great writers. Dylan Thomas made over two hundred handwritten manuscript versions of his poem “Fern Hill.”6 Even toward the end, when Hemingway was reaping the ravages of his lifestyle, while writing at his Finca Vigia in Cuba, he stood before an improvised desk in oversized loafers on yellow tiles from 6:30 a.m. until noon every day, carefully marking his production for the day on a chart. His average was only two pages—five hundred words.7 It was discipline, Hemingway’s massive literary discipline, that transformed the way his fellow Americans, and people throughout the English-speaking world, expressed themselves.
Michelangelo’s, Leonardo da Vinci’s, and Tintoretto’s multitudes of sketches, the quantitative discipline of their work, prepared the way for the cosmic qualitative value of their work. We wonder at the anatomical perfection of a da Vinci painting. But we forget that da Vinci on one occasion drew a thousand hands.8In the last century, Henri Matisse explained his own mastery, remarking that the difficulty with many who wanted to be artists was that they spent their time chasing models rather than painting them.9 Again, the discipline factor!
Closer to our own time, Winston Churchill was rightly proclaimed the speaker of the twentieth century, and few who heard his eloquent speeches would have disagreed. Still fewer would have suspected that he was anything but a “natural.” But the truth is, Churchill had a distracting lisp that made him the butt of many jokes and resulted in his inability to be spontaneous in public speaking. Yet he became famous for his speeches and his seemingly impromptu remarks.
Actually, Churchill wrote everything out and practiced it! He even choreographed his pauses and pretended fumblings for the right phrase. The margins of his manuscripts carried notes anticipating the “cheers,” “hear, hears,” “prolonged cheering,” and even “standing ovation.” This done, he practiced endlessly in front of mirrors, fashioning his retorts and facial expressions. F. E. Smith, a close friend of Churchill, said, “Winston has spent the best years of his life writing impromptu speeches.”10 A natural? Perhaps. A naturally disciplined hard-working man!
And so it goes, whatever the area of life.
Thomas Edison came up with the incandescent light after a thousand failures. Samuel Beckett said,
Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.11
Jascha Heifitz, the greatest violinist of the twentieth century, began playing the violin at the age of three and early began to practice four hours a day, a discipline he continued until his death at age seventy-five, when he had long been the greatest in the world—some 102,000 hours of practice. He no doubt gave his own “Hear, hear!” to pianist and composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s response to a woman’s fawning remarks about his genius: “Madame, before I was a genius, I was a drudge.”
We will never get anywhere in life without discipline, be it the arts, the trades, business, athletics, or academics. Whatever your particular thing is, whether it is swimming, football, soccer, basketball, tennis, surfing, mountain climbing, bull riding, motocross, chess, math, computer science, the guitar, the sitar, writing, poetry, or painting—whatever it is—you will never get anywhere without discipline.
This is doubly so in spiritual matters. In other areas, we may be able to claim some innate advantage. An athlete may be born with a strong body, a musician with perfect pitch, or an artist with an eye for perspective. But none of us can claim an innate spiritual advantage. In reality, we are all equally disadvantaged. None of us naturally seeks after God, none is inherently righteous, none instinctively does good (read Rom. 3:9–18). Therefore, as children of grace, our spiritual discipline is everything—everything!
I repeat: discipline is everything!
Paul on Discipline
This being so, the statement from Paul to Timothy regarding spiritual discipline in 1 Timothy 4:7—“train yourself for godliness”—takes on not only transcending importance, but personal urgency. There are other passages that teach discipline, but this is the great classic text of Scripture. The word train comes from the word gumnos, which means “naked” and is the word from which we derive our English word gymnasium. In traditional Greek athletic contests, the participants competed without clothing so as not to be encumbered. Therefore, the word train originally carried the literal meaning “to exercise naked.”12 By New Testament times, it referred to exercise and training in general. But even then it was, as it remains, a word with the smell of the gym in it—the sweat of a good workout. “Train yourselves, exercise, work out (!) for the purpose of godliness” conveys the feel of what Paul is saying.
Spiritual Sweat
In a word, he is calling for some spiritual sweat! Just as the athletes discarded everything and competed gumnos—free from anything that could possibly burden them—so we must get rid of every encumbrance, every association, habit, and tendency that impedes godliness. If we are to excel, we must strip ourselves to a lean, spiritual nakedness. The writer of Hebrews explains it like this: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1). Men, we will never get anywhere spiritually without a conscious divestment of the things that are holding us back. What things are weighing you down? The call to discipline demands that you throw it off. Are you man enough?
The call to train ourselves for godliness also suggests directing all of our energy toward that goal. Paul pictures this elsewhere: “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control” (1 Cor. 9:25–27). Intense, energetic sweat! We should singularly note that a little after Paul’s command to “train yourself for godliness,” he comments on the command and the intervening words, saying “for to this end we toil and strive” (1 Tim. 4:10). The word toil means “strenuous work,” and strive comes from the Greek word from which we get “agonize.” Toil and agony are called for if one is to be godly.
When one seriously trains, he willingly undergoes hours of discipline and even pain so as to win the prize—running ten thousand miles to run one hundred meters at one’s best. The successful Christian life is a sweaty affair!
No manliness, no maturity! No discipline, no discipleship! No sweat, no sainthood!
Why the Disciplines?
Understanding this, we now get down to the reason for this book, which is that in today’s world and church, Christian men who are disciplined are the exception, not the rule. Why? The answer is that the popular, politically correct culture of the new millennium suppresses manliness, and especially the manliness and leadership of men who attempt to follow Christ. The reasons are feminism, entertainment, and legalism, and together, they are daunting.
Feminism
During the 1970s, certain feminist strategists initiated the so-called “Girlhood Project” with the intent of effectively blurring, and even erasing, the distinction between males and females. According to author and social critic Barbara Defoe Whitehead, feminists called for “a new sexual standard based on traditional boyhood. In their plays and pursuits, little girls were to be made more like boys. Among cultural elites, a traditionally feminine daughter became a mild social embarrassment, while a feisty tomboy daughter became a source of pride.”13 Now, men are afraid to raise boys.14 The “copy the boys” approach was applied to all of life: to sexuality, to speech, and even to body type, with the tomboy ideal of a wiry, athletic body. Along with this, naturally active and competitive boys were penalized for their boyish behavior, while girls were lauded for ruggedness and athletic prowess.15
The effect today is a culture that celebrates a woman who has a body that is sculpted, by exercise and diet, to look like that of a man, and who talks like a man and acts like a man. Amid this cultural inversion, a rugged, assertive, and disciplined man is deemed a threat. If a guy lifts his head to take charge in a mixed-gender situation, he is labeled as a chauvinist or a sexist pig. So a generation of men has been neutered and neutralized as to their natural ruggedness and willingness to undergo the disciplines that will turn them into real men. And Christian men are particularly susceptible to being cowed by the culture, because discipline for godliness demands a particular toughness and rugged individuality in a castrating, God-denying culture.
Entertainment
The second culprit in the neutralizing of men is the addiction to entertainment. A face lit by a luminous screen is a study in passivity. Fleeting images, intermingled with the thousand commercials and banner ads of an average week’s viewing, instill passiveness. There is no time for engagement or reflection, much less action. The viewer becomes a passive, munching, sipping drone (a male bee that has no sting and gathers no honey). There are guys, voyeurs, who have substituted viewing for doing and imagine that they have scored a touchdown or taken a hill by virtue of having watched it—passive living legends in their own inert minds.
Sexual voyeurism is a pathetic delusion because in it a man’s God-giventestosterone (which is meant to infuse manliness) becomes a medium of enslavement and impotence. Sexual voyeurism steals a man’s virility and initiative. Godly discipline becomes a receding mirage for the voyeur. And this also applies to the millions in the thrall of the gaming world (addicted to games like World of Warcraft or Fortnite), which keeps men playing games into their thirties in their Star Wars pajamas—warriors in their imaginations. Those enslaved by the world of entertainment will never attain manliness, a life disciplined for godliness—a life overseen, instructed, and energized by the Man of all men, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Legalism
Underlying much of the conscious rejection of spiritual discipline is the fear of legalism. For many, spiritual discipline means putting oneself back under the law with a series of Draconian rules that no one can live up to—and which spawn frustration and spiritual death.
But nothing could be further from the truth if you understand what discipline and legalism are. The difference is one of motivation: legalism is self-centered; discipline is God-centered. The legalistic heart says, “I will do this thing to gain merit with God.” The disciplined heart says, “I will do this thing because I love God and want to please him.” There is an infinite difference between the motivation of legalism and discipline! Paul knew this implicitly and fought the legalists bare-knuckled all the way across Asia Minor, never giving an inch. Now he shouts to us, “Train [discipline] yourself for godliness”! If we confuse legalism and discipline, we do so to our soul’s peril.
Where Things Are
The reality is that men are much less spiritually inclined and spiritually disciplined than women. Women are more likely to believe in God, find religion important, attend religious services, pray, and attend Bible studies and prayer meetings.16 Surprisingly, for every Bible sold, it is more likely to be a man purchasing it.17 And yet, men are less likely to read it.18 But it isn’t just the Bible that men are less likely to read. Women overwhelmingly read more than men,19 and buy more Christian books, fiction and nonfiction.20
It is also a fact that far more women are concerned about the spiritual welfare of their mates than vice versa. The magazine Today’s Christian Woman has found that articles focusing on the spiritual development of husbands have garnered the highest readership.21 All this is sustained by hard statistics. A study found that 62 percent of women believed religion can answer today’s problems, while only 52 percent of the men agreed.22 The typical evangelical Protestant church service has 55 percent females versus 45 percent male attenders.23 Furthermore, married women who attend church do so without their husbands 25 percent of the time.24
Why? Certainly the pervasive American male credo of self-sufficiency and individualism contributes. Some of this may also be due to the male avoidance of anything relational (which, of course, Christianity is!). But I do not concede that women are simply more spiritual by nature. The parade of great saints (male and female) down through the centuries, as well as spiritually exemplary men in some of our churches today, clearly refutes this idea. But the fact remains that men today need far more help in building spiritual discipline than women.
Men, what I am going to say in this book comes straight from the heart and my long study of God’s Word—man to man. In writing this, I have imagined my own grown sons sitting across the table, coffee cups in hand, as I try to impart to them what I think about the essential disciplines of godliness. This book is eminently user-friendly. The church in America needs real men, and we are the men!
Cosmic Call
We cannot overemphasize the importance of this call to spiritual discipline. Listen to Paul again from 1 Timothy 4:7–8: “Train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.”
Whether or not we have disciplined ourselves will make a huge difference in this life. We are all members of one another, and we are each either elevated or depressed by the inner lives of one another. Some of us affect others like a joyous tide, lifting them upward, but some of us are like undertows to the body of Christ. If you are married, the presence or lack of spiritual discipline can serve to sanctify or damn your children and grandchildren. Spiritual discipline, therefore, holds huge promise for this present life.
As for “the life to come,” spiritual discipline builds the enduring architecture of one’s soul on the foundation of Christ—gold, silver, and precious stones that will survive the fires of judgment and remain a monument to Christ for eternity (cf. 1 Cor. 3:10–15). Some may minimize the importance of spiritual discipline now, but no one will then! “Godliness is of value in every way”! The disciplined Christian gives and gets the best of both worlds—the world now and the world to come.
The word discipline may raise the feeling of stultifying constraint in some minds—suggesting a claustrophobic, restricted life. Nothing could be further from the truth! The obsessive, almost manic discipline of Mike Singletary liberated him to play like a wild man on the football field. Hemingway’s angst over the right word freed him to leave a mark on the English language second only to Shakespeare. The billion sketches of the Renaissance greats set Michelangelo free to create the skies of the Sistine Chapel. Churchill’s painstaking preparation freed him to give great “impromptu” speeches and brilliant ripostes. The disciplined drudgery of the musical greats released their genius. And, brothers in Christ, spiritual discipline frees us from the gravity of this present age and allows us to soar with the saints and angels.
Do we have the sweat in us? Will we enter the gymnasium of divine discipline? Will we strip away the things that hold us back? Will we discipline ourselves through the power of the Holy Spirit?
I invite you into God’s gym in the following chapters—to some sanctifying sweat, and to some pain and great gain.
God is looking for a few good men!
Food for Thought
What is spiritual discipline, and why is it so important? What usually gets in our way (see Rom. 3:9–18)? What can a lack of spiritual discipline do to your life?
Reflect on 1 Timothy 4:7–8 (“train yourself for godliness”). What is the literal meaning of “train” here? Practically, step by step, what does this mean you should do?
What does Hebrews 12:1 say about this? What things are holding you back in your walk with God? Why are you hanging on to them?
Is there a cost to spiritual discipline? Check out 1 Corinthians 9:25–27. What could greater discipline cost you? Are you prepared to pay the price? Why or why not?
The author writes, “No manliness, no maturity! No discipline, no discipleship! No sweat, no sainthood!” True or not true? How do you feel, deep inside, about this challenge?
How does spiritual discipline differ from legalism? Which do you most often practice? Is a change needed? If so, how can you bring this about?
Application/Response
What did God speak to you about most specifically, most powerfully in this chapter? Talk to him about it right now!
Think About It!
Can we really become disciplined men of God—a spiritual Mike Singletary or Winston Churchill? Aren’t we just setting ourselves up for defeat? Answer this in your own words, without using evangelical clichés.
Resources for Further Growth
Books
The Christian Life (Sinclair B. Ferguson)
Desiring God (John Piper)
Devoted to God (Sinclair B. Ferguson)
The Hole in Our Holiness (Kevin DeYoung)
How Does Sanctification Work? (David Powlison)
Inside Out (Larry Crabb)
The Joy of Fearing God (Jerry Bridges)
Make It Home before Dark (Crawford Loritts Jr.)
The Mortification of Sin (John Owen)
Reset (David Murray)
You Can Change (Tim Chester)
1. Mike Singletary played linebacker for the Chicago Bears of the NFL from 1981 to 1992. He was a perennial All-Pro, a two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year, and a member of the Super Bowl XXV-winning Bears team. He is now a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
2. Mike Singletary with Armen Keteyian, Calling the Shots (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1986), 57.
3. Quoted in Matthew Sayed, Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 62.
4. Quoted in Sayed, Bounce, 50.
5. Paul Johnson, Intellectuals (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 168, 169.
6. Leland Ryken, The Liberated Imagination: Thinking Christianly about the Arts (Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1989), 76.
7. “Scriveners’ Stances,” MD 13, no. 7 (July 1969): 245–54.
8. Ryken, The Liberated Imagination, 76.
9. Lane T. Dennis, ed., Letters of Francis Schaeffer (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1985), 93, 94.
10. Quoted in William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill; Visions of Glory: 1874–1932 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983), 32, 33.
11. Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho (London: John Calder, 1983), 7.
12. Gerhard Kittle, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1968), 775.
13. Barbara Defoe Whitehead, “The Girls of Gen X,” The American Enterprise, January/February 1998, 56.
14. Andrew Reiner, “The Fear of Having a Son,” The New York Times, October 14, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/well/family/the-fear-of-having-a-son.html. Reiner notes: “In a 2010 study, economists from the California Institute of Technology, the London School of Economics and New York University discovered, among other things, that adoptive American parents preferred girls to boys by nearly a third. . . . Adoptive parents are even willing to pay an average of $16,000 more in finalization costs for a girl than a boy . . . many fertility doctors observe that 80 percent of patients who are choosing their baby’s gender prefer girls.”
15. Michelle Conlin, “The New Gender Gap,” Business Week, May 26, 2003, 14.
16. Religious Landscape Study,” Pew Research Center, May 11, 2015, http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/.
17. “Onward and Upward: Christian Book Titles See Sales Rise Higher and Higher,” Nielsen, August 6, 2015, https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2015/onward-and-upward-christian-book-titles-see-sales-rise-higher.html.
18. “Religious Landscape Study,” Pew Research Center.
19. Kathryn Zickuhr and Lee Rainie, “A Snapshot of Reading in America in 2013,” Pew Research Center, http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/01/16/a-snapshot-of-reading-in-america-in-2013/.
20. “Onward and Upward,” Nielsen.
21. Bill Hendricks, Christian Booksellers Association report, February 28, 1991.
22. Hendricks, Christian Booksellers Association report.
23. Hendricks, Christian Booksellers Association report.
24. “Quick Facts on the Gender Gap,” Church for Men, http://churchformen.com/men-and-church/.
Part 2
Relationships
2
Discipline of Purity
One need turn on the television for only a few minutes to feel the heat of the oppressive sensuality of our day. Most of the oppression is crude. A boring trip around the TV channels at midday invariably reveals at least one couple wrapped in bed sheets and much sensual monotony. But the heat has become increasingly artful, especially if its purpose is to sell. The camera focuses close up, in black and white, on an intense, lusting male face, over which is superimposed an amber flame, which then becomes a glowing bottle of Calvin Klein’s Obsession as the face intones its desire. Other spots feature subtle cinematic images with prose from D. H. Lawrence—“to know him, to gather him in . . .”—and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary as she wanders around her illicit lover’s bedroom.1 The sticky steam of sensuality penetrates everything in our world!
Indeed, our world today is very similar to the world of Corinth described in Paul’s letters. But even with the fact that we are thoroughly “Corinthian,” many sensualists want more. Professor David A. J. Richard of New York University Law School, who advocates freedom for hard-corepornography, argues that “pornography can be seen as the unique medium of sexuality, a ‘pornotopia’—a view of sensual delight in the erotic celebration of the body, a concept of easy freedom without consequences, a fantasy of timeless repetitive indulgence.”2Pornotopia? Now there’s a word! It sounds like a new section of Disneyland: Autopia, Pornotopia, Fantasyland. “Absurd!” we think—and it is—but sadly, Richard’s arguments have been given serious weight. It is no wonder we live in a culture that sweats sensuality!
And the church has not escaped, for many in today’s church have wilted under the heat. Leadership magazine once commissioned a poll of a thousand pastors. The pastors indicated that 12 percent of them had committed adultery while in the ministry—one out of eight pastors!—and 23 percent had done something they considered sexually inappropriate. The researchers also surveyed a thousand Christianity Today subscribers who were not pastors and found the figure to be nearly double, with 23 percent saying they had had extramarital intercourse and 45 percent indicating they had done something they themselves deemed sexually inappropriate.3 One in four Christian men are unfaithful, and nearly one half have behaved unbecomingly! These are shocking statistics—especially when we remember that Christianity Today readers tend to be college-educated church leaders, elders, deacons, Sunday school superintendents, and teachers. If this is so for the church’s leadership, how much more for the average member of the congregation? Recent statistics chronicle an increase.4
This leads us to an inescapable conclusion: The contemporary evangelical church, broadly considered, is “Corinthian” to the core. It is being stewed in the molten juices of its own sensuality. Thus, it is no wonder that the church
has lost its grip on holiness;is so slow to discipline its members;is dismissed by the world as irrelevant;is rejected by so many of its children; andhas lost its power in many places—and that Islam and other false religions are making so many converts.Sensuality is easily the biggest obstacle to godliness among men today, and it is wreaking havoc in the church. Godliness and sensuality are mutually exclusive, and those in the grasp of sensuality can never rise to godliness while in its sweaty grip. If we are to “discipline [ourselves] for the purpose of godliness” (1 Tim. 4:7 NASB), we must begin with the discipline of purity. There has to be some holy heat, some holy sweat!
Lessons from a Fallen King
Where are we to turn for help? The most instructive example in all of God’s Word is the experience of King David as it is told in 2 Samuel 11.
Life at the Top
As the account begins, David is at the summit of his brilliant career—as high as any man in biblical history. From childhood he had been a passionate lover of God and had possessed an immense integrity of soul, as attested by Samuel’s words when he anointed David as king: “Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). God liked what he saw. God liked David’s heart!
His was a brave heart, as was evidenced when he met Goliath and returned the giant’s fearsome rhetoric with some spine-tingling words of his own—then charged full speed into battle, nailing Goliath right between the headlights (1 Sam. 17:45–49).
David had an archetypal sanguine personality brimming with joy, enthusiasm, and confidence, and overflowing with irresistible charisma. He was the poet—the sweet psalmist of Israel—so in touch with God and himself that his psalms pluck the heartstrings of man even today. Under his leadership all Israel had been united. David hardly seemed a candidate for moral disaster. But the king was vulnerable, for there were definite flaws in his conduct that left him open to tragedy.
Desensitization
Second Samuel 5, which records David’s initial assumption of power in Jerusalem, mentions almost as an aside that “David took more concubines and wives from Jerusalem” (v. 13). We must note, and note well, that David’s taking additional wives was sin! Deuteronomy 17, which set down the standards for Hebrew kings, commanded that they refrain from three things: (1) acquiring many horses, (2) taking many wives, and (3) accumulating much silver and gold (vv. 14–17). David did fine on one and three, but he completely failed on number two by willfully collecting a considerable harem.
We must understand that a progressive desensitization to sin and a consequent inner descent from holiness had taken root in David’s life. David’s collection of wives, though it was “legal” and not considered adultery in the culture of the day, was nevertheless sin. King David’s sensual indulgence desensitized him to God’s holy call in his life, as well as to the danger and consequences of falling. In short, David’s embrace of socially permitted sensuality desensitized him to God’s call and made him easy prey for the fatal sin of his life.
Men, it is the “legal” sensualities, the culturally acceptable indulgences, that will take us down. The long hours of indiscriminate TV watching or internet surfing, which is not only culturally cachet but is expected of the American male, is a massive culprit of desensitization. The expected male talk—double entendre, coarse humor, laughter at things that ought to make us blush—is another deadly agent. Acceptable sensualities have insidiously softened Christian men, as statistics well attest. A man who succumbs to desensitization of the “legal” sensualities is primed for a fall.
Relaxation
The second flaw in David’s conduct that opened him to disaster was his relaxation from the rigors and discipline that had been part of his active life. David was at midlife, about fifty years old, and his military campaigns had been so successful that it was not necessary for him to personally go off to war. He rightly gave the “mopping up” job to his capable general, Joab, and then relaxed. The problem was, his relaxation extended to his moral life. It is hard to maintain inner discipline when you are relaxing in this way. David was imminently vulnerable.
David did not suspect anything unusual was going to happen on that fatal spring day. He did not get up and say, “My, what a beautiful day. I think I will commit adultery today!” May this lesson not be wasted on us, men. Just when we think we are the safest, when we feel no need to keep our guard up, to work on our inner integrity, to discipline ourselves for godliness—temptation will come!
Fixation
In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.
It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” (2 Sam. 11:1–3)
After a warm day, evening was falling. The king strode out on the rooftop for some cool air and a look at his city at dusk. As he gazed, his eye caught the form of an unusually beautiful woman who was bathing without modesty. As to how beautiful she was, the Hebrew is explicit: the woman was “beautiful of appearance, very” (v. 2). She was young, in the flower of life, and the evening shadows made her even more enticing. The king looked at her . . . and he continued to look. After the first glance David should have turned the other way and retired to his chamber, but he did not. His look became a sinful stare and then a burning, libidinous, sweaty leer. In that moment David, who had been a man after God’s own heart, became a dirty, leering old man. A lustful fixation came over him that would not be denied.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer made the observation that when lust takes control, “At this moment God . . . loses all reality. . . . Satan does not fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God.”5 What a world of wisdom there is in this statement! When we are in the grip of lust, the reality of God fades. The longer King David leered, the less real God became to him. Not only was his awareness of God diminished, but David lost awareness of who he himself was—his holy call, his frailty, and the certain consequences of sin. This is what lust does! It has done it millions of times. God disappears to lust-glazed eyes.
Men, the truth demands some serious questions: Has God faded from view? Did you once see him in bright hues, but now his memory is blurred like an old sepia photograph? Do you have an illicit fixation that has become all you can see? Is the most real thing in your life your desire? If so, you are in deep trouble. Some decisive steps are necessary, as we shall see.
Rationalization
From deadly fixation, King David descended to the next level down, which is rationalization. When his intent became apparent to his servants, one tried to dissuade him, saying, “Isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” But David would not be rebuffed. Some massive rationalization took place in David’s mind, perhaps very much as J. Allan Peterson has suggested in The Myth of the Greener Grass:
Uriah is a great soldier but he’s probably not much of a husband or a lover—years older than she is—and he’ll be away for a long time. This girl needs a little comfort in her loneliness. This is one way I can help her. No one will get hurt. I do not mean anything wrong by it. This is not lust—I have known that many times. This is love. This is not the same as finding a prostitute on the street. God knows that. And to the servant, “Bring her to me.”6
The mind controlled by lust has an infinite capacity for rationalization:
“How can something that has brought such enjoyment be wrong?”“God’s will for me is to be happy; certainly he would not deny me anything that is essential to my happiness—and this is it!”“The question here is one of love—I’m acting in love, the highest love.”“My marriage was never God’s will in the first place.”“You Christians and your narrow judgmental attitudes make me sick. You are judging me. You are a greater sinner than I’ll ever be!”Degeneration (Adultery, Lies, Murder)
David’s progressive desensitization, relaxation, fixation, and rationalization set him up for one of the greatest falls in history—and his degeneration. “So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, ‘I am pregnant’” (2 Sam. 11:4–5). David was unaware he had stepped off the precipice and was falling, but that realization would soon arrive—the bottom was coming up fast.
We are all familiar with David’s despicable behavior as he became a calculating liar and murderer in arranging Uriah’s death to cover his sin with Bathsheba. Suffice it to say that at this time in the king’s life, Uriah was a better man drunk than David was sober (v. 13)!
A year later David would repent under the withering accusation of the prophet Nathan. But the miserable consequences could not be undone. As has often been pointed out:
It was the breaking of the tenth commandment (coveting his neighbor’s wife) that led David to commit adultery, thus breaking the seventh commandment.Then, in order to steal his neighbor’s wife (thereby breaking the eighth commandment), he committed murder and broke the sixth commandment.He broke the ninth commandment by bearing false witness against his brother.This all brought dishonor to his parents and thus broke the fifth commandment.In this way he broke all of the Ten Commandments that relate to loving one’s neighbor as oneself (commandments five through ten). And in doing so, he dishonored God as well, breaking, in effect, the first four commandments.7
David’s reign went downhill from there on, despite his laudable repentance:
His baby died.His beautiful daughter, Tamar, was raped by her half-brotherAmnon.Amnon was murdered by Tamar’s full brother Absalom.Absalom came to so hate his father David for his moral turpitude that he led a rebellion under the tutelage of Bathsheba’s resentful grandfather, Ahithophel.David’s reign lost the smile of God. His throne never regained its former stability.Men, we must understand that David would never have given more than a fleeting glance to Bathsheba if he could have seen the shattering results. I believe with all my heart that few, if any, would ever stray from God’s Word if they could see what would follow.
The record of the tragic fall of King David is God-given and should be taken seriously by the church in this “Corinthian age” as a warning regarding the pathology of the human factors that lead to a moral fall:
The desensitization that happens through the conventional sensualities of cultureThe deadly syndrome that comes through moral relaxation of disciplineThe blinding effects of sensual fixationThe rationalization of those in the grip of lustIn David’s case, the cycle included adultery, lying, murder, familial degeneration, and national decline. The pathology is clear, and so are the horrible effects of sensuality. Both are meant not only to instruct us but to frighten us—to scare the sensuality right out of us!
The Will of God: Purity
Sometimes people under the Christian umbrella simply do not buy what I am saying in regard to purity. They consider such teaching to be Victorian and puritanical. Victorian it is not. Puritanical it gloriously is—for it is supremely biblical. In answering such people, I take them to the most explicit call for sexual purity I know, 1 Thessalonians 4:3–8:
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.
If the reading of this passage is not convincing enough concerning the biblical ethic, we must understand that it is based on Leviticus 19:2, where God says, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy”—a command that is given in the context of warnings against sexual deviation. I also want to point out that in 1 Thessalonians we are called to avoid sexual immorality and are three times called to be “holy.” To reject this is to sin against the Holy Spirit—the living presence of God—as the Thessalonians passage makes so clear.
As the New Testament scholar Leon Morris has written:
The man who carries on an act of impurity is not simply breaking a human code, nor even sinning against the God who at some time in the past gave him the gift of the Spirit. He is sinning against the God who is present at that moment, against One who continually gives the Spirit. The impure act is an act of despite against God’s good gift at the very moment it is being proffered. . . . This sin is seen in its true light only when it is seen as a preference for impurity rather than a Spirit who is holy.8
Therefore, for a professed Christian to reject this teaching regarding sexual purity is to reject God, and this may indicate a false faith!
The Discipline of Purity
Men, if we are Christians, it is imperative that we live pure, godly lives in the midst of our Corinthian, pornotopian culture. We must live above the horrifying statistics or the church will become increasingly irrelevant and powerless, and our children will leave it. The church can have no power apart from purity.
This demands that we live out Paul’s dictum: “train yourself for godliness”—holy sweat!
Accountability
An important place to begin our training is with the discipline of accountability. This has to be done with someone who will regularly hold you accountable for your moral life, asking you hard questions. If you are married, ideally you should use your spouse. But I also recommend another man, one who will give you no quarter in sensual matters. This should be someone who will ask you the really hard questions, such as: What are you looking at on the internet? You need someone of the same gender who will understand your sensuality from the inside out—someone you can be completely honest with, to whom you can confess temptations and attractions. You need someone who will help you toe the mark and keep your soul faithful to God. Mutual accountability is the ideal. In this connection, I think of a certain salesman who regularly maintains accountability via phone contact with other Christian salesmen, and even works at scheduling trips to cities at the same time they will be there.
Prayer
Along with this comes the discipline of prayer (more on this in chap. 8). Pray daily and specifically for your purity. I am amazed that so few men who are concerned about their lives pray about it. Enlist the prayers of your spouse and friends, and pray for others in this respect. Do not wait to be asked. Your friends need prayer for purity, and so do you!
Memorization
Next, fill yourself with God’s Word through the discipline of memorization. Our Lord set the example par excellence in rebuffing Satan’s temptations with three precise quotations from the Old Testament Scriptures (cf. Matt. 4:1–11). The psalmist said, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word” (Ps. 119:9), and, “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (v. 11). Of course, he was referring to all of God’s Word, not just the passages that deal with sensuality. Nevertheless, I have seen the disciplined memorization of 1 Thessalonians 4:3–8 change a man’s life. (Other helpful passages include Job 31:1; Prov. 6:27; Mark 9:42ff.; Eph. 5:3–7; and 2 Tim. 2:22, some of which I comment on below.)
Mind
The discipline of the mind is, of course, the greatest of challenges (and I will discuss it more fully in chap. 6). And Scripture regularly presents its discipline as a discipline of the eyes. Men, it is impossible for you to maintain a pure mind if you are a television-watching, internet-surfing, video-game-playing “couch potato.” In one week you will watch more murders, adulteries, and perversions than our grandfathers read about in their entire lives.
Here is where the most radical action is necessary. Jesus said, “And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell” (Mark 9:47). No man who allows the rottenness of R-rated movies and shows, the various “soft-core” pornography magazines, and suggestive digital images to flow through his house and mind will escape sensuality.
If surfing for porn or flirting on social media is a temptation to you—tear it out. Cancel your internet service if you can, or at least install an accountability program on your device. If you use a smartphone to gratify your lustful desires, replace it with a phone with no data plan. If you find yourself viewing pornographic films in the darkness, toss your TV. It is better to go without a television, computer, or smartphone than to have sin destroy your life.
Job gave us wisdom for our day: “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?” (Job 31:1). How do you think Job would live in our culture today? He understood the wisdom of Proverbs: “Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned?” (6:27). Men, Job’s covenant forbids a second look. It means treating all women with dignity—looking at them respectfully. If their dress or demeanor is distracting, look them in the eyes and nowhere else, and get away as quickly as you can!
The mind also encompasses the tongue (see chap. 11 of this book), for as Jesus also said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12:34). Paul is more specific: “But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving” (Eph. 5:3–4). There must be no sexual humor, urbane vulgarities, and coarseness, as so many Christians are so prone to engage in to prove they are cool and not “out of it.”
Boundaries
Men, put disciplined boundaries around your life—especially if you work with women. Refrain from verbal intimacy with women other than your spouse. Do not bare your heart to another woman or pour forth your troubles to her, whether in person or online. Intimacy is a great need in most people’s lives—and talking about personal matters, especially one’s problems, can fill another’s need for intimacy, awakening a desire for more. Many affairs begin in just this way.
On the practical level, do not touch. Do not treat women with the casual affection you extend to the females in your family. How many tragedies have begun with brotherly or fatherly touches, then sympathetic shoulders. You may even have to run the risk of being wrongly considered “distant” or “cold” by some women.
Whenever you dine or travel with a woman, add a third person. This may be awkward, but it will afford an opportunity to explain your rationale, which, more often than not, will incur respect rather than reproach. Many women business associates will even feel more comfortable dealing with you.
Never flirt—even in jest. Flirtation is intrinsically flattering. You may think you are being cute, but it often arouses unrequited desires in another.
Reality
Be real about your sexuality. Do not succumb to vain gnostic prattle about being a Spirit-filled Christian who would “never do such a thing!” I well remember a man who indignantly thundered that he was beyond such sin. He fell within months! Face the truth—King David fell, and so can you!
Divine Awareness
Lastly, there is the discipline of divine awareness. This is what sustained Joseph through the temptations of Potiphar’s wife. “How then can I do this great wickedness,” he said, “and sin against God?” (Gen. 39:9)—and he fled. “So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart” (2 Tim. 2:22).
Men, our culture oppresses us with its obsessions and pornotopian heat. Many in the church have wilted. The statistics tell it all. In order not to become part of those statistics, there has to be some disciplined sweat.
Are we men enough? Are we men of God? I pray we are!
Food for Thought
“The contemporary evangelical church, broadly considered, is ‘Corinthian’ to the core,” the author writes. “It is being stewed in the molten juices of its own sensuality.” Do you agree or disagree? Concerning your own church? Concerning your own life?
“At this moment [of lust] God . . . loses all reality. . . . Satan does not fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer said. Have you found this to be true in your battles with temptation? What is the most effective way to prevent moral lapses?
Is 1 Thessalonians 4:3–8 too narrow to consider as binding on Christian men today? Why or why not? If not, how can we put this passage to work so that we will be victorious in our fight for purity?
What does God’s holiness have to do with our holiness (see Lev. 19:2)?
Considering the prevalent immorality of our culture, how can we possibly hope to keep our thoughts and behavior pure?