I've just recovered from a horrible bout with the flu... an entire week of aches, congestion and fever. The good part is that through it all I ended up losing 10 lbs! But for some reason, my wife was mad at me when I told her this. Maybe it's because I didn't do anything to lose that weight... I didn't have to work hard at it.

Mark Moring, managing editor of Campus Life, shares a story about a father who was skeptical of his teenage son's new found determination to build bulging muscles. One day he followed his teenager to the store's weight-lifting department, where they admired a set of weights.

"Please, Dad," pleaded the teen, "I promise I'll use 'em every day."

"I don't know, Michael. It's really a commitment on your part," the father said.

"Please, Dad?"

"They're not cheap either," the father said.

"I'll use 'em, Dad, I promise. You'll see."

Finally won over, the father paid for the equipment and headed for the door. After a few steps, he heard his son behind him say, "What! You mean I have to carry them to the car?"

You see the problem for many of us is that we want it all for nothing: we want to be physically fit and lose weight without having to exercise, we want to be filthy rich by winning a lottery, we want to turn the channel without having to get out of our chairs. This is the kind of society we live in… a world of instant gratification and if something takes long and involves lots of effort than we try to avoid it at all costs.

Unfortunately, things are not all that different in the church! There are thousands of Christians who want to experience meaningful, deep and rich spirituality without having to put the necessary time and effort in what we call the spiritual disciplines. But the truth is scripture tells us that being a Christian is hard work, it is not an easy road to travel.

In Matthew 7:13-14 Jesus said… "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. [14] For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” And latter in Luke 13:24 he said… "Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.”

Being a Christian then is about striving to enter through the narrow door, it is about taking the path less traveled that involves hard work and spiritual discipline. In other words, Christianity should never be watered down and taken as a kind of easy belief system. As free as our salvation is through grace and faith in Christ, we are still called to strive hard at reaching our eternal goal.

Here then is some food for thought:

"People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated." - D.A. Carson

"We will never get anywhere in life without discipline, be it in the arts, business, athletics, or academics. 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 (cf. Romans 3:9-18). Therefore, as children of grace, our spiritual discipline is everything – everything! I repeat…discipline is everything!" - Kent Hughes

"There is much Spirit-filled human effort involved in sanctification. On the one hand, “it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). On the other hand, we’re commanded in 1 Tim. 4:7, “discipline (ourselves) for the purposes of godliness.” God uses means of grace to sanctify us, chief of which are the personal and corporate spiritual disciplines. In the personal realm, these include intake of God's Word, prayer, private worship, fasting, silence and solitude, etc. These are balanced by disciplines we practice with the church: public worship, hearing God's Word preached, observance of the ordinances, corporate prayer, fellowship, etc." - Don Whitney