But many of my readers are not missionaries, are not ministers, are not what we call "full time" workers.  How does this apply to them in the daily routine of the home, the business, the school, the factory, and the farm?  Here are a few of the ways in which discipline will apply:

There is everywhere, especially in our cities, the plague of late talking, and night lunching which has nothing whatsoever to do with the King's business.  We dare to repeat ourselves at this point.  The time for God, for His Word, and for prayer is, as a result, cut short the next morning.  Let the Cross cut off that false habit.  Don't pray about it.  Quit it.  Then don't pray about getting up in the morning.  Get up.

It will seem severe to some to cut loose from an unholy affection, a fleshly attachment.  Have you had a "crush" on somebody?  God hates it.  You deny it.  Deny self there.  That is discipline.

Others suffer from a tongue loose at both ends.  Such persons will be forced to keep a strict watch over themselves, and cry continually, "Set a watch, 0 Lord, before my mouth."

Others will learn to endure under the discipline of some ever-present opposition, an opposition of suspicion, of slander, of being wounded in the house of their friends.  Their "daily furnace" is the tongue of man.  Such is their inescapable lot.  What an opportunity to get the gold of self-discipline!

Others will need to exercise a rigid self-discipline, in order to endure that defeat, that failure, that misunderstanding, that utter discrediting of their best efforts--patiently.

Are you providentially located?  Learn to be faithful right there.  Be content.  Do not wish yourself "other-where."
Are you naturally hasty, impetuous, and zealous?  We knew one such person who never learned to discipline himself "to be quiet." He became sour, and sick, and--dead.

A great mother in Israel said: "There are many women who would not be entirely well for anything in the world.  No one would enquire about them."

Many parents will suffer a painful inner crucifixion through learning to discipline their children.  Those who have not disciplined themselves--how can they discipline their children?  Children are being denied proper and godly discipline today because the parents have not yet learned to hate their "own flesh." Not having laid the Cross on his own flesh, the parent denies the Cross to his child.  "He that spareth his rod hateth his son."

There are still others who are weak, sensitive, and nervous in body.  One who knows says, "There will be days when the smallest fret, a jarring noise, bustling people, people who drum on the rail of the bed, or knock it, or drop things, a crooked picture, wrong colors put together, a book upside down, something perversely lost among the bed clothes will be absurdly but intensely irritating; even common good temper will need to be prayed for then; it will not come of itself" (Amy Carmichael).

What then is discipline?  The same author says: