Life, and the constant stream of decisions we dads face, fascinates me. Even what we consider to be small decisions add up to be big ones over time. We just didn’t realize we were making them incrementally. 

Consider a few examples. Someone brings donuts to work. You’ve had breakfast, but a couple of your favorite donuts won’t hurt. Lunch out (only a few $ right?) is much more appealing than packing a boring lunch. After dinner, your sons were playing their new video game you bought them for Christmas and begged you to keep playing and not have to stop for family Bible time. So you let them play. Besides you could catch up on few things you wanted to do. Later, watching the news was too tempting to pass up with all that is going on in the world, even though you knew you likely wouldn’t get up for your Bible time. 

Decision by decision, the course is being set for yourselves and your children, your health and spiritual growth. Self discipline is foundational. If you don’t rule yourself well, someone/something else will. Food addictions, strangling debt, health crisis like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease are killing us. We are investing and withdrawing daily, how and what? Will our Lord be pleased? 

“And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul” (Mark 8:34-37)?