Welcome to today's encouragement from our daily bread. I'm Wyn Collier, and I wrote today's

piece, A Disciplined Life in God. It was June 2016, during the official celebration of

Queen Elizabeth's 90th birthday.

From her carriage, the monarch waved to the crowds, passing in front of long lines of red-coated

soldiers standing at perfect, unflinching attention.

It was a warm day in England, and the guards were dressed in their traditional dark wool pants,

wool jackets, button to the chin, and massive bare-fur hats.

As the soldiers stood in rigid rows under the sun, one guard began to faint.

Remarkably, he maintained his strict control and simply fell forward, his body remaining

straight as aboard as he planted his face in the sandy gravel. There he lay, somehow, still at attention.

It took years of practice and discipline for this guard to learn such self-control,

to hold his body in place even as he was falling unconscious.

The Apostle Paul described such training.

I discipline my body and keep it under control, he wrote in 1st Corinthians 927.

Paul recognized that everyone who competes goes into strict training.

While God's grace, not our efforts, undergirds all we do, our spiritual life deserves rigorous

discipline.

As God helps us discipline our mind, heart, and body, we learn to keep our attention

fixed on him, even amid trials or distractions.

Today's our daily bread devotional scripture reading is from 1 Corinthians chapter 9, verses 24 to 27.

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize?

Run in such a way as to get the prize.

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