Does God Want Me to Be Spontaneous?
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
Ascension
4.9 • 7.1K Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2019
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
God may want you to be spontaneous, but he also wants you to be disciplined. How does that work? Well, unless you just want to have no control over you impulses like a dog chasing a squirrel, discipline is a necessary prerequisite to being spontaneous.
Spontaneity requires a schedule, Fr. Mike says. God can only introduce new and exciting things into your day once you’ve done the things he put on your path in the first place.
So make a schedule for your day. Yes, life will get in the way and you may have to abandon some things on that schedule, but at least having a schedule helps you decide whether or not the unexpected things are more important than the priorities you set for yourself.
Fully embrace today by making a plan for it, as the author of Hebrews encourages us:
“But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13).
The truly spontaneous person has a carpe diem attitude that starts with a set of determined goals. This determination is what gives him or her the energy boost to get to the uncharted territory of spontaneity. Have the disciple to schedule things right now so you have the freedom to be spontaneous later.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, my name is Father Megchimitz and this is Ascension Presents. |
| 0:07.8 | So one of the things I think that it's admired, what a temperament or a character trait |
| 0:13.4 | that's often admired in our culture is the ability to be spontaneous, right? |
| 0:17.0 | The ability to like just kind of like, at the spirit of the moment, I mean, how many |
| 0:20.8 | movies are there about like the main character or the main character's love interest? |
| 0:24.1 | The reason why they're awesome, the reason why the main character is interested in this |
| 0:28.1 | love interest is because there's someone who at the drop of a hat is willing to do anything. |
| 0:32.6 | It's really, it's willing to be spontaneous and we admire that. |
| 0:35.4 | We think like, that would be so cool to have that kind of freedom and then we look at |
| 0:39.0 | our own lives and I'm like, man, because I have this schedule and I have this plan and |
| 0:42.0 | I have this ritual and I have all this stuff that I need to do on my calendar. |
| 0:45.7 | There's no room to be spontaneous. |
| 0:48.5 | I would maintain that that is not necessarily the case. |
| 0:52.2 | I would maintain that it's only, it is only discipline that allows a person to become |
| 0:58.1 | spontaneous. |
| 0:59.1 | It's only because that's right. |
| 1:00.5 | We associate, right? |
| 1:01.5 | We don't associate spontaneous people with discipline. |
| 1:04.2 | We associate spontaneous spontaneity with impulse control, maybe a lack of impulse control |
| 1:09.8 | because it's like, you can't say no to the marshmallow member of the marshmallow experiment. |
| 1:13.0 | If not, look it up. |
| 1:14.0 | It's funny. |
... |
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