(The role of Discipline in Building Boundaries)
When we became believers and were born again by the Spirit of God, our spirits were made new but not our mind or our bodies. Those we must renew through knowledge and growth. The challenge we face is learning how to handle ourselves with a new spirit dwelling in an “old” mind and body that don’t know how to behave. We have to learn how to live and act as children of God. This is probably nowhere harder to do than in premarital relationships. Our newborn spirits tell us one thing, while our un-renewed mind and body tell us something else. Without a disciplined spirit, the chemical and sexual stirrings of mind and body are difficult to deny. That is why we must as Paul writes, to “be transformed by the renewing of mind” (Rom. 12:2b) and to take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2Cor. 10:5b)”
The above excerpt by Myles Monroe sums up the role of self-discipline in keeping boundaries in relationships.
Proverbs 25:28 has this to say: like a city whose walls are broken down, so is a man who lacks self-control. Psalm 80:12 also reads “why have you broken down the walls so those who pass by pick its grapes?” Without building boundaries around you in your pursuance of relationships, people will walk into your life and rob you of all the grapes. They will just be passing by without staying, yet they will eat the available grapes that make the garden worth its sort. The grapes represent the quality things you have – the pride of your personhood, joy, self-worth, peace, values, even your commitment to Christ etc.
Keep your garden intact and preserve its fruits to that God-fearing individual who will come into your life, observing all the divine and the institutional protocols of marriage. One who will not come and eat and go, but rather one who will stay and nurture all that you are and perpetually eat and drink from each other under God’s divine provisions.
