We must endeavor to discipline our lives. For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. It requires discipline to teach a class, to attend church, etc. The deepest yearning of our hearts is the desire to grow into the kind of person that God would have us to be. We do not always remember this because we live in a world, which involves many kinds of pressures.
Spiritual growth is sometimes precedence for a time.
For too many people, Christ is not very real and Christianity is not very meaningful. Religion can become only a perfunctory, surface, casual kind of thing. It is only skin deep. It is largely habit. Many do not find Christianity very meaningful.