Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

by David Mathis

One thing to make explicit here at the end of this first chapter on fellowship, and the beginning of part 3 on the means of grace in the church, is that the deepest, most durable form of fellowship is covenantal—in other words, it is between parties that have made formal commitments to each other. This is not only true in the partnership of marriage, but also in the local church. When we make vows and promises to each other in covenanting together in a local church as “members” or “partners” (or whatever term a church uses), we don’t inhibit the true life of the church, but give the truest conditions for its growth and flourishing.

the importance of listening, and how this underrated act, which is essential for fellowship, serves as a means of grace both to ourselves and to others in the life of the church.

In our sin, we’d rather trust in ourselves than another, amass our own righteousness than receive another’s, speak our own mind rather than listen to someone else. True, sustained, active listening is a great act of faith, and a great means of grace, both for ourselves and for others in the fellowship.

Good listening asks perceptive, open-ended questions that don’t just tee up yes-no answers but gently peel the onion and probe beneath the surface. It watches carefully for nonverbal communication, but doesn’t interrogate and pry into details the speaker doesn’t want to share. It meekly draws them out and helps point the speaker to fresh perspectives through careful, but genuine, leading questions.

He who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life. . . . Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.

Good listening is a great means of grace in the dynamic of true Christian fellowship. Not only is it a channel through which God continues to pour his grace into our lives, but it’s also his way of using us as his means of grace in the lives of others. Cultivating habits of good listening may be one of the hardest things we learn to do, but we will find it worth every ounce of grace-empowered effort.

We were made to worship Jesus together. Among the multitude. With the great horde. Swallowed up in the magnificent mass of the redeemed. God didn’t fashion us to enjoy him finally as solitary individuals, but as happy members of a countlessly large family.

Corporate worship is the single most important means of grace and our greatest weapon in the fight for joy, because like no other means, corporate worship combines all three principles of God’s ongoing grace: his word, prayer, and fellowship. It is corporate worship, with its preaching and sacraments and collective praises, confessions, petitions, and thanksgivings, which most acutely brings together the gifts of God’s voice, his ear, and his body.

Corporate worship is a means of grace not when we’re caught up with what we’re doing, but when we experience the secret of worship—the joy of self-forgetfulness—as we become preoccupied together with Jesus and his manifold perfections.

Often we come into corporate worship feeling a sense of spiritual fog. During the rough-and-tumble of the week, the hard knocks of real life in the fallen world can disorient us to ultimate reality and what’s truly important. We need to clear our heads, recalibrate our spirits, and jump-start our slow hearts.

Instead of staying away from corporate worship when we sense ourselves to be spiritually lethargic, precisely what we need more than ever is the awakening of worship. When our hearts feel it least is when we need most to remind our souls, “For me it is good to be near God”

We were not made to stand solo with no fellows. Even in times as troubling as Elijah’s, God gave him seven thousand who hadn’t abandoned the truth (1 Kings 19:18). God made us for community—and named her “the church”—and being part of this great local and global community plays an important role in assuring us not only that we are not deceiving ourselves in pretending our profession is credible, but also that we truly know whom we have believed (2 Tim. 1:12).

When we join in corporate worship, God loves not only to change our minds, but to irrevocably change our hearts right then and there.

Corporate worship demands that we discipline ourselves to respond, and not only pursue God on our own terms. It is an opportunity to embrace being led, and not always taking the lead.

The secret of joy in corporate worship is not only self-forgetfulness—or to put it positively, preoccupation with Jesus and his glory—but also the happy awareness that we are not alone in having our souls satisfied in him.

The weekly priority of preaching in worship points to the importance of our not just interacting with God as friends and sharing at his Table as family, but also submitting to his word in the message of his herald, the preacher.

When we put ourselves under the preaching of God’s word, it is one of the precious few moments in life today when we close our mouths and resist the temptation to respond right away, and focus our energy and attention to hearing with faith.

The great goal of preaching, as well as the sacraments and our various other habits of grace, as we have seen, is knowing and enjoying Jesus. The greatest incentive for attentive listening as we gather for corporate worship and sit under the preaching of God’s word is that we may know him

One of the great blessings of good preaching is that it helps us in the life-giving act of self-forgetfulness. Faithful preaching exposes our sin and challenges us to change, but it does so in the stanzas, while the chorus calls us away from self to the Savior. It is a glorious thing for our souls to be freed from our regular preoccupation with self, even if for only a few moments at the sermon’s climax, as we’re captivated by Christ.

Faithful preaching refills our faith. Personal renewal and steady-state strengthening come not from giving ourselves a pep talk but from regularly receiving the preaching of the gospel. We simply don’t have the resources in and of ourselves. We need an external word.

When we sit attentively under the faithful preaching of the gospel, not only do we forget ourselves and refill our faith, but we are genuinely changed.

Good preaching helps us not only to forget ourselves, but to turn our gaze to the God-man, who is the only one who can satisfy our souls.

So also the “visible sermon” of the Supper leads from life to life, or death to death. The Table will not leave us unaffected, but either closer to our Savior or more callous to him.

The Lord’s Supper is no less than a memorial meal that draws us back to the cutting of the covenant at Calvary in Christ’s self-giving sacrifice for us.

“Participation in the Lord’s Supper,” writes Wayne Grudem, is very clearly a means of grace which the Holy Spirit uses to bring blessing to his church. . . . We should expect that the Lord would give spiritual blessing as we participate in the Lord’s Supper in faith and in obedience to the directions laid down in Scripture, and in this way it is a “means of grace” which the Holy Spirit uses to convey blessing to us. . . . There is a spiritual union among believers and with the Lord that is strengthened and solidified at the Lord’s Supper, and it is not to be taken lightly.79

One of the most loving things we can do for each other in the church is tell each other when we’re wrong.

The kind of rebuke that the Scriptures commend is the kind intended to stop us from continuing on a destructive path.

Reproof is a fork in the road for a sinful soul. Will we cringe at correction like a curse, or embrace rebuke as a blessing? One of the great themes in Proverbs is that those who embrace rebuke are wise and walk the path of life, while those who despise reproof find themselves to be fools careening toward death.

Typically it is easier for others in our lives not to say anything but just let us go merrily on our way down the path of folly and death. But reproof is an act of love, a willingness to own that awkward moment, and perhaps having your counsel thrown back in your face, for the risk of doing someone good. When a spouse or friend or family member or associate rises to the level of such love, we should be profoundly thankful.

We’ll not just suffer a brother or sister speaking into our lives on rare occasion, but invite them to do so—and when they do, embrace it as a blessing. Even when it’s a

rebuke poorly delivered, and the timing and tone are poor, and the motivation seems suspect, we’ll want to ransack it for every grain of truth, and then repent and thank God for the grace of having people in our lives who love us enough to say something hard.

The love of Christ for us is our key to unlock the power of rebuke. With him in view, the one “who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20), no longer must reproof be an assault on our very foundations and deep sense of worth, but it becomes a fresh opportunity for growth and greater joy.

It is another grace of the gospel that by the Spirit we can grow skin thick enough to hear any reproof as a pathway to yet even more grace. It is the gospel that gives us the wherewithal for truly leaning into rebuke and receiving its bounty. Only in Jesus can we find our identity not in being without fault, but in being shown love by God when we’re still sinners, chock-full of faults

Love compels us not only to want to receive a rebuke with a gospel identity, but also to give others the gift. One of the most loving things we can do for others is tell them when they’re in the wrong.

But however difficult it may be, if we really believe that we all are sinners and that unchecked sin leads to pain and misery and eternal destruction, love will constrain us to give the gift of loving reproof. Here, then, in the spirit of seeking to provide reproof in “loving humility,”

Having checked your own eye and sought sympathy, pray for others before confronting them. Pray about the moment you approach them, that you would give your word of correction sufficient gospel preface, that they would receive your loving reproof, and that if they resist in the moment, God would soon soften their heart to the degree that your observation is true. Also pray for loving courage to gently hold your ground and not immediately backtrack if they snap back or their inner lawyer immediately objects.

We will only go so deep with Jesus until we start yearning to reach out. When our life in him is healthy and vibrant, we not only ache to keep sinking our roots down deep in him, but we also want to stretch out our branches and extend his goodness to others.

getting on board with Jesus’s mission to disciple the nations may be the very thing he uses to push through your spiritual lethargy and jump-start your stalled sanctification.

disciplemaking is the very stuff of Christian fellowship, and every believer, indwelt by God’s Spirit, can be a channel of God’s grace to anyone else. This means good disciplemaking is always a two-way street. The “disciple” and the “discipler” are most fundamentally disciples of Jesus.

Actively making disciples helps us see our lives in better proportion—not with ourselves at the center, doing the big things, but situated happily on the periphery, doing our small part in a big and glorious God-sized plan.

But tipping and leaning won’t cover the full picture of what life-on-life disciplemaking requires. It’s not just friend-to-friend, and it’s not just teacher-to-student. It’s both. There is the sharing of ordinary life (relationship) and seeking to initiate and make the most of teachable moments (intentionality).

In good disciplemaking we are able to demonstrate for the ones we’re investing in something that Jesus’s disciples never saw in him: how to repent. Those who are looking to our lives and seeking to imitate our faith need to see us be honest and forthright about our sins, hear our confessions, witness our repentance, and watch us earnestly pursue change.

Disciplemaking hems us in, exposes our failures, and teaches us to draw our daily strength not from ourselves but from Jesus and the gospel, which are the essence of disciplemaking. The gospel is the baton to be passed.

One of the effects of the gospel going deeper into our souls is that it frees our fingers to loosen their grasp on our goods. Generosity is one of the great evidences of truly being a Christian.

Giving it away also speaks. It is an opportunity to show, and reinforce, the place of faith and love in our hearts. It’s a chance to gladly pursue the first and second greatest commandments through our giving, and to cultivate the mind of Christ through our spending: “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others”

But the greatest test of our treasure is not whether we’re willing to spend it, but whom and what we spend it on. Generosity is an occasion to look past the small joys of self-oriented spending, and pursue the greater pleasures of spending on others. And so a good instinct to develop on the threshold of significant purchases is to ask what this expenditure reveals about our heart. What desire am I trying to fulfill? Is this for private comfort, or gospel advance, or expressing love to a friend or family member?

The point is that a fully human life is lived in a way free from being enslaved to our stuff. Our possessions are meant to serve our needs and our humanness, rather than our lives being centered around service to our possessions and our desires for them.

Nothing shows our hearts like sacrifice. When we are willing not only to give from our excess, but to embrace some personal loss or disadvantage for the sake of showing generosity toward others, we say loudly and clearly, even if only to our own souls, that we have a greater love than ourselves and our comforts.

God loves a cheerful giver because he is one, the consummate one. And every gift we give in Christ is simply an echo of what we have already received, and the immeasurable riches to come

One key principle in making our time management Christian is this: Let love for others be the driver of your disciplined, intentional planning