The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives

by Dallas Willard

It would of course be a rather low-voltage spiritual life in which prayer was chiefly undertaken as a discipline, rather than as a way of co-laboring with God to accomplish good things and advance his Kingdom purposes.

Constant prayer will only “burden” us as wings burden the bird in flight.

The emphasis upon the character of overall discipline throughout the life must not be missed if prayer is to be the powerful work and effectual discipline God intended it to be, one of his most precious gifts to us.

We must accept the fact that unconfessed sin is a special kind of burden or obstruction in the psychological as well as the physical realities of the believer’s life. The discipline of confession and absolution removes that burden.

cannot be omitted and it too serves as a powerful discipline. It is difficult not to rectify wrong done once it is confessed and known widely. Of course not all sin calls for restitution. But it is unthinkable that I should sincerely confess to my brother or sister that I have stolen a purse or harmed a reputation and then blithely go my way without trying to make some restoration for the loss. In general, our own innate integrity, a force within our personality, requires such restitution. This often is not a pleasant experience, but it actually strengthens us in our will to do the right thing. Confession then is one of the most powerful of the disciplines for the spiritual life. But it may be easily abused, and for its effective use it requires considerable experience and maturity, both in the individual concerned and in the leadership of the group—which leads us to our final discipline.

In submission we engage the experience of those in our fellowship who are qualified to direct our efforts in growth and who then add the weight of their wise authority on the side of our willing spirit to help us do the things we would like to do and refrain from the things we don’t want to do. They oversee the godly order in our souls as well as in our fellowship and in the surrounding body of Christ.

If we trust in riches we will also love them and come to serve them. In our actions we will place them above the truly ultimate values of human life, even above God and his service.

While certain individuals may be given a specific call to poverty, in general, being poor is one of the poorest of ways to help the poor.

But the virtue or discipline here is in the giving, not in the resultant state of poverty.

Say we decided to give away all the money we had, where would the money go? It would go somewhere—someone will continue to be affected by it. We must never forget that the riches of this world, whether they are to be regarded as good or evil, are realities that do not just disappear if we abandon them.

Likewise, charity and social welfare programs, while good and clearly our duty, cannot even begin to fulfill our responsibilities as children of light to a needy world.

Poverty as vowed only amounts to foregoing formal ownership of things, not foregoing access to and use of them—which, in fact, the vow usually guarantees.

The person who has grown to the place where he or she can truly say with Paul, “This one thing I do” (Phil. 3:13), or who truly “seeks first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matt. 6:33), is a person who has entered into simplicity. They easily put all demands that come to them in “their place” and deal harmoniously, peacefully, and confidently with complexities of life that seem incomprehensible to others, for they know what they are doing.

Instead, he refutes false generalizations that are observed as law in the practice of those to whom he speaks.

How do we respond to that man sleeping in those discarded boxes? Does it take great and awkward effort even to acknowledge his presence, or to speak to him if need be, or to take his hand or help him with his few possessions?

Yet, many will insist, this is necessary for the advancement of the cause of Christ. We cannot sustain our programs, we are told, unless we can attract and hold the right kinds of people. These people seem to have forgotten that the church’s business is to make the right kind of people out of the wrong kind.

We must take care not to force such things upon our dependents, but shopping, banking, even living in the poorer districts of our area will do much to lend substance to our grasp of how the economically deprived experience their world—and ours. This will add a great substance to our understanding, prayers, and caring that can never be gained by an occasional “charity run” or by sending money to organizations that work with the poor. Remember, Jesus did not send help.

Actually, the attempt to associate material goods with evil is an extension of the spirit of Antichrist, which denies that Christ has come in the flesh (1 John 4:3). But the “redemption” of material goods is absolutely necessary, for they are active realities in the created world. And their redemption is to be carried out by our possessing them in submission to God, as the redemption of the body is to be carried out by submitting the bodily members to righteousness.

More often than not, faith has failed, sadly enough, to transform the human character of the masses, because it is usually unaccompanied by discipleship and by an overall discipline of life such as Christ himself practiced.

The gospel of Christ, by contrast, comes to create a new person pervaded by the positive realities of faith, hope, and love—toward God primarily and therefore toward all men and women and creatures. From this positive transformation of the self, justice, peace, and prosperity can result as God’s rule is fulfilled in human life. We shouldn’t disparage practicality. It is of the essence of spirituality as well as of intelligence, faith, and love. But nothing is really practical in relation to human aspirations for the world if it does not proceed from deep insight into the realities of the human heart and does not call into question the fundamental forces that move human life and history. And that lack of insight is starkly and constantly revealed by our tendency to ask “Why?” when faced by the evils people do.

We certainly think it would be wonderful if we and all others would try to make a difference—to do what we should—and we often say so. But we do not want to bother with becoming the sort of people who actually, naturally do that.

But in our distorted judgment about the nature of life, we have tried to turn the Beatitudes into mere poetry, rather than treating them as realistic announcements about how things are.

The government shall be upon his shoulders in reality. This is the future event we should keep in mind when learned people tell us that personal virtue is not an answer to social ills.

There is every reason to believe, when we penetrate into the life context of Old Testament events, that the attitude in which this system was to be carried out was that of thoughtful, compassionate neighbors who were living entirely within the letter and the spirit of the Ten Commandments and with the help of other counsels of God to the Jewish people. Those who were out of line would be brought into line, if at all possible, by the persuasion and example of the judge of ten, who was a neighbor in the most literal of senses, or in cooperation with those over him if that was required. Legitimate needs of the individual would be known and would be cared for from the resources of the community, wherein all lived with a consciousness of provision by God. To “judge” was to have the responsibility for making sure that justice was being done in the community, that things were going as they should.

Justice cannot prevail until there are enough people properly equipped with Christ’s character and power, in something like the Mosaic distribution throughout society, who cooperatively and under God constantly see to it that the good is secured and that the right is done.

efforts. Our part is to understand the way God works with humanity to extend his Kingdom in the affairs of humankind, and to act on the basis of that understanding.

The prophet sees the general outline of future facts, not the details. But there always are details, of course. What we are suggesting is that the details of Christ’s coming reign consist in the reorganization of society on the model of the “judges,” around those who assume loving responsibility for their neighbors with that fully developed character and power of Jesus Christ to which the ministry of the Kingdom of God has brought them, under the real, personal presence of Christ on earth.

And it is too difficult for ordinary people. In fact, it is impossible, as the record of human government shows. Turmoil, insurrection, and revolution are inevitable in an open society where the officials are corrupt. Ultimately, the saints—and by this we do not mean a political party of “saints”—must be the ones to judge the earth. Only saints of the faith of Abraham and Paul are capable of governing as God (and humans) would have it, because they work in the power of God and have the character to bear it without corruption.

But now is the time for decision and especially for planning. God changes lives in response to faith. But just as there is no faith that does not act, so there is no act without some plan. Faith grows from the experience of acting on plans and discovering God to be acting with us.

You will be challenged to consider how thoroughly you are committed to following Jesus, and you may find that your commitment is remarkably flabby and thin because it has never been translated into how you spend your time.