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God has given us the Disciplines of the spiritual life as a means of receiving his grace. The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us.
A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then the natural forces of the earth take over and up comes the grain. This is the way it is with the Spiritual Disciplines—they are a way of sowing to the Spirit. The Disciplines are God’s way of getting us into the ground; they put us where he can work within us and transform us. By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done. They are God’s
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Spiritual growth is the purpose of the Disciplines.
Spiritual disciplines are a way for us to intentionally and actively pursue God with the purpose of spiritual growth.
Psychiatrist Carl Jung once remarked, “Hurry is not of the Devil; it is the Devil.”1
In meditation we are growing into what Thomas à Kempis calls “a familiar friendship with Jesus.”
What happens in meditation is that we create the emotional and spiritual space which allows Christ to construct an inner sanctuary in the heart.
Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind.
Bonhoeffer recommended spending a whole week on a single text! Therefore, my suggestion is that you take a single event, or a parable, or a few verses, or even a single word and allow it to take root in you. Seek to live the experience, remembering the encouragement of Ignatius of Loyola to apply all our senses to our task. Smell the sea. Hear the lap of water along the shore. See the crowd. Feel the sun on your head and the hunger in your stomach. Taste the salt in the air. Touch the hem of his garment.
Prayer catapults us onto the frontier of the spiritual life. Of all the Spiritual Disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.
Prayer is the most important of the spiritual disciplines as it invites us to communion and connection with God.
themselves over a period of time, and so should we. When such a progression is followed, we can expect to pray a year from now with greater authority and spiritual success than at present.
Prayer, just like any other activity needs to be cultivated and trained in order to grow in.
Jesus taught us to pray for daily bread. Have you ever noticed that children ask for lunch in utter confidence that it will be provided? They have no need to stash away today’s sandwiches for fear none will be available tomorrow. As far as they are concerned, there is an endless supply of sandwiches. Children do not find it difficult or complicated to talk to their parents, nor do they feel embarrassed to bring the simplest need to their attention. Neither should we hesitate to bring the simplest requests confidently to the Father.
Our confidence in prayer is based on who God is and his abilities.
Some have exalted religious fasting beyond all Scripture and reason; and others have utterly disregarded it. —JOHN WESLEY
Fasting must forever center on God. It must be God-initiated and God-ordained. Like the prophetess Anna, we need to be “worshiping with fasting” (Luke 2:37). Every other purpose must be subservient to God. Like that apostolic band at Antioch, “fasting” and “worshiping the Lord” must be said in the same breath (Acts 13:2).
Fasting is to be centred on God and it reminds us that we are sustained by his provision.
Fasting reminds us that we are sustained “by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). Food does not sustain us; God sustains us. In Christ, “All things hold together” (Col. 1:17). Therefore, in experiences of fasting we are not so much abstaining from food as we are feasting on the word of God. Fasting is feasting!
Fasting is to be centred on God and it reminds us that we are sustained by his provision.
Many Christians remain in bondage to fears and anxieties simply because they do not avail themselves of the Discipline of study. They may be faithful in church attendance and earnest in fulfilling their religious duties, and still they are not changed.
Faithful church attendance and fulfillment of religious duties alone don’t bring about change, it is the knowledge of the truth that makes one free.
They may sing with gusto, pray in the Spirit, live as obediently as they know, even receive divine visions and revelations, and yet the tenor of their lives remains unchanged.
Emotionalism and excitement in church isn't an indicator of life change nor does it lead to change
Good feelings will not free us. Ecstatic experiences will not free us. Getting “high on Jesus” will not free us. Without a knowledge of the truth, we will not be free.
We come to the Scripture to be changed, not to amass information.
However, we are changed by the amass of information about who God is and and what he has already done.
We must understand, however, that a vast difference exists between the study of Scripture and the devotional reading of Scripture. In the study of Scripture a high priority is placed upon interpretation: what it means. In the devotional reading of Scripture a high priority is placed upon application: what it means for me. All too often people rush to the application stage and bypass the interpretation stage: they want to know what it means for them before they know what it means!
Daily devotional reading is certainly commendable, but it is not study. Anyone who is after “a little word from God for today” is not interested in the Discipline of study.
Simplicity is freedom. Duplicity is bondage. Simplicity brings joy and balance. Duplicity brings anxiety and fear. The preacher of Ecclesiastes observes that “God made man simple; man’s complex problems are of his own devising” (Eccles. 7:30, JB).
Contemporary culture lacks both the inward reality and the outward life-style of simplicity. We must live in the modern world, and we are affected by its fractured and fragmented state. We are trapped in a maze of competing attachments. One moment we make decisions on the basis of sound reason and the next moment out of fear of what others will think of us.
When things are chaotic outward, it leads to inner chaos. Simplicity of life eases the inner calm needed.
Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. “We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like.”
The Epistles reflect the same concern. Paul says, “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction” (1 Tim. 6:9). A bishop is not to be a “lover of money” (1 Tim. 3:3). A deacon is not to be “greedy for gain” (1 Tim. 3:8). The writer to the Hebrews counsels, “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, ‘I will never fail you nor forsake you’” (Heb. 13:5). James blames killings and wars on the lust for possessions: “You desire and do not have; so you
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Simplicity sets possessions in proper perspective.
Simplicity is freedom, not slavery. Refuse to be a slave to anything but God.
Remember, an addiction, by its very nature, is something that is beyond your control. Resolves of the will alone are useless in defeating a true addiction. You cannot just decide to be free of it.
We can cultivate an inner solitude and silence that sets us free from loneliness and fear. Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment.
He inaugurated his ministry by spending forty days alone in the desert (Matt. 4:1–11). Before he chose the twelve he spent the entire night alone in the desert hills (Luke 6:12). When he received the news of John the Baptist’s death, he “withdrew from there in a boat to a lonely place apart” (Matt. 14:13). After the miraculous feeding of the five thousand Jesus “went up into the hills by himself . . .” (Matt. 14:23). Following a long night of work, “in the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place . . .” (Mark 1:35). When the twelve returned from a preaching and
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The wise preacher of Ecclesiastes says that there is “a time to keep silence and a time to speak” (Eccles. 3:7). Control is the key.
The disciplined person is the person who can do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. The mark of a championship basketball team is a team that can score points when they are needed. Most of us can get the ball into the hoop eventually, but we can’t do it when it is needed. Likewise, a person who is under the Discipline of silence is a person who can say what needs to be said when it needs to be said. “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (Prov. 25:11). If
What are some steps into solitude? The first thing we can do is to take advantage of the “little solitudes” that fill our day. Consider the solitude of those early morning moments in bed before the family awakens. Think of the solitude of a morning cup of coffee before beginning the work of the day. There is the solitude of bumper-to-bumper traffic during the freeway rush hour. There can be little moments of rest and refreshment when we turn a corner and see a flower or a tree.
Pause moments. Selah reflections
The touchstone for the biblical understanding of submission is Jesus’ astonishing statement, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).
Denying ourselves and following Jesus through self-denial is the act of choosing to submit.
Did Jesus lose his identity when he set his face toward Golgotha? Did Peter lose his identity when he responded to Jesus’ cross-bearing command, “Follow me” (John 21:19)? Did Paul lose his identity when he committed himself to the One who had said, “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16)? Of course not. We know that the opposite was true. They found their identity in the act of self-denial.
As the cross is the sign of submission, so the towel is the sign of service.
“The second service that one should perform for another in a Christian community is that of active helpfulness. This means, initially, simple assistance in trifling, external matters. There is a multitude of these things wherever people live together.
There is the service of bearing the burdens of each other. “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). The “law of Christ” is the law of love, the “royal law” as James calls it (James 2:8). Love is most perfectly fulfilled when we bear the hurts and sufferings of each other, weeping with those who weep. And especially when we are with those who are going through the valley of the shadow, weeping is far better than words.
At the heart of God is the desire to give and to forgive.
Without the cross the Discipline of confession would be only psychologically therapeutic. But it is so much more. It involves an objective change in our relationship with God and a subjective change in us. It is a means of healing and transforming the inner spirit.
The followers of Jesus Christ have been given the authority to receive the confession of sin and to forgive it in his name. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23). What a wonderful privilege! Why do we shy away from such a life-giving ministry? If we, not out of merit but sheer grace, have been given the authority to set others free, how dare we withhold this great gift!
It is God who seeks, draws, persuades. Worship is the human response to the divine initiative. In Genesis God walked in the garden, seeking out Adam and Eve. In the crucifixion Jesus drew men and women to himself (John 12:32). Scripture is replete with examples of God’s efforts to initiate, restore, and maintain fellowship with his children.
The language of the gathered fellowship is not “I,” but “we.”
Many times I do not feel like worshiping and I have to kneel down and say, “Lord, I don’t feel like worshiping, but I desire to give you this time. It belongs to you. I will waste this time for you.”
For this reason I have chosen to list guidance among the Corporate Disciplines and to stress its communal side. God does guide the individual richly and profoundly, but he also guides groups of people and can instruct the individual through the group experience.*
Scripture must pervade and penetrate all our thinking and acting. The one Spirit will never lead in opposition to the written Word that he inspired. There must always be the outward authority of Scripture as well as the inward authority of the Holy Spirit. In fact, Scripture itself is a form of corporate guidance. It is a way God speaks through the experience of the people of God. It is one aspect of “the communion of the saints.”
For us, scripture must be our corporate guide and God is the one guiding and sustaining us through it.
Jesus began his public ministry by proclaiming the year of Jubilee (Luke 4:18, 19). The social implications of such a concept are profound.* Equally penetrating is the realization that, as a result, we are called into a perpetual Jubilee of the Spirit.
The carefree spirit of joyous festivity is absent in contemporary society. Apathy, even melancholy, dominates the times.
Celebration brings joy into life, and joy makes us strong. Scripture tells us that the joy of the Lord is our strength (Neh. 8:10). We cannot continue long in anything without it. Women endure childbirth because the joy of motherhood lies on the other side.
Celebration is central to all the Spiritual Disciplines. Without a joyful spirit of festivity the Disciplines become dull, death-breathing tools in the hands of modern Pharisees. Every Discipline should be characterized by carefree gaiety and a sense of thanksgiving.
Ancient Israel was commanded to gather together three times a year to celebrate the goodness of God. Those were festival holidays in the highest sense. They were the experiences that gave strength and cohesion to the people of Israel.
