Spiritual Disciplines
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The key points from this study are:
1. Understand the point of discipline. Most
of us, spiritually speaking, are flabby and out of shape. The
result is that we are unable to engage in the simplest forms of
spiritual living for any prolonged period. Spiritual discipline
is no different than any other form of discipline: to develop the
endurance and the disposition to maintain your performance when,
if less fit, you would be unable to continue any longer.
2. Understand the place of discipline. The
point of a disciplined life is not discipline itself. To think
this is to act like body-builders: people who confuse physical
conditioning done to obtain purposeful strength and make the
physical conditioning (or some grotesque simulation of it) the
end in itself. Rather, discipline is useful only to the
extent that it causes you to be more of a disciple: a
follower of Jesus.
3. Engage in discipline:
- Prayer. One simply cannot be a
Christian without extensive and intensive time spent in
prayer. It must be done, there is no substitute. If your
prayer life is not satisfactory, you must figure out why
and address it.
- Meditation. Meditation is the
way we can take our prayers and studies and understand
their significance, place them in the context of this
world, and discern how they should play out in our lives.
The greatest truths are those that dawn on us slowly and
over time, and we will not appropriate those if we do not
spend time in quiet reflection.
- Fasting. In a self-indulgent
world, it is important to spend time in self-denial.
Food, relating as it does to one of the most basic of all
drives, is the best focus for self-denial. Practicing
this discipline is important because self-gratification
seems essential. We actually think something bad will
happen to us if we do not gratify every whim that crosses
our fancy. Prolonged self-denial of basic desires,
practiced repeatedly, will translate to the strength to
resist other urges in other contexts.
- Submission. Submission is a
useful discipline for much the same reason as fasting. We
are constantly told that we have rights, that we should
never tolerate mistreatment, that we stand firm against
every wrong done to us. We are also told that we are
authorities unto ourselves and that no one has the right
to dictate to us what we can do or be (except as we
consent). These views, while sometimes justified in a
political context, can spill over into our attitudes to
God. Submission in the temporal realm can build an
attitude of humility and obedience in the divine realm.
- Service. True service, without
any gloss of self-righteousness, can teach us humility
and submission. Even more, a study of the nature of true
service can show us how the sin of pride can infect
almost anything we do, even seemingly "good"
deeds. Thus, true service can also teach us the nature of
true goodness.
- Worship. It is true that what
Jesus gives us is more in the nature of a relationship
than information. Worship is the method in which we
experience this relationship, both in the individual
sense of our own relationship with God and in the
communal sense of our relationship with others within the
body of Christ.
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7/12/97