Spiritual Disciplines

Christian experience is transformational. The familiar story of the prodigal son in Luke 15 is suggestive of this. It took only a few hours to get the prodigal out of the far country, but undoubtedly it took many years to get the far country out of the prodigal. He was instantly forgiven and justified, declared to be not guilty and given the tokens of acceptance: the ring, the robe and the reception. But almost certainly there were habitual thoughts to conquer, attacks of guilt for wasting the inheritance and the lingering censure of his brother. Salvation in Christ is both immediate and progressive—immediate in that we are instantly justified when we accept Christ’s death as sufficient to take us to God just as we are; progressive in that we must then engage in a lifelong process of working out the implications of our justification in our thoughts, emotions, relationships, service and practices. This is where spiritual disciplines are crucial: they may be defined as Christian practices that encourage spiritual growth and spiritual formation. They are life patterns that direct us to God and disciple us more fully into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

Everyday Disciplines

Both the Old and New Testaments reveal people being confronted with themselves, brought in touch with God and transformed in the context of everyday life. Abraham (Genesis 18) met God in the context of hospitality. Jacob (Genesis 25-35) experienced his family as a furnace of transformation as God kept reaching out to him through the mirrors provided by his family members—brother, mother, father-in-law and wives. Remarkably, the one event for which he was known to be a man of faith took place at the every end of his life: the blessing of his children (Hebrews 11:21). Joseph (Genesis 37-50) experienced his work as the arena in which he was called to discover God’s sovereign purpose for his life (Genesis 50:20). He started with a career (shepherding), found an occupation (as a slave in Potiphar’s house and then a prisoner) and eventually through all discovered his calling (to save the people of Egypt and Israel). (He was also the first futures trader, making investments on the grain market.)

Moses was shaped by God and continuously drawn into a deeper life by the discipline of leadership. Ruth found bereavement to be the context in which her life of faith was evoked and translated into practice. David and Jonathan experienced friendship as a lifelong spiritual discipline, a discipline that led David to express his loyalty to his dead friend by caring for Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth (2 Samuel 9). The kings, good and bad, were tested by their experience of government, politics and power. Jeremiah discovered that his ministry was the context in which he, and not just others, was being transformed.

The preacher of Ecclesiastes went through the discipline of success and wealth. Job found God and himself through suffering. Ezekiel, once a priest in Jerusalem, became a prophet when he went through the discipline of immigration as an exile in Babylon. Jonah got “saved” by going on a journey (see Traveling) to people he did not love with a message he hardly believed. Hosea gained the heart of God when his own heart was broken and remade through a tragic marriage. Daniel found encounter with advanced study and a foreign culture the arena of faith and life building (Daniel 1).

In the New Testament Mary and Joseph were shaped by an unexpected and unplanned conception and birth. Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42) were disciplined in the context of homemaking. The man born blind (John 9) was transformed in the context of his illness and disability. James and John (Mark 10:35-45) were invited to grow by encountering their own ambition. Peter (Acts 10) was challenged by encountering multiculturalism and confronting his own ethnocentrism. Paul found volunteer work as a tentmaking missionary one of the “weaknesses” and hardships (2 Cor. 11:27) that proved to be an arena of transforming grace. Philemon was invited to find the same thing through showing mercy to a former employee that had disappointed him bitterly.

Hardly any of these examples come from ecclesiastical contexts; they show that everyday life is inundated with opportunities to grow spiritually. Some of these everyday disciplines are relational (family, marriage, friendship, neighboring). Some are vocational (work, ministry, mission). Some are societal (culture, multiculturalism, government). Some are existential (suffering, relocation, relinquishment, success, death). And some are personal (ambition, ethnocentrism, calling). So we do not have to “get away from it all” to experience spiritual growth. Rather what we need to do is to explore the meaning of everyday life and live it fully for God—the very reason for this whole volume.

Christian Practices

There is another approach to spiritual disciplines—the classic approach—that considers Christian practices that help us make sense of everyday life. Some of these Christian practices, like the sacraments, the Lord’s Supper, fellowship and sabbath, are mandated in Scripture, give us perspective and help us become deep, rather than just busy, people.

Apart from these mandated practices, the Bible does not really emphasize disciplines in the way that has become trendy today. The Bible inspires us with a vision of a God who is continuously seeking us. In the light of this we find “our own way” of responding, which could include any of the following disciplines and some not even mentioned. These are offered as examples rather than as a plan. They are also offered with a caution. Disciplines are not the means of sanctification—that is God’s work—but rather are ways of making ourselves available to God in spiritual growth. E. Stanley Jones says this magnificently:

Conversion is a gift and an achievement. It is an act of a moment and the work of a lifetime. You cannot achieve salvation by disciplines—it is the gift of God. But you cannot retain it without disciplines. If you try to attain salvation by disciplines you will be trying to discipline an unsurrendered self. You are sitting on the lid. The result will be tenseness instead of trust. . . . While salvation cannot be attained by discipline around an unsurrendered self, nevertheless when the self is surrendered to Christ and a new center formed, then you can discipline your life around that new center—Christ. Discipline is the fruit of conversion—not the root. (p. 210)

A handy way to survey these practices is to consider spiritual growth as a journey with three movements: the journey upward (to know and love God better), the journey inward (to know and love ourselves better) and the journey outward (to know and love others better). The order is significant. Self-discovery apart from God-discovery leads to dangerous egoism. Sometimes this egoism takes a disguised form of self-crucifixion or putting ourselves down emotionally as a way of ingratiating ourselves to God. In this case the cloak of pride is turned inside out, but it is still pride because “I” is still in the center (compare Col. 3). No one is saved by either positive or negative works. Even a negative self-image does not commend us to God’s favor. The journey outward in service depends on being real with God and ourselves. We cannot give bread to others if we do not have bread ourselves.

The Journey Upward

Solitude: planned availability. Silence does not guarantee solitude. And solitude is not the same thing as loneliness. When we are lonely, we reach out to other people to fill the void of our lives, and we cling to them to meet needs in ourselves. If people are not willing to do this for us, we may escape into busyness to avoid the further conversion of our own souls. Solitude, in contrast, is different from loneliness, for solitude is intentional isolation from others and planned availability to God. When we are lonely, we know we are alone. Solitude, in contrast, is the experience of silence in which we discover we are not alone. Loneliness is usually involuntary. But solitude is the grace of turning involuntary loneliness into a reaffirmation that we are in the presence of God and are positioned to experience God’s friendship, even if it is dialogue about God’s absence, as it was for the psalmist (Psalm 22).

Thanksgiving: waging war on discontentment. The first movement of the soul toward God when we are alone should be gratitude. It was for lack of gratitude and reverence that the Gentiles, who “although they knew God . . . neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him” (Romans 1:21), were given over (Romans 1:24, 26, 28) to experience what we call sins, which in reality were symptoms of the fundamental sin of ingratitude (see Festivals—Thanksgiving). The original sin from the garden onward has been to turn away from simple love of God and to cease practicing continuous thanksgiving in the midst of ordinary life. John Calvin said, “We are surrounded by God’s benefits. The best use of these benefits is an unceasing expression of gratitude” (Institutes 3.10.28). Being content in any and all circumstances (Phil. 4:4-12) has almost nothing to do with the circumstances of our lives and almost everything to do with whether we refer everything to God in humble gratitude. There is nowhere else we can serve the Lord than where we are right now. Oswald Chambers put this in his deeply direct way: “Never allow the thought—`I can be of no use where I am’; because you certainly can be of no use where you are not” (p. 291).

Confession: being honest with God. We cannot be positive all the time any more than we can breathe out all the time. Sometimes in the psalms a person starts not with gratitude but rather with a lament. Gratitude often comes later, after the person has “told it like it is.” Gratitude and confession are like the exhale and inhale of breathing. They belong together. Authenticity comes not by introspection but by yielding ourselves just as we are to the loving God who wishes to reside in us. Start with the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17). Walk through each commandment slowly and leisurely and ask God to reveal to you what you must see in the light of his presence. Repentance, says C. S. Lewis, “is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if you chose; it is simply a description of what going back is like” (quoted in “The War Within,” p. 45).

Bible meditation: crawling through Scripture. Confession expresses the hunger of our hearts. God’s Word feeds that hunger. But how are we to read the Bible? Reading large passages of Scripture every day with a view to reading through the Bible each year is a wonderful discipline, and there are excellent lectionaries to assist you in this. But equally there is great gain in crawling through the Scripture, attending to each sentence and making it our own. Bible meditation is more than, though not less than, exegesis, which is the science of understanding the text in its context. Meditation helps us internalize what we have read and heard so that our fundamental longings and addictions are addressed by the inseminating Word of God. The words used in the Bible for meditate imply the use of both mind and heart. The Hebrew word siach means “to muse,” “go over in one’s mind,” “rehearse” (Genesis 24:63; Psalm 119:15, 23, 27, 48, 78, 148). Hagah means “to mutter” or “meditate.” It is used of the sound characteristic of the moaning of the dove (Isaiah 38:14) or the growling of the lion over its prey (Isaiah 31:4). The righteous ponder or brood upon the proper answer (Proverbs 15:28) and then talk about wisdom (Psalm 37:30) or God’s righteousness (Psalm 35:28). Promeletaō in the New Testament means “to meditate before what you shall answer” or “to practice a speech” (Luke 21:14). In meditating we imbibe the word (Rev. 10:10), chew on it as a cow chews its cud, make it our very own. It is a prayerful way of reading the Bible.

A central role in this is played by our imagination. One way to make a beginning is to take an incident in the Gospels (such as John 5:1-15 or John 21:1-19) and put yourself into the story. Linger long enough on each detail until you have re-created the whole drama. Allow yourself prayerfully to identify with more than one character in the drama, and allow Jesus to minister to you as he ministers to the people in the story. This is one way in which the journey upward leads almost inevitably to confrontation of oneself. Another way is to focus on images in the Bible, its picture language for God, aspects of life, our own journey or the hope that lies before us. The Bible is rich in symbols, metaphors, similes and analogies that spur our minds and hearts as we imaginatively enter into them.

The Journey Inward

The lengths to which people will go to avoid self-confrontation are awesome. Work and leisure are the most common dodges. But by far the most dangerous are the diversions created when religion itself is used to escape self-discovery. Service to God and theologizing about God easily become a way of hiding, like Adam among the trees of the garden escaping from the voice and presence of the Lord. Some ministering people have what Eric Fromm called “market-oriented personalities”; they sell themselves to do whatever procures them signs of acceptance, so delaying the needed journey within. Fortunately our God is more willing to seek us than we are to be found.

Journal keeping. A discipline that encourages inner authenticity is keeping a journal. Psalm 42:5 is really a journal entry. In it David is talking to God in writing about his depression in the light of something greater than his own experience: “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” The psalms are an eloquent witness that outpourings of emotions, hurts, fears and resentments to God in prayer are not merely permitted; they are positively encouraged. One way of recognizing the word of God in the psalms is not merely to analyze their words but rather to allow God to be revealed through the psalmist’s prayers. This is the metacommunication of the psalms that turns out to be more important than the messages communicated within the psalms. The God so revealed is one to whom we can bring the whole range of our experience, past and present, letting it pour right out just as it is.

Keeping a journal is like writing a letter to God or writing out our prayers or speaking to our own soul in the presence of someone greater than our own experience. Then our absence of experience of God or even our experience of the absence of God can become a cry for more reality with God. It is essential that we let our thoughts and feeling flow out without editing and self-criticism, for we have a God to whom we can pour out the darkest and deepest things within us.

Walking through life with Jesus. For many Christians the past is not in the past, except in the ultimate sense of being justified by faith. But in the day-to-day interchanges they are living out past hurts today, reacting in the light of unforgiven acts against them and repeating patterns that may have been handed down through many generations. Especially if we were rejected at birth, or our parents wished we were another sex, or our parents had attempted to abort us, or we were sexually or physically abused, or we witnessed a profound trauma, or we were profoundly hurt in romantic relationships from which we have never recovered, or we were scarred by failure at school, in the neighborhood, in the marketplace or in church ministry, we may be in need of soul healing (or the healing of memories, as it is sometimes called).

Deeply painful events in our past may have been suppressed merely to achieve survival, but they continue to affect us when we are touched by someone of the opposite sex or when a contemporary situation triggers some of the old feelings. Sometimes the violent anger that spills over, completely out of proportion to the triggering event, is a sign that there is an unhealed scar. Many Christian workers actually minister from this “hurt edge” and play the martyr or evoke pity as a way of gaining control of situations and people. True joy in the Spirit is lacking because joy is the overflow of the Spirit in all dimensions of our personhood and when our whole personal history has been redeemed.

So it is a good thing to engage in the discipline of walking through your life with Jesus, asking him to show you the happy as well as sad events and relationships that make up your personal story. Usually this takes several hours and may be done best in a retreat setting, because it takes action-oriented people several hours to stop long enough to get in touch with their own feelings. The theological reality behind this discipline is the statement of God to Jacob and Jesus to us: “I am with you” (Genesis 28:15; Genesis 31:3). God is personally present through our entire lives from conception onward, even before we first felt the warmth of divine love. God is unconditionally present and does not require us or the other players in our lives to be worthy of his presence. God is omnipotently present, for there is no experience we have had, no matter how painful or violent, that cannot be transformed into an asset by divine grace. One reason why we so rarely experience full release and recovery of our past is that we are too theoretical and not specific enough in our desire to become whole. Our imaginations can serve us in this.

As we encounter situations in which we were hurt by others, we can prayerfully ask Jesus to show us his presence there, revealing his lordship and showing us what he will now do to that experience in the light of his victory on the cross. Far from leaving ourselves open to demons who come to us in the name of Jesus, this is a genuine act of worship and opens us up to the Spirit, provided that we do not reduce God to the picture we have of God, for this would be idolatry. When we have been profoundly sinned against, we can ask for grace to reach the point at which we can say to those who have wounded us, “I forgive them, for they did not know what they were doing.” Sometimes with very painful events, such as the discovery of the sources of homosexual tendencies or the experience of sexual abuse, it is important to share this journey with at least one experienced counselor. Often hours of prayer and counseling become intertwined before there is complete and substantial healing of profound hurt.

Journey Outward

As we become increasingly real with God and ourselves, we are liberated to serve others. Often, however, the order is reversed. Our service to others raises crucial questions that inspire the inward and upward journeys. Why am I so sensitive to criticism? Why do I work so hard? So the three journeys are interdependent, as our suggested disciplines show.

Intercession. A remarkable passage in the book of Job shows Job praying for his grown children the morning after the party (Job 1:4-5)! Family life calls us to prayer. In marriage one of our most important ministries is to pray for our spouse—even more important than praying with him or her. Prayer for our enemies and the most difficult people in our lives is transformative of ourselves first and often of others. When we pray, we get in touch with God’s mind about others. We piggyback on the Spirit’s prayers. We touch people directly through Jesus the mediator. And we get changed.

Forgiveness. Family and work give us more than the average opportunity to practice the discipline of forgiveness. Many people find repeating the Lord’s Prayer one way of reminding themselves to keep this discipline. Forgiveness of others is at the heart of the prayer, but not merely forgiveness in our relationship with God. Once again the journeys are related: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). Augustine called this a terrible prayer because it says that what we desperately need ourselves can only be received when we extend it to others. We can only ask God to forgive us what we are willing to forgive others. (For other disciplines in the journey outward, see Hospitality; Ministry; Social Action; Spiritual Gifts; Stewardship.)

Spiritual disciplines like the ones we have already explored involve hard work: cultivating the soil, planting the seed, watering and fertilizing it, tearing out the weeds and removing the stones. Waiting for the harvest is itself hard work for the farmer. But, on the whole, the seed grows by itself. Spiritual disciplines, properly understood, are not attempts to merge ourselves with God, but ways of removing obstacles and creating new channels of response to the seeking Father. God does the finding, and our seeking is—even from the first movement within our souls—an active response to God’s finding us. So disciplines are not the means of gaining godliness; they are the fruit of godliness. As we have seen, this involves both discerning God in everyday life and developing personal contemplative practices. As A. W. Tozer said, “To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by children of the burning heart” (quoted in Hilton, p. xxviii).

» See also: Spiritual Formation

» See also: Spiritual Growth

References and Resources

R. Banks, Redeeming the Routines (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books, 1993); G. Bernados, The Diary of a Country Priest (London: Fontana Books, 1956); D. Bonhoeffer, Life Together (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1976); J. P. de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment, ed. K. Muggeridge (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982); O. Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1956); R. Foster, Celebration of Discipline (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978); J. Houston, The Transforming Friendship: A Guide to Prayer (London: Lions, 1989); W. Hilton, Toward a Perfect Love, trans. D. L. Jeffrey (Portland, Ore.: Multnomah, 1985). R. P. Job and N. Shawchuck, A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants (Nashville: Upper Room, 1983); E. S. Jones, Conversion (Nashville: Abingdon, 1959); H. Nouwen, Creative Ministry (Garden City, N.Y.: Image/Doubleday, 1971); D. Postema, Space for God (Grand Rapids: Bible Way, 1985); R. P. Stevens, Disciplines of the Hungry Heart (Wheaton, Ill.: Harold Shaw, 1993; portions quoted with permission); D. Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives (New York: Harper & Row, 1988); “The War Within: An Anatomy of Lust,” Leadership 3, no. 4 (Fall 1982) 30-48.

—R. Paul Stevens