Introducing Spiritual Disciplines

This article is part of the Habits of the Christian Faith series.

In this article, we are introducing ourselves to the idea of Christian spiritual disciplines. These are practices that help us grow in our relationship with God and deepen our faith in him.

There are many disciplines that believers have practiced throughout history. While the list can vary depending on who you ask, here are some you may have heard of:

Solitude
Celebration
Bible Study
Prayer
Fasting
Worship

As we move through this series on Habits of the Christian Faith, we will be spending careful time learning about, sharing about, and practicing a variety of common spiritual disciplines.

Join us over in our private Facebook group, The Gospel Garden, if you’d like to walk with others working through these ideas in their own process of growth in the Gospel.

To begin, it’s helpful for us to understand New Testament discipline as found in scripture so we can get a handle on what the Christian practice of spiritual disciplines is and what it is not.

Defining New Testament Discipline

“Discipline” is a complicated word for us. It can come with ideas of:

punishment
blind obedience
abuse from our past
rote and lifeless routine

There are three ways we see the word “discipline” used in the New Testament. Watch the video to learn about each:

Did you notice that instances of “training” and “discipline” in the New Testament DO NOT come with the idea of punishment? Here’s why:

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus,
Romans 8:1 (CSB)

Praise Jesus for that!

So we see that when discipline is mentioned in the New Testament, it is with the idea of self-control and training toward growth in godliness.

Is it easy? No.

Christian spiritual discipline comes with challenges. In the practice of these disciplines, we encounter the truest parts of ourselves, however beautiful or ugly they may be, and do it all in the living and loving presence of God.

Disciplines are a means of living a Jesus-like life.

The Disciplined life of Jesus

Jesus’s own style of life was characterized by disciplines. Let’s look at some examples:

Jesus practiced prayer:

During his earthly life, he offered prayers and appeals with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.
Hebrews 5:7 CSB

Jesus practiced solitude and fasting:

Then Jesus left the Jordan, full of the Holy Spirit, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over, he was hungry.
Luke 4:1-2 CSB

Jesus studied the scriptures:

But Jesus answered him, “It is written: Man must not live on bread alone.” … And Jesus answered him, “It is written: Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”
Luke 4:4, 8 CSB

Jesus practiced service:

“just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Matthew 20:28 CSB

Jesus practiced worship:

“You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews.
John 4:22 CSB

Jesus practiced submission:

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me – nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
Luke 22:42 CSB

With only this handful of examples, we can conclude that Jesus lived a disciplined life. Though he was fully God, as a man he learned obedience just as we do. He fostered his intimacy with the Father by abstaining from ungodly influence when necessary, and engaging with Him and with others when necessary.

In his life, we see the ways of the Kingdom of God. We see evidence that we are not only waiting for His kingdom to come in the last day. We are living Jesus’s indestructible, resurrection life even now. Today.

Why Spiritual Disciplines?

Spiritual disciplines are tools to aid us as we train ourselves, with God’s help, in righteous, Kingdom of God living in this time while we wait for the day of his return.

A simple way to describe spiritual disciplines is that they are the intersection of religion and real life.

It is common to find a disconnect between our real life experiences and what we profess to believe as followers of Christ. The practice of spiritual disciplines seeks to aid us in living out the faith we profess in ways pertinent to our individual stories.

I like what Dallas Willard has to say in his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines:

“Every Christian must strive to arrive at beliefs about God that faithfully reflect the realities of his or her life and experience, so that each may know how to live effectively before him in this world”
p 26

What Spiritual Disciplines Are Not

Spiritual disciplines are tools. They are not ends in themselves. Practicing them does not make us more worthy, just as not practicing them does not make us less worthy. Our worth is in Christ, not in what we do or don’t do. Our salvation and redemption are secure because Christ has made it secure, not because we are able to secure it for ourselves.

We must remember this as we practice disciplines, because it can be tempting to rate ourselves on how disciplined we are as if that gets us bonus points with God.

However, the practice of the disciplines does carry benefit to our spiritual maturity and intimacy with God.

As James says, when you “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.” (James 4:8).

This is our aim. To train ourselves, with God’s help, to draw near to him. Spiritual disciplines are not meant to be rigid rules or legalistic requirements, but rather tools to help us grow spiritually in cultivating a deeper connection with God and living out our faith in daily life.

Stages of Spiritual Growth

Much like a newborn child must grow to be an older child, then an adolescent, then a young adult, then a mature adult, our spiritual maturation follows stages of growth.

When it comes to which spiritual disciplines we choose to practice, certain stages of growth lend themselves more to certain disciplines. Our individual personalities can impact which disciplines are most effective for our growth as well.

Here is one way to view the stages we go through on our journey of growth in the Gospel:

Baptism into Christ is the initial stage of spiritual growth.

In this stage, we experience conversion to the faith, the intensity and freshness of the delight of the Gospel. It can feel like everything is bright and beautiful and we are saturated with hope.

We may experience what I like to call “microwave growth,” in which we are taking in and giving out so much of the glory of God that we are learning and living the Kingdom life almost effortlessly. It is a stage filled with delight, joy, and excitement.

The next stage is pruning.

Once the honeymoon period of our initial coming to faith in Christ dissipates, we grow into a new perspective of the world, ourselves, and God’s working in both.

As our perspective shifts, we begin to realize the ways our sin is producing death in our lives and we take action, with God’s help, to put that sin to death and grow increasingly alive to God.

As Paul says,

…to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.
Ephesians 4:22-24 CSB

The third stage of spiritual growth is submitting ourselves to God.

In this stage, which we may cycle in and out of with Stage 2 as we grow and change throughout our lives, we choose over and over again to purposefully submit our hearts, souls, minds, and bodies to whatever it is God is giving us to do.

Paul talks about it this way:

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires. And do not offer any parts of it to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. But as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness. For sin will not rule over you, because you are not under the law but under grace.
Romans 6:12-14 CSB

Whichever stage of spiritual growth you’re in, spiritual disciplines can help you grow. The key is to try them, find the practices that resonate with your personality and your spiritual needs, and to commit to them consistently over time. By doing so, you can deepen your relationship with God and experience the fullness of life that he has for you.

We need to remember that whatever is purely mental cannot sufficiently transform us. Whatever the body does, whatever we are training it to do, affects the soul.

Praise God that he is the one making our efforts fruitful.

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