Category Archives: Christian Life

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Spiritual Disciplines for the Believer

SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES

I was in my forties when I first became aware of the term ‘spiritual disciplines.’ Since I didn’t know what they were, I purchased a book on spiritual disciplines to educate myself. Not long after, my brother mentioned spiritual disciplines to me. He was surprised that I was reading up on the subject. We had a lively discussion as a result.

There are many forms of spiritual disciplines. Some of these should be incorporated in all believers’ lives. They help develop your spiritual depth of understanding and commitment to your faith and to God.

Why? Being intentional in our faith is a necessity for there to be sustained, active, and genuine growth. Stale spirituality is unattractive and has no life to it. Certain spiritual disciplines will guide this process and help us grow in our spiritual life. A spiritual discipline is a practice you cultivate to grow deeper in your faith and in a manner worthy of the purpose we are called to. This requires personal discipline, motivation, and spiritual intention. Reading God’s Word and praying are two mainstay disciplines in a Christian’s life.

The following list is comprised of several spiritual disciplines in my life. Like me, you will find your own way as you discover what disciplines you need to develop. Spiritual maturity means you are serious in your walk with God and want to develop spiritual legs. You should desire an ever-deepening walk of faith and a determined path to get there.

This list is not exhaustive. I first wrote it in 2007 as a handout for my church family to pass out after my talks. They were the disciplines I was practicing at the time. They are what helped shape my spiritual life. Intercession is another important discipline.

Spiritual Disciplines That Work

God time:  Spend long periods alone with God, in bible reading, meditating on scriptures, and in oral prayer. Schedule time in your week. Make this like an appointment, a hallowed time, set aside for time with God.

Journal writing:  Keep a journal handy to note scriptures, quotes from books and prayers, and to record daily praises and happenings. Come up with a system for easy access to your verses and quotations. Make sure to note book and page number for later reference.

Disciplined reading:  Every day read in thought-provoking books about God, faith, emotions, behaviors and spiritual bondage issues, written by credible authors, intellectually challenging with stimulating discourse.

Study:  Study the Word of God. Study theology and doctrinal works. This is a powerful tool for going deeper and for the understanding of the themes found in God’s Word.

Active seeking:  Ask God to show you your true self that you might change; to use people, family, children, friends etcetera to speak truth to you. Read scripture with the intent to learn. Apply what God brings to mind. Become interactive with God.

Open access:  With open access, you choose to not ignore or run from your sin or yourself. You choose to deal with it and let God work in you as he sees fit. God will use events in your life to help bring about a spirit of willingness in you. What may seem severe or a trial, may be God calling to you to come to his loving embrace, to come home to him, and to trust him with your stuff.

On-going surrender:  This discipline makes surrender to God your heart’s desire.  Keep going deeper with this. Surrender starts small and grows. It is a daily attitude of giving God preeminence in your life. Either God is on the throne of your life or you are on the throne of your life.

Interactive asking and listening:  Cultivate a spirit of asking. Ask God for songs and verses when you are in need. It is helpful in the moment of distress to send a prayer up to God and ask for his help in giving you guidance. In Christ, you will be enabled.

Earnest prayer and fasting:  As burdens and concerns surface, respond by praying in earnest for the individual, individuals, or the situation—with purposeful spiritual intention to prepare for a work of God. I encourage you to include a form of fasting with a commitment to fervent prayer.  Fasting requires a giving up of something for the  benefit that it can accomplish spiritually.

Set boundaries:  Determine and adjust boundaries in relationships and choices even when it may put some distance in interpersonal relations. To be true to God is the first priority. This is difficult at times. Families don’t always understand. What matters most is to be true to God. Limit where he says to limit. Be careful with impulsivity. A caveat, though, make sure what you do is in keeping with scripture and the will of God. You answer to God first. This is freeing.

THE RESULT

I have found that God brings us to himself when we truly seek him.  He is our friend and he can be found. His friendship is different than all other friendships. It is full of meaning and strength, compassion and help, guidance and deliverance. There are some amazing fruits that bubble up when he becomes our all-in-all. Loving others is more automatic because he is loving through us.  Judging is no longer comfortable because love looks at people differently. Instead of seeing their failings, now we are able to see their neediness and pain, and their lack of peace and areas of bondage.

You will find that you no longer want to be as busy doing and doing for Christ. You want to rest in being who he wants you to be. The positive works flow out of this being because it’s not in your strength but in his. The whole center of reference has pivoted from you doing good things for Christ to Christ doing good things through you. The mystery of seeking God’s will is not so mysterious after all.  When one walks closely with God, his will walks with you. It is the walking in his presence that is on-going spiritual challenge.

Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly-mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? –1 Corinthians 3:1-3

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. –Hebrews 5:11-14

Spiritual disciplines separate the adults from the babies.
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You Can have a Relationship with God

My sincere friend — a single woman, a devoted follower of God, a woman of God, a seeker of truth, a sacrificial person who has lived her whole life for God, in other countries … teaching children, and in several schools in the States — and I were having a heart-to-heart talk a couple of weeks ago. By the way, I admire her walk with God, she has trusted him when others might have quit. I mentioned to her the relationship we have with God. She then said a brief statement that stopped me in my tracks. “I’d never heard it called a relationship until recently.” THAT surprised me.

But I shouldn’t have been surprised. I don’t remember it being referred to in that way either. I was never taught it, but it has become a dear friend to me. My relationship with God is like a friendship, a long and enduring steadiness that strengthens, helps, and enlivens me where it counts.

After my friend’s comment, I thought back to my understanding of the term ‘relationship’ and why I believe it is a correct term to describe my connection with God. I did not see my walk with God as a relationship until it became a real relationship. This knowledge changed my viewpoint in many respects. I also saw a problem I’d never seen before and the solution to that same problem. I had a tiny epiphany.

I realized we’d been missing a big chunk of what it means to be truly Christian, and that, in itself, as a result, has led to disillusionment with the faith by some and a turning away from the faith, creating distance in those who had once professed faith in Christ but now had left the fold, not believing in its relevancy for them. Lack of depth in spiritual relationship, or in the knowledge that relationship can be had, most likely had not been cultivated in their life. Nor had an awareness of the richness that can be known in spiritual relationship infiltrated the church in living color, except for the notables who lived it, like Andrew Murray, for example. Their spiritual life was probably frustrated by a lack of intimate connection with the Trinity.

I realized that some people, believers (?), turn away from God simply because they’ve never developed a close intimacy with Him in a way that deeply impacts the heart. When God is not real, when lives are lived in two categories, secular and spiritual–with separation between the two, they have not connected with God in the interior life in a way the speaks life to the soul. Their walk with God is not one of deep heart-belief. There is a noticeable gap somewhere between believing, knowing, worshiping, and heart-living. They need to awaken, or re-awaken, to a life hid in Christ with a renewal that goes to the core. When God becomes real to you, and in you, it changes everything. This is where real living becomes sweeter than honey.

For me, it was during that process of seeking God to know Him, a pursuit that involved minutes, hours, days, and years. This was the impetus that propelled me forward, and when I began to have a greater heart for God and a more in-depth understanding of who He is and His interest in me. As His life flowed in and through me, and as my intense longing to know God became fruitful, my way of thinking and my inner self absorbed living truth that spoke volumes in the quiet places. A person that pursues God will find. God promises us that we will, and it is true.

Spiritual relationship with God starts at salvation when you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. That is just a starting point. From there on, your life grows in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and begins to reflect His life in you. The relationship becomes deeper as you submit to Him and follow God and the truths found in His Word. You are being shaped and molded into the form the Master Sculptor would have you to be. But at times, the relationship becomes strained when you choose to follow the ways of the flesh instead of the ways of the Spirit, or when your spiritual life has become dull, placid, rigid, or smacks of religious routine. Then you have to get back on track to renew in the areas where you’ve become distant and to make intentional choices that will revive an intimacy of tender relationship with God.

Seek God until you find Him. You’ll be glad you did.