Spiritual Disciplines – 1
By Rev. Dr. Brent Russett – Asbury Free Methodist
October 23, 2022
We have been working our way through a series on Spiritual Formation – how God transforms us. Let me lay a few verses from 1 Peter on your mind.
2 Peter 1:5–8 (NIV)
5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Make every effort – What are we to put our effort into. How do you produce goodness, knowledge, self-control. A significant portion of the answer to that question is spiritual disciplines, which is what we are going to look at this morning. Today, I am going to give you the 60,000-foot view. We are then going to take a few weeks off from this series, and then I want to look at some of the specific spiritual disciplines.
When I say the word “discipline,” what comes to mind probably has a lot to do with who you are and what stage of life you are in. If you spent a lot of time getting into trouble at school, the word “discipline” and the words “principles office” might be synonymous. If you are a parent of young kids, then what probably comes to mind is handing out consequences for misbehaviour. So, when I say we are going to talk about spiritual disciplines, you are thinking – Oh Yeah! Not!
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For many of us, what comes to mind when we hear the word “discipline” is restraining ourselves. We talk about self-discipline. It usually comes to mind right about the time dessert is being offered. For others, it has to do with engaging in a process to achieve our goals. If you want to get in shape, you discipline yourself to go for a walk or go to the gym. If you want to become a musician, you must discipline yourself to practice.
Spiritual disciplines are kind of like, but not exactly like, that last one. Engaging in a process to achieve our goals. We will come back to that.
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We do have a goal. It is, first and foremost, God’s goal for us. We want to be transformed so that we become Christlike. We want the dead places in us to become alive. We want the sinful places in us to be forgiven and replaced with goodness and righteousness. We want the broken places in us to be renewed and healed. But more than anything, we want our relationship with God to deep and growing and good and sweet. That is God’s goal, and I hope it is also yours as well.
These things will not happen without engaging in the spiritual disciplines. Like the person trying to become healthy, our goal is to become spiritually healthy. But self-discipline for the purpose of becoming healthy and spiritual disciplines are somewhat but not entirely the same.
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Imagine someone who lives a completely undisciplined life? They get up when they feel like it. They eat what every they want. If they don’t feel like moving, they don’t move. It takes discipline to get to work, so work is not for them. I will just do what I feel like. I have met some people who are close to living that way. It is really sad to watch. If you are going to do much in life, it will take discipline.
Imagine a person who is a follower of Christ but lives a spiritually undisciplined life. It is sad to watch.
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On the other hand, I have known some people who are hyper-disciplined. I knew some people who grew up in homes where their father was military, and he brought military discipline into the home. That wasn’t good, either. Hyper-disciplined people are unable to smell the roses – and they are not much fun and are sometimes painful to be around.
I have known some hyper-spiritually disciplined people. They do all the right things. But there is some off about their spiritual life.
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Like self-discipline, the spiritual disciplines are action-oriented. You need to do something – or in some cases refrain from doing something. The classic spiritual disciplines are divided into three parts.
The inward disciplines
- Prayer
- Fasting
- meditation on scripture
- study
The outward Disciplines
- simplicity
- silence and solitude
- submission
- service
The Corporate Disciplines
- confession
- worship
- guidance
- celebration
As you can see, these are things we choose to do. These are things we actively engage in. Just like you can’t just think yourself into shape. You cannot just think about spiritual growth and have transformation take place. You actually have to engage in spiritual practice.
Here is our first challenge. There is a temptation to believe that we work for our righteousness. We can become legalistic. We can take on a checklist mentality. Prayed. Check. Read my Bible. Check. Worshipped. Check.
That is kind of like my wanting my relationship with my wife to grow and deepen. Talked with my wife. Check. Glad I got that off my list. Went on a date. Check. Whew. Somehow, a checklist mentality loses something in a relationship.
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There are a number of metaphors I could use to describe the spiritual disciplines, but the one I want to use today is sailing.
I had a friend who loved to sail. He had what I believe it was a 24ft sailboat that he used to race at the Britannia Yacht club. It was a beautiful boat. It had three different sails that could be hoisted. It was in immaculate condition, and from time to time, he would take me sailing.
There is a lot of work involved in sailing a boat like that. There are sails to be unwrapped and hoisted. There are riggings to be fed and used. There are constant adjustments to be made. But it is a lot of fun. Here are some things I learned about sailing.
One. If the sails are not up, you aren’t going far. You may have a lovely looking boat. But without the sails, you are stuck in the middle.
Spiritual disciplines are to our spiritual life what sails are to a sailboat. Your life may look fine on the outside, but you are not going to go far in your transformation journey. Your relationship with God is not going to develop much. Your ability to heal or to become fully alive is going to be inhibited. Spiritual disciplines are like the sails on a sailboat – remember that.
Another thing I learned about sailing is that you can put your sails up but if you there is no wind, you are not going to go far. It is the wind that powers the boat.
Jesus, when he was talking to Nicodemus, likened the Holy Spirit to the wind. Putting your sails up is like practicing your spiritual disciplines. But all the prayer and Bible reading, and fellowship and worship will not move you unless the Spirit of God blows through your life.
This is really important to remember. You can set your sails for God to move in your life, but he is the one who powers your transformation. He is the one who makes you fully alive. That is why you can do all the right stuff and go nowhere.
Does God want the wind of his Spirit to empower your life? Of course. The one thing that will stop the wind from blowing is pride. Spiritual pride is living our lives independent from God. Spiritual humility is being dependent on God.
Does God know when we have become proud? Yes. What does that look like? It looks like work righteousness. I can get to God with my own effort. It looks like being religious on the outside but not allowing it to touch our hearts on the inside.
Some examples of this would be coming to church to come to church – without the expectation of meeting with God. It would be reading your bible for knowledge that doesn’t touch your heart. It would be like singing worship songs without engaging our head or our heart. It would be like – as Paul would say – having a form of godliness but denying its power.
The boat looks nice. The sails are raised. But the wind is not blowing, and we are not going anywhere.
I wish I was only talking about theory here. But too often in my own life, I have done what Jesus said not to do.
Matthew 15:8 (NLT)
8 ‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
There have been times in my life, and maybe there have in yours, where you go through the motions without engaging your heart.
This is why Spiritual Disciplines are different than self-discipline. It is not all about what you do. You have to set your sails, but God has to empower you by his spirit. It is not all about what you do – You have your part to play – but God must blow through you to move you along.
He won’t do that if we are proud and self-reliant. He won’t do that if we make our spiritual lives all about us and not about him.
Another thing I learned about sailing is that where you are in relation to the wind matters. If you are headed directly into the wind, you are not going to go anywhere. In fact, it can be quite dangerous. If the wind catches one side or another, it can flip the boat around, and if you aren’t ready for it, you can get hit by the sail.
For the sake of our metaphor, I want to liken going against the wind to going against God. You know what God has called you to do, but you are choosing to be disobedient.
I am not talking about those things where you are struggling to be obedient, but you fail sometimes. I am talking about the stuff where you are not even struggling. You have just held a big stop sign out to God and said – nope. That has a way of stalling your progress.
Where you are in relation to the wind matters. Here is the thing about sailing. If you are out sailing for a while, the direction of the wind change. It doesn’t usually reverse directions. It is not like it was blowing from the east, and then it changes and blows from the west. But it can be blowing from the west and then shift where it is blowing from the southwest.
When that happens, you have to adjust your sails. Remember, the sails are your spiritual disciplines. They have to be adjusted from time to time to take full advantage of the move of the Spirit.
There are different ways to pray. There are prayers of Examen and prayers of adoration. There are prayers of lament and prayers of intercession. There are contemplative prayers and meditative prayers. There are prayers of relinquishment and prayers of tears. There are authoritative prayers and ordinary prayers. There is listening prayer, and there is sitting in silence. It depends on where your boat is and which way the Spirit is moving as to what kind of prayers you need for this present season.
There are different ways to read the bible. You can read large chunks of scripture – like reading the bible through in a year. You can spend your time each day on a very few verses where you meditate on them. You may choose to memorize some of them. You can do in-depth study of Scripture. You can pray the scriptures. You can practice something called lexcio Divian or sacred reading. Where you read the scriptures in a prescribed pattern, looking for what God is saying to you and how to apply it.
It depends on where your boat is and which way the Spirit is moving as to what kind of Bible reading you need for this present season. And it is ok if you haven’t understood by what I mean by the different prayers or different bible readings. Just know that sometimes you have to adjust in order to take full advantage of what God wants to do in your life right now.
Near the beginning of this sermon, I listed thirteen different spiritual disciplines. You were not meant to practice all of these all the time. There will be seasons for fasting and seasons for celebrating. There will be time for silence and solitude and time for engagement and conversation. What spiritual disciplines you need over a particular season of your life is something you talk to God about. But be prepared to adjust what you are doing from time to time. There are times when you need to adjust your sail.
Another thing I learned about sailing is that the direction you need to take is sometimes not the most direct route and that is ok.
If you are at the far side of the lake and you want to sail home (home in this case, being transformed to be like Jesus) and the wind isn’t heading directly there, then what you need to do is tack. That is a sailing term that means you zigzag across the lake in order to be able to go where you need to go.
I wish our spiritual growth was always in a straight line. But few people have found it so. In fact, sometimes, it feels like I am sailing away from where I need to go. I am adjusting to the wind. I am moving with the Spirit, but what the Spirit is doing is counter-intuitive.
Lord, I want you to deal with the anger in my life, and you have me dealing with busyness and hurry. Why don’t you just change me the way I want to be changed? You have me sailing way over here, and I want to be over there. Lord, I want you to give me joy and peace and you teaching me about patience and service. What is up with that.
Here is what I have found. The Lord knows what we need more than we do. He will get us to where we need to go.
I find that I want to steer the boat. I want to be in control. It amazes me how deep this need for control goes. But whenever I try to control my spiritual life – it becomes problematic.
What this means, of course, is that Jesus is in the boat with us. He wants to guide us. He makes a better captain than a crewman; you make a better crew person than a captain. He can say, use this sail, not that sail. Only put this sail out so far. Hold it at this angle. Why don’t you raise another sail? If you want to sail well, let Jesus dictate how the boat is set up.
But here is the thing about sailing – when your boat is dialled in, the sails are trimmed, the direction is right, and the wind is blowing – it is a blast. It is an adventure. It is amazing how fast you can go. But it doesn’t move until the sails are hoisted. Your spiritual life will be stalled if you don’t engage in the spiritual disciplines.
Just like a good marriage, a relationship with God takes effort. God’s grace does not mean that we don’t make an effort. It means that we don’t try to earn what is a gift through our efforts. But Peter says this.
2 Peter 1:5–8 (NIV)
5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Make every effort. Spiritual disciplines will take effort. It is sometimes hard. It sometimes feels like we aren’t moving very fast, or the wind isn’t very strong.
Ron Mulholland writes this. “A genuine spiritual discipline is a discipline of loving obedience offered to God with no strings attached. We put no conditions on it. We put no time limits on it. We had no expectations of how we want God to change us through it. We simply offer the discipline to God and keep on offering it for as long as God wants us to keep on. That is not easy!”
It is not easy. But it is good. I loved when my friend took me sailing at the Britannia Yacht club. After a day of sailing, we would pull in and park amongst a bunch of other sailboats. They were different shapes and sizes. If someone was out on their boat, you would talk to them about how the sailing was. You could go into the club and talk to other members about some different ways of doing things.
The more experienced members of the club could point out where the rocks are and what to stay away from. They didn’t sail each other’s boats. But they helped each other by sharing what they learned.
You cannot do my spiritual disciplines for me, and I cannot do your spiritual disciplines for you. But you can encourage me, and I can encourage you. In fact, the spiritual life was never meant to be a solo endeavour. We were meant to encourage one another and help each other.
What are your spiritual practices right now? Are they adequate for the life you are living?
If you want to succeed in life. If you want to become who you are called to be. Take the spiritual disciplines seriously.
Have you raised your sails? Are you ready for the wind to blow?