Cultivating Spiritual Disciplines
By Sha.ron Q.
Drawing close to God each day can be very challenging amidst work, school, and busy urban life. God is invisible so it is even harder! How do you know someone whom you cannot see? How do you grow your spiritual senses and muscles for a strong, intimate relationship with God?
Here are some ways Christians have tried to do so. I recommend a classic book on Spiritual Disciplines for us to grow our relationship with God, “Celebration of Discipline” by Richard Foster.
In it, he describes 3 types of disciplines:
1) The Inward Disciplines
Meditation – means “ listening to God’s words, reflecting on God’s works, rehearsing God’s deeds, ruminating on God’s law and more.” (p. 19)
Prayer – “Real prayer is something we learn.” (p.46)
Fasting – “abstaining from food for spiritual purposes” (p.62)
Study – “is a kind of experience in which through careful attention to reality the mind is enabled to move in a certain direction.” (p. 80)
2) The Outward Disciplines
Simplicity – Is an “inward reality that results in an outward life-style” (p.99)
Solitude – “Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfilment.” (p.122)
Submission – “inner attitude of mutual subordination.” (p.141)
Service – “As the cross is the sign of submission, so the towel is the sign of service.” (p.159)
3) The Corporate Disciplines
Confession – “In acts of mutual confession we release the power that heals.” (p.184)
Worship – “It is to know, to feel, to experience the resurrected Christ in the midst of the gathered community.” (p.199)
Guidance – “God does guide the individual richly and profoundly, but he also guides groups of people and can instruct the individual through the group experience.” (p.222)
Celebration – “Celebration is central to all the Spiritual Disciplines. Without a joyful spirit of festivity the Disciplines become dull, death-breathing tools in the hands of modern pharisees” (p.240)
There is much we can do to draw close to God in this year of exploring more about what it means to #GETREST in God!
Which discipline are you drawn to? Which one is the most puzzling, or uncomfortable?
Consider getting the book to read and just as discipline of physical exercises reaps benefits in physical health, spiritual disciplines will reap the fruit of spiritual intimacy with God.
