A few years ago I received a book titled Being Jesus’ Disciple, published by Rose Publishing, as part of their Bible Basics Series. As I was dusting the other day, I noticed it on a bookshelf and pulled it out to flip through it. I ran across a chapter titled Spiritual Disciplines. Within it eight disciplines are listed.
- Scripture Reading, Memorizing, and Reflecting
- Prayer
- Fasting
- Worship
- Service
- Solitude
- Discernment
- Evangelism
What are Spiritual Disciplines?
They are practices we do routinely, to help us overcome our bad habits, and replace them with good habits. Habits that make us more like Christ and develop an intimate relationship with God. A relationship that is satisfying, loving, meaningful, and transforming. By practicing any of the spiritual disciplines above you will automatically start to develop better habits. By combining them and practicing them all routinely, you will see noticeable transformations in your life. You will develop not only a deeper relationship with God, but with all people surrounding you, because spiritual disciplines help develop better attitudes, more stable emotions, good thoughts, and kindness towards all. Spiritual disciplines help enrich our lives and in turn help us enrich the lives of others around us.
We become light within the darkness.
Knowing and practicing these disciplines is important.
Ultimately the bad habits equal sin and ugliness in our lives. Come on, don’t turn away now. We’re just getting started. We all have little bad habits in our lives. Little sins… maybe even big ones?
Like the lady you cursed under your breath while driving the other day? Or maybe you said something you shouldn’t have during an argument recently? Holding a grudge against anyone?
Or perhaps you just needed to “vent” about the coworker that irritates the crap out of you? I mean you totally didn’t mean to judge, condemn, or gossip right? It just happened.
Maybe you can be a bit prideful sometimes? Or less than obedient to your spouse? Have you lost your temper or yelled at your kids lately?
How many complaints have you uttered today, or unleashed on others?
What about the “colorful language” you use to express yourself? I’ve decided that cursing is like smoking cigarettes, when you’re doing it you don’t realize how awful it is, but once you quite, you really have a hard time being around those that still do, because you realize how ugly it is.
You didn’t honor God with your finances, yet you’re rocking a brand new Coach purse?
Maybe it’s a substance abuse you hide in the dark? Telling yourself its really not that bad, but knowing it is?
Maybe none of these apply to you, but if we are 100% honest with each other, we all fall short of grace on our own. Some of us fall flat on our faces at times. What’s important is acknowledging our bad habits, moving forward, AND knowing that God’s grace is more than enough for all of us.
Looking over the eight disciplines listed, I realized that I practice four of them routinely, two of them sometimes, and the other two not so much.
Being 100% honest with you, I’ve gotten sloppy in the four that I do practice routinely. I decided I’d benefit from reviewing each one again. I want to fully understand how to practice them, and develop good, practical, lifetime, habits that ensure I exercise them in my life often. One particular line on page forty really caught my attention. It explains that by working on these eight spiritual disciplines:
“we also seek to live out the fruit of the Spirit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (gal. 5:22-23)”
I don’t know about you my darling friend, but that sounds wonderful to me. I want all the above to be more abundant in my life. I need a renewing of my spirit, my mind, and my soul. Not because I feel far from God, but because I desire to seek Him above all other things. What about you?
Not only will we start harvesting the fruit of the Spirit, but by practicing these spiritual disciplines they will also help us recognize God’s calling and purpose for our lives. They will humble us and keep us in tune with God’s desires for us, as we become closer and closer to Him.
I also believe that knowing and practicing these disciplines will help us become stronger against the enemy. It’s no secrete that we must stay close to God in order to be strong enough to battle against the enemy’s attacks. Anyone who is doing good in the name of God is going to be attacked by the enemy, but if we are strong in the above areas, we will be able to stay grounded in our faith, defeat the enemy, and live a victorious life! When troubles come our way we will be trained and equipped to handle them the right way.
I WANT TO BE CLEAR, spiritual disciplines are not impossible or unrealistic expectations for people to try to maintain, and they will not make us perfect people. I know when exercised in our lives routinely they can be very powerful in helping live a life worthy of living, because the relationship developed with God while practicing them is absolutely priceless. Having a close intimate relationship with God should be the greatest priority in your life, and if it’s not perhaps it’s time to evaluate your priorities and realign them. With God front and center everything else will begin to line up, as transformation begins to take place inside of you and around you.
First discipline to tackle??
Scripture reading, memorizing, and reflecting!!
Click here to get started today!!! We will learn helpful and practical tips and tricks to make scripture reading, memorizing, and reflecting easier and more fun!! I’ve reached out to several Christian Bloggers for some practical tips and tricks to help us take on this spiritual discipline and make it a rich part of our lives. There are several helpful and practical tips and tricks, and I know you’ll find something just right for you!
Do you know someone who would be encouraged by this Blog Post? Please share! By doing so you are helping spread His Light to others 🙂
I would LOVE to connect with you! Like and follow along on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
AND
If you found this Blog Post encouraging and would like to subscribe to E-Mail notifications for future post please do so!
As always your thoughts and comments are welcome!! Connecting is so important in forming Godly relationships!
I never really considered evangelism a spiritual discipline. I’m intrigued. Thanks for sharing! So glad there’s grace for my lack of discipline, too! My word for the year is SHINE and I love the correlation here! Blessings!
Liz, I am grateful for grace in the areas I lack discipline too! I can say working through each discipline so far has definitely helped me develop some great habits, strengthened my faith, and my relationship with God is stronger than it has ever been before. Thanks for stopping by, SHINE bright my darling friend! x Jen
I am scheduled to talk on discipline with a group, while studying , I came across your page on 8 spiritual discipline, I m truly blessed.
Jen, thanks for explaining so clearly and simply what spiritual disciplines are and why we should practice them? I found what you had to say very helpful. I believe we should exercise them and I must admit that I am lacking in the practise of some of them. Your blog will help me to explain them to others. Thanks and continue to grow in grace and God continue to bless and use you to be a blessing to others like me. I appreciate it.
June, thank you so much for your kind words. I’m excited for you to share with others! That’s what it’s all about! Blessings to you sweet friend ❤️
Aw, this was an incredibly good post. Spending some time and actual effort to create a really good article… but what can I say… I put things off a whole lot and don’t manage to get anything done.