Introduction To Spiritual Disciplines Series

Spiritual Disciplines: Introduction

1 Timothy 4:7-8

John 10:10, 15:5

April 11, 2021

Do you have any bad habits? Is there anything about you that you would like to change? That’s a pretty loaded question. I’m not going to ask the person who is sitting next to you, either! Today and for the next weeks we’re going to be looking at spiritual disciplines. Today is the intro and next week we get into the meat, what I would call the practical applications.

Richard Foster once wrote, “The purpose of the Spiritual Disciplines is the total transformation of the person. They aim at replacing old destructive habits of thought with new life-giving habits” (Foster 1998, 62).

We’d like to think we’re in pretty good shape, but we tend to have these habits which pull us further from God, than towards God. If we would be willing to embrace these disciplines, or at least even attempt them with the expectations we will grow closer to Christ, we might find ourselves changing and becoming a little more Christ-like, which is a good thing.

Yet, to change . . . UGH! It’s not so easy. It sounds easy, but it’s not always that way. We may be able to easily name the problem, but the application is not always so easy.

When we were in Michigan, I had the opportunity to meet Robert Quinn. Quinn was a business professor at University of Michigan. After reading his book, Deep Change, I called him and met him for lunch. This book is one of the best business leadership / spiritual transformational books I’ve ever read.

In his book, Quinn explains,

Few people are good at reinventing themselves (what I will call spiritual transformation). They often choose the destructive alternative of staying very busy. It may not be effective behavior, but it has the effect of a good narcotic. It diverts attention from the real issue and temporarily saves them from having to tackle and resolve the actual problem (Quinn, 1996, 20).

You see, Quinn’s premise is that people need to make deep changes in their lives, which as we spoke - - he agreed has a direct correlation to spiritual transformation. His premise is this - - - the very event we fear in our lives often occurs because we are unwilling to risk deep change and we end up experiencing what we feared, slow death (Quinn 1996, 21).

Let me put that into spiritual talk. We desire to be more like Jesus, we desire to give up some of those bad habits or even destructive choices and thoughts . . . but we fear making those changes, yet at the same time we fear that if we don’t, we will die a slow death. Yet, we don’t make the changes, because of fear.

I know that’s kind of deep . . . but I really believe that is so true for the church. We struggle with becoming who Christ is calling us to be. We want to get there, but we aren’t always sure we want to do the hard work, so we settle or we become so busy - - we don’t have the time to draw closer to Jesus.

Discipleship is a real buzz word in the church. In reality discipleship means we are growing in union with Jesus Christ and growing in conformity to his image. We become more like the Master, Jesus.

Yet, this is where the ‘rubber meets the road’ and we are called to take action so that we can become more like the Master. Taking this action always involves risk and sacrifice, which is a crucial ingredient if a we are willing to grow, that is, bear fruit, through the practice of Spiritual Disciplines.

Let me tell you a sad fact. Until I was in my 9th class in my doctoral program, I had no clue what Spiritual Disciplines were. I never formally practiced them, I couldn’t name more than one discipline and that would have been a guess. If pastors don’t know what they are, then we can’t help the church. So, my hope is that you will not brush these off, some you may already be doing. Some of these disciplines that we talk about over the weeks may be foreign to you, but in the end, my deepest hope and prayer is that you will be willing to try, willing to experiment, and therefore, grow in Christ.

If you want to get better at something, you have to practice, you have to do it, in order to get better. You just don’t get better wishing to get better. I asked Joni how many hours she thinks she has practiced singing. She estimated around 20,000 hours refining her gift. Folks, that’s about 2.3 years singing. That’s a lot of singing.