Have you trained for a marathon? Or did you do a citizen's training in High School? How about joining a work-out challenge or a weight-loss program at the gym? What seems to be common with all these things I mentioned? TRAINING! Some serious training in order to be ready to reach their ultimate goal.
What do all these physical training got to do with my godliness, you may ask? Well, same with our walk with Christ, there are necessities to sustain and maintain our spiritual growth. They are in fact indispensable; for without these disciplines we will not grow in our Christian life and our walk with Christ.
Come to think of it, everyday we need food and water to live, just like our spiritual body needs bread (God's word) and water (Jesus, our living water) to grow. When we were babies we were taught how to eat and eat properly so we can make better choices with food when we get older. Doctors always ask and remind us at our appointments about physical exercise and being active at least three days a week or 30 minutes per day. These are practices that help us live a healthy life, way of living that we need to continually implement in our lives if we want to stay healthy and live longer. Whether you are a new christian or a "seasoned" one at that, we ALL need to continuously practice these so called SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES to promote spiritual growth.
First Timothy tells us to "Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness." (1 Timothy 4:7). We are mandated by the Word of God towards godliness. Just like keeping our human body fit so that we do not get sick and instead stay healthy, we have to do the same and maintain a healthy spiritual life. My husband since he was diagnosed with Diabetes have been very intentional with his self-discipline of a healthy diet and exercise. Mind you his physical discipline is walking two to three hours walk every day or at least 5 days a week. It is a discipline he practices in order to maintain his health and keep off from medications.
I am pretty sure you have got all these questions in your mind: but how do I do these spiritual disciplines? What are these disciplines? Why do I even have to do them?
"Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come." - 1 Timothy 4:7b-8
practices
"The spiritual disciplines are those practices found in Scripture that promote spiritual growth among believers in the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are habits of devotion, habits of experiential Christianity that have been practiced by God’s people since biblical times." This definition is by Don Whitney, author of "Spiritual Discipines for the Christian Life".
I love unpacking definitions like this in order for me to understand it better and fully. Words matter and if I do not understand the words then the whole meaning is nothing to me. So let us start here...
First and foremost, what is DISCIPLINE? By dictionary definition, discipline is the practice of training to obey rules or a code of behavior. Lots of words there that tells me - it is something that is developed over time, something I have to follow and endure and give it time in order to get the desired result.
Whitney says that spiritual disciplines are PRACTICES found in the Scripture. Practice is the actual application, exercise, implementation or use of the idea, method or belief. These practices are not just dictated by your Pastor or your Small Group Leader, they are actually mandated for every follower of Jesus in the Word of God. These disciplines have been practiced for hundreds of years by God's people. Proven and tested.
Meanwhile, HABITS are things we have grown in doing or practice regularly, they are routines that have become part of our everyday life. It is something (practices) we do regularly that over time (pattern) settles in our life (discipline) and without it or if we do not perform or implement it, it will feel like something is lacking in our existence on the other hand, if we keep on practicing these disciplines we will grow in strides in the word. Did I make it more confusing for you? Let us take skin care as an example, ladies. Most of us, if not all, have a facial skin care routine. We clean and wash our face at night, put cream on. We also apply sunscreen as protection from the sun at daytime. Some of us have an extra eye cream or lip application too. This routine becomes a ritual (pattern) to most of us, nights when we get so tired and busy that we want to skip this, but still make time to do it because it will feel really odd if we don't! This skin care routine becomes a ritual and a discipline for us.
training
As important as disciplining our body to be healthy, all these spiritual habits and practices are as important to our spiritual nurturing. It develops our relationship with God and strengthen our faith.
Spiritual disciplines keeps us connected with other believers as some of these call us to practice it corporately (meaning with a community of other christians) like studying God's word and prayer.
They are also important, simply because they are taught and modeled in the Bible. What other reason do you want to hear? If it is in the Word of God, then it is "breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16-17). These disciplines are our guiding steps to walking and looking more like Jesus everyday...towards godliness.
Because spiritual disciplines are derived from the Word of God, then it also takes us into a deeper understanding of the gospel. The more we understand the gospel, the deeper relationship and knowledge of Jesus we develop.
And again, if it is not enough, let me remind you of 1 Timothy 4:7 “Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. ”. Let us keep this in mind, may our main purpose for practicing all these spiritual disciplines be godliness and practicing spiritual discipline be the means to accomplish our godliness.
Ultimately, all these for GOD's glory!
"Rightly motivated, they (spiritual disciplines) are the means to godliness. - Don Whitney [Desiring God Podcast]
motivation
Why does a runner run? They run for different reasons. They are motivated by these different reasons. Much the same with practicing spiritual disciplines, what is motivating us to do it?
Let us take a moment to ask ourselves, for example, why are we reading God's word? How do we spend our time reading the Bible? Are we just reading to check off our list? I have heard from Don Whitney's podcast interview that it is way better to read God's Word for 5 minutes and spend the next 5 minutes meditating on it, digging and truly asking God questions from the text you read, rather than reading chapters and chapters of the Word of God for a whole ten minutes, then closing the book and that was it.
What is our motivation for doing spiritual disciplines? Steve Childers used the illustration of a runner to point the "how" of spiritual disciplines. He said if we look at two runners, we really can not tell what is motivating them to run. It could be that one is just running for vanity. The other could be running to glorify God. He also emphasized this as a great danger in practicing our spiritual discipline: Are we just learning to do the disciplines and not caring to know why we are doing it?
Therefore, spiritual disciplines is not just doing it for the purpose of doing what you are supposed to do as a believer. Spiritual disciplines must be done with the right motivation in your heart. According to Childers "One of the most significant things in spiritual disciplines is understanding the affections of your heart. Is the motive Christ? Is the means Christ?" As I have mentioned above, spiritual disciplines are a means to righteousness provided we are rightly motivated. So Whitney and Childers both reiterate that our ultimate purpose for practicing spiritual disciplines is to honor and glorify God! Therefore, let us keep asking ourselves this: What is in my heart?
The funny thing is I totally agree with Childers when he mentioned his observation: looking from the outside we can not really tell the difference between two christians practicing spiritual disciplines on what their motivation is for doing what they are doing! Quite deceiving...
“It is not enough to do the correct thing; it must be done in a right spirit, and with a pure motive. A good action is not wholly good unless it be done for the glory of God, and because of the greatness and goodness of his holy name.” -Charles Spurgeon
disciplines
So now that we know what Spiritual Disciplines are; why we do them and how we should be doing them...{yes in everything we do it should always be for the glory of GOD!} ... here are the SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES-
"Pray then like this:
'Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.'" - Matthew 6:9-14
"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." - 2 Timothy 3:16-17
"And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." - Matthew 6:16-18
"Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places." - Leviticus 23:3
WORSHIP
"But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." -John 4:23-24
FELLOWSHIP
"And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near." - Hebrews 10:24-25
godliness
Let us keep training for godliness, pursuing Jesus, knowing Him and continuously aiming to look more like Him. With the right motivation in our hearts (to honor and glorify GOD), we can work towards godliness through our spiritual disciplines (only a means not an end).
And so I encourage each one of you to examine ourselves if we are doing and exercising, diligently practicing our spiritual disciplines to train for godliness? Let us not get tired of continuously training because through these habits of devotion we will grow steadily. We must always keep focused on our mindset and our true intentions and that is for the ultimate glory of our God.
I will leave you with this quote from Don Whitney when he spoke at the Desiring God National Conference 2003 -
"The goal of every spiritual discipline is godliness. Godliness is another way of describing holiness, sanctification, and Christlikeness. To put it in other terms, the purpose of the spiritual disciplines is intimacy with Christ and conformity (both internal and external) to Christ." - Don Whitney, "Pursuing a Passion for God Through Spiritual Disciplines: Learning from John Edwards"