Spiritual Disciplines: Perseverence

We complete our reading of Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life this week by turning our time and attention to the topic of Perseverance. If you’d like to know more about what we’ve been doing, you can read about it here. 

Last week, we discussed Learning. In that post, we discovered that spiritual maturity doesn't increase by age and experience alone. It requires a teachable heart. 

Each week I have worked to draw your attention to a reminder like this. Going through the motions won’t help you grow in godliness. The Holy Spirit will. Engage in the Spiritual Disciplines because they get you more of Jesus. The Holy Spirit will use them to make you more like Christ. Keep this in mind as we move on from our study of the Spiritual Disciplines.

Summary

Our schedules overflow with activity. Most of us go, go, go seven days a week. There is little rest for the weary it seems. The Spiritual Disciplines aren't for a special class of Christians. We don't need more time or a better handle on things.

“The godly person,” Whitney said, “is a busy person. The godly person is devoted to God and to people, and that leads to a full life.” The people we admire are busy people as well. They have responsibilities, families, and jobs like us. In truth, they are busier than we would ever know. 

“Laziness,” Whitney said, “never leads to godliness.” He is onto something with that point. Seldom have I met a maturing believer in Christ, whose schedule wasn’t full. As we grow in godliness our level of activity and service increases. 

“God makes Christlike people,” Whitney said, “out of busy people, and He does so through the biblical Spiritual Disciplines.” The Disciplines aren’t for a special class of believers, but you and I amidst a crazy schedule. In fact, the Spiritual Disciplines refuel our hearts and give us the power we need to maintain our busy pace. “Instead of adding additional weight,” Whitney said, “the Spiritual Disciplines are actually one of the ways God lightens your load and gives you smoother sailing.” 

Our busyness can become an excuse to neglect the Disciplines, but we do so to our detriment. “Without practicing the Spiritual Disciplines,” Whitney said, “we will not be godly; but neither will we be godly without perseverance in practicing the Disciplines.” We can’t do them every once in awhile—when schedules and energy allow—and expect to become more Christlike. 

The Holy Spirit isn’t going to impose Christlikeness upon us in this life. We have to discipline ourselves towards that purpose. While salvation is a work of God from beginning to end, sanctification is a work of both God and man. We play a definite and vital role in our sanctification and will experience as much of it as our efforts permit.

Lest we fall into the trap of believing that we bring about the change we seek of our own efforts. “We must perpetually remind ourselves,” Whitney said, “that despite the most fervent diligence to our responsibility to discipline ourselves ‘for the purpose of godliness,’ we cannot make ourselves more like Jesus. The Holy Spirit does that, working through the Disciplines to bring us closer to Jesus and making us more like Him.” 

So while there is a role we play in our growth in godliness, the Holy Spirit does the heavy lifting. The Spiritual Disciplines help position us so that when the Holy Spirit sparks, a fire is lit. We don’t have control over when the Holy Spirit does His part, but that shouldn’t cause us to neglect ours. 

We aren’t able to grow in Christlikeness apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, and we won’t grow in isolation either. It is quite fashionable to rail against the church these days as if one can love God and not love His people. The church is a gift to the believer and we need each other far more than we realize. “Without true fellowship,” Whitney said, “even the Christian who is ardently practicing the personal Spiritual Disciplines will not develop in a biblically proportioned way.” 

John Bunyan’s Christian didn’t make the journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City alone. And we won’t either. “Associate with sanctified persons,” Thomas Watson said, “They may, by their counsel, prayers, and holy example, be a means to make you holy.” 

Christian fellowship is more than socializing with other believers in Christ. “Christian fellowship,” Whitney said, “involves talking about God, the things of God, and life from a uniquely Christian perspective.” The Lord uses socializing to connect us with both believers and unbelievers alike. There is a higher aim for Christian fellowship. It is to push and stretch us to be about the Lord’s work and ever growing in godliness.     

“Practicing the Spiritual Disciplines and progressing in godliness,” Whitney said, “will be accompanied by struggle.” The Christian life is not any easy one. Every believer must do battle with the world, the flesh and the Devil. Christ won the ultimate victory over these three foes at Calvary. We must persevere in the Disciplines to experience that victory day to day.

“So we need to remember,” J.I. Packer said, “that any idea of getting beyond conflict, outward or inward, in our pursuit of holiness in this world is an escapist dream that can only have disillusioning and demoralizing effects on us as waking experience daily disproves it. What we must realize, rather, is that any real holiness in us will be under hostile fire all the time, just as our Lord’s was.” 

Reflection

I’m amazed at the degrees to which we will go to find a loophole or shortcut. I find more and more that there are zero true shortcuts in life. Good old fashioned hard work is required to do anything of real and lasting value. There are those who will attempt to convince you otherwise, but they're wrong. The disciplined application of effort is the only path to that will get you where you want to go. 

Whitney has done us a great service by calling to the Christian mind the enduring need of discipline. No amount of will or self-control can get anyone to Heaven. Only Jesus life, death, burial, and resurrection can secure that for us. 

“One of the surest signs that someone does cling to Christ,” Whitney said, “is his or her ever-deepening desire to know Him better and to become as much like Him as possible. That is what godliness is, and genuine disciples of Jesus passionately pursue it. And just as the only way to God is through Christ, so the only way to godliness is through the Christ-centered practice of the Spiritual Disciplines.” 

I am thankful for Whitney’s reminder of discipline’s place in the Christian life. He has given us a clear a path to pursuing Christlikeness. There will never be a ‘right time’ for me to put in place what I’ve learned these many weeks. However I integrate these Disciplines into my everyday life, I will have to do so with life still up in the air.  

Next Week

Congratulations! You reached the end of our reading Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life together. Thank you for coming along for the ride. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have. If you didn't jump in with us this time, I'd encourage you to buy the book and walk through the series on your own.

Your Turn

This is the end of our reading Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life together. I’d love to hear what stood out to you this week and every week throughout our study. Share what caught your eye, or stirred your heart as you read.
 

Legalism and Discipline

Discipline can elicit a harsh and immediate rebuke in many Christian circles because it is often equated with legalism. 

Legalism for the unaware is church speak for man-centered righteousness most noticeable in the Pharisees in the New Testament. 

There’s was an external righteousness of earning God’s love and approval. 

God’s Word forcefully and rightly condemns this way of living. 

Pharisaical legalism and discipline aren’t the same. 

One is based on the idea that your actions earn you God’s favor. 

The other is based on the idea that consistency and diligence are the pathways to spiritual growth. 

One concentrates on attaining salvation by works. 

The other concentrates on being transformed into the image of Christ.

Christians often hear the first message when the other is preached and it leads to frustration and heartache. 

The life God calls the Christian to isn’t a life devoid of work. It simply redefines its why. 

You are called to work hard, just not for your salvation. 

Spiritual Disciplines: Worship

We continue our reading of Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life together this week by turning our time and attention to the topic of Worship. If you’d like to know more about what we’re doing, you can read about it here: Will You Read Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life With Me? Last week, we learned how the discipline of prayer helps us grow to be more like Christ. In that post, we discovered that meditation on Scripture is the fuel for our prayer life. 

“The rigid rehearsal of a routine,” Whitney said, “is not the same as rightly practicing a Spiritual Discipline.” Don’t hold onto things too tightly. Hold them loosely instead. Our goal in studying the Spiritual Disciplines is that we might grow in Christlikeness, not that we would morph into strange creatures so weighed down by activities and routines that we completely miss their purpose. Remember that we are after growth in godliness not a growing to do list! 

Summary  

“Worship,” Whitney says, “is focusing on and responding to God.” It’s why we are here, and our purpose for eternity but what does it look like and what does it have to do with our growing in Christlikeness? 

Most picture standing and singing without end when they think of worship and specifically heaven. Popular culture and poor teachers of Scripture have done us a disservice by allowing this image to of worship to remain in our minds. Singing songs to and about God can be worship, but there is more to the worship of God than songs and hymns. 

Nearly any practice can be turned into a moment of worship. “To worship God,” Whitney said, “means to ascribe the proper worth to God, to magnify His worthiness of praise, or better, to approach and address God as He is worthy.” There is no shortage of opportunities to reflect back to God His worth. Drinking a cup of coffee while watching the sun erupt over the horizon can cause praise of the Father to overwhelm your heart. When spontaneous affections for God rise in your heart, you are worshiping God. 

“The more we focus on God,” Whitney said, “the more we understand and appreciate His infinite worth.” It’s not simply that we allow our mind to drift to occasional thoughts of God but rather our intentional focus upon Him that constitutes worship. Focus is key in our understanding of what it means to worship God. Only when God is the center of our attention can He be uppermost in our affection.  

We aren’t to focus our minds towards vague thoughts about God, however, but upon specific attributes and truths about Him found in Scripture. “all worship of God—public, family, and private worship,” Whitney said, “should be based upon and include much of the Bible. The Bible reveals God to us.” God has revealed Himself to us generally through Creation, more specifically in the Bible, and most deliberately in His incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.  

The Bible therefore is central to our proper worship of God. For it is within Scripture that we learn of the life, death, burial and resurrection of Christ. It is Scripture that we find example after example of faithful men who loved God, yet remained heavily tainted by sin. We see how God intentionally pursued them and in turn see how He has done the same with us. “As we meditate on this and begin to discover more of what it means for God to be holy,” Whitney said, “the Holy Spirit causes the desire to worship Him to overwhelm us.”

This brings to mind Jesus words to the women at the well in John 4:23-24. There he reveals this powerful link between worshiping in spirit and truth. “Before we can worship in spirit and truth we must have within us the One who is the ‘Spirit of truth’, (John 14:17), that is, the Holy Spirit.” Apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, true worship can not happen. 

“The Holy Spirit,” Whitney said, “opens minds to the truth of Scripture and awakens hearts that were dead toward God.” He aides us in finding new occasions to praise God each time we open our Bibles. We see new and different things that while present before, did not catch our notice. As we meditate on Scripture the Holy Spirit is at work to kindle our emotions towards worship. 

Worship in truth is worship according to the truth of Scripture.

1.) We worship God as He is revealed in the Bible, not as we might want Him to be. We worship Him according to the truth of who He says He is: a God of both mercy and justice, of love and wrath, who both welcomes into heaven and condemns into hell. 

2.) Worship according to the truth of Scripture means to worship God in the ways to which He has given His approval in Scripture. In other words, we should do in the worship of God what God says in the Bible we should do in worship.”

The title for this and every chapter includes the words “for the purpose of godliness.” Whitney’s book is not concerned merely with our learning new and interesting things about the Spiritual Disciplines. He is more concerned with helping us see how each is given to us by God for our growth in conformity to the image of Christ.

What about worship conforms us to His image? 

“Godliness without the worship of God,” Whitney said, “is unthinkable.” We can’t grow to resemble the character and grace of a God we spend little time beholding. “The worship of God makes believers more godly,” Whitney said, “because people become like their focus.” What we choose to think about shapes us. If we fill our minds with good, pure, honorable things the same will ooze out of us. 

For all we have learned worship to be in this chapter, we must come to grips with the reality that it is both a public and private affair. The one is meant to feed the other. Our private worship of God in meditation upon Scripture and prayer is meant to fuel our corporate worship on Sundays. We will seldom worship a God on Sunday that we haven’t spent time with in private all week long. The opposite is also true. 

Reflection

I’ve often taken worshiping God for granted. I wrongly assumed that all He wanted from me was a few moments each morning and an hour on Sunday. That idea couldn’t be farther from the truth. God not only desires a deeper richer relationship with us, but has gone to great links to secure it. Why would I not meditate on His Word, thank Him for all He has done for me in Christ and all He is doing in my life through the power of the Holy Spirit? My failure to understand how sweet an invitation to spend time with Him is, is shameful. 

Reading this chapter was the kick in the pants I needed. “We minimize our joy,” Whitney said, “when we neglect the daily worship of God in private.” I’ve found the same to be true about the neglect of public worship as well. I rarely miss my private devotional time. It’s part of my morning routine. But too often I allow myself to miss the joy of gathering with other believers for corporate worship. Sure, there are valid reasons why we miss Sundays, but my heart is the real issue. It should bother me to miss seeing and worshiping with my church family. It should be as important to me as my daily time in Scripture. 

Next Week

We will continue with the next chapter (chapter six) of the book next Sunday. We may be in the middle of this series, but it’s never too late to get the book and join in. Click here to see what ground we have covered so far.  

Your Turn

I’d like to hear what stood out to you in this week. Please post your reflections, and thoughts in the comment section below. If you have shared your thoughts on your own blog, please link to it as well. Do not feel the need to be profound or to share something new. Simply share what caught your eye, or stirred your heart as you read. 
 

Spiritual Disciplines: Prayer

We continue our reading of Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life together this week by turning our time and attention to the topic of Prayer. If you’d like to know more about what we’re doing, you can read about it here: Will You Read Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life With Me? Last week, we discussed five different ways we need to be engaging with God’s Word. In that post, we discovered that meditation on Scripture is the secret ingredient to a vibrant walk with Christ. 

We also learned that there is a danger lurking in the waters in which we’re swimming. The Spiritual Disciplines can become entanglements that quickly drown us. While water is a necessity, too much of it isn’t a good thing. At every turn we must keep the goal of godliness before us! In short, we must beware of activity for it’s own sake. 

Summary  

Prayer is on one hand the simplest of disciplines and on the other the most neglected. That wouldn’t be a sobering reality if prayer wasn’t also vitally important to our spiritual growth and health. “Prayer,” Whitney said, “is second only to the intake of God’s Word in importance.” 

Again, again and again we see Jesus withdrawing to pray in the gospels. He gets away from the crowd, and busyness of life to spend time with His Father. A large measure of His effectiveness no doubt derived from this simple habit of communing with The Father. 

The same is expected of us. “In every season,” Whitney said, “God expects every Christian to be devoted to prayer and to pray without ceasing.” If all we had was the example of Christ, it would be enough to drive us to prayer, but it’s not all we have. Scripture makes it clear that prayer is expected of us. Jesus’ words present a straightforward call to prayer. Verse after verse contains a phrase such as “And when you pray…” or “But when you pray..”  In addition to the words of Christ, it is the explicit expression of God from the rest of Scripture that we are to pray.    

“God expects us to use the walkie-talkie of prayer,” Whitney said, “because that is the means He has ordained not only for godliness, but also for the spiritual warfare between His kingdom and the kingdom of His enemy. To abandon prayer is to fight the battle with our own resources at best, and to lose interest in the battle at worst.”

Prayer is the method of our talking with God. We don’t have another means through which we can communicate with Him. If you would talk to God, you must pick up the metaphorical walkie-talkie and speak. 
  
Stuff gets in the way of our prayer life however. Sometimes it’s busyness, others it’s a lack of discipline but mostly it’s a lack of trust. “Often we do not pray,” Whitney said, “because we doubt that anything will actually happen if we pray.” This lack of trust persists despite God’s promise to answer every single word we send His way through prayer. 

“Ask and your shall receive; everyone that asks, receives.” Andrew Murray said, “This is the fixed eternal law of the kingdom: if you ask and receive not, it must be because there is something amiss or wanting in the prayer.” There is not a prayer of yours that has not found an answer from the mouth of God. You may be unaware of His reply, or it’s timing may be different from yours, but make no mistake an answer has been given. 

“He does not lead us to pray in order to frustrate us,” Whitney said, “by slamming Heaven’s door in our face.” God’s call to prayer is for our good. He is like a daddy setting his child upon his knee and asking them to tell all about their day. 

Prayer is a learned thing. Perseverance, consistency and The Spirit’s help are required to grow in prayer. You learn to pray by praying, but there is one resource that will aide you in your journey. Last week, we saw that meditation was the secret to a vibrant walk through God’s word. This week, we discover that it is also the  link between Bible intake and prayer.      
 
“There should be a smooth almost unnoticeable transition,” Whitney said, “between Scripture input and prayer output so that we move even closer to God in those moments.” Meditation is meant to be the bridge that helps us navigate that transition easily. It takes what we’ve read in God’s Word, drives it into our hearts and then turn to God about it. “We enlivened by meditation, prayer,” Whitney said, “becomes more like a real conversation with a real person—which is exactly what prayer is.”

The overarching principle of this chapter this: “Would you be like Christ? Then do as He did—discipline yourself to be a person of prayer.” What does our prayer life look like? Are we devoting ourselves to prayer? Are we letting our meditation on God’s Word drive us to our knees in prayer and worship? Prayer is fueled by meditation on Scripture. Make meditation and prayer part of your daily devotions. Read less if you have to in order to create more time for meditation and prayer.  

Reflection

I was disappointed following my first reading of this chapter. I found it lacking, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on what. Perhaps I was looking for something that would radically transform my prayer life. I came to the page in search of a thought, idea or method that would open the door to growth in this area. I’ve found my prayer life dull, repetitive and lacking in fruit for years. And I hate that. I want a deep, rich, fulfilling prayer life.

In search of some nugget or prayer hack I completely missed the point Whitney was making. I don’t need new tips and tricks, I need more of Christ. And I find more of Christ through meditation upon His Word. “What is the reason that our desires like an arrow shot by a weak bow do not reach the mark?” William Bates said, “But only this, we do not meditate before prayer...The great reason why our prayers are ineffectual, is because we do not meditate before them.” 

The great failure of my pursuit of Christ is here laid bare. I have long neglected to meditate upon The Word. I’m learning page by page that neglecting this one area of the Spiritual Disciplines leaves a gaping hole in the middle of my journey towards Christlikeness.   

Next Week

We will continue with the next chapter (chapter five) of the book next Sunday. Chapter five may sound like we’re in the middle of this series, but we’ve only just begun. There remains plenty of time to get the book and join in. 

Your Turn

I’d like to hear what stood out to you in this week's chapter. Please feel free to post your reflections, and thoughts in the comment section below. If you have shared your thoughts on your own blog, please link to it as well. Do not feel the need to be profound or to share something new. Simply share what caught your eye, or stirred your heart as you read. 
 

Will You Read “Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life” With Me?

“Discipline without direction,” Donald Whitney said, “is drudgery.” 

All the times I set out to instill greater discipline in my life, ‘just because’, I failed. It didn’t take and many times served to not only to frustrate but to hinder the growth I needed. Doing things ‘just because you should’ or ‘because everyone else does’ or even ‘because it’s what your hero does’, isn’t necessarily a good enough reason. You must have a deep driving purpose that carries you through. Being disciplined is a wonderful thing, but for it to serve its intended purpose in our lives we must give something to push us towards. It must have direction. 

I have found this to be especially true in the Christian life. Engaging in the Spiritual Disciplines without giving thought to their purpose robs them of their life giving power. For years I’d read my bible, pray occasionally, and attend church on weekends, thinking that engaging in those activities alone was enough. One day that all changed. I became obsessed with growing in Christlikeness. I saw in Romans 8 the Lord’s promise to work in all circumstances and events to shape and mold my character into that of Christ. “God’s eternal plan,” Whitney says, “ensures that every Christian will ultimately conform to Christlikeness.” With that promise as the goal of my Christian life Bible reading, prayer and Sunday worship took on a whole new life. They became the tools The Spirit would use to conform me into the image of Christ. The end breathed life into the means. 

I ran with the what seemed the wind at my back for years. I’d dove into Scripture, memorized verses, and prayed with a fresh energy and desire to know my Lord more deeply. What I didn’t realize was that I was neglecting many of the other tools God has given me, namely the other Spiritual Disciplines. I was nailing Bible intake, but dropping the ball on evangelism, meditation, solitude, and fasting. While Scripture reading is the discipline on which all others hang, I needed to tap into these other means the Lord had given me for my good. 

Whitney says,“God uses three things to change us: 1.) people, 2.) circumstances, and 3.) the Spiritual Disciplines. People and circumstances work from the outside in, while the disciplines work from the inside out.” We only have control over one of those three, namely the Spiritual Disciplines. The other two just happen to us without warning and without permission. 

Spiritual Disciplines are things we do, however. They don’t happen on their own, they require great effort on our part. Which is why so few even try. Barna Research Group reported a survey that showed only 18 percent of “born again Christians” read the Bible every day. That’s a heartbreaking and sad statistic. It stopped me dead in my tracks when I first encountered it. 

“Holiness is not an option for those who claim to be children of the Holy One,” Whitney said, “so neither are the means of holiness. (see 1 Peter 1:15-16)” I’ve already mentioned a few of the means, but in short we call them the Spiritual Disciplines. “Spiritual disciplines,” Whitney said, “are those practices found in Scripture that promote spiritual growth among believers.” They are how we place ourselves in the path of God’s grace and seek Him. 

In short, Spiritual Disciplines are things you do to cultivate Christlike joy and character. There is an important distinction that needs to be made before wading too much farther into the waters of the disciplines. You must keep it firmly fixed in your mind that the Spiritual Disciplines concern your sanctification, or growth in godliness, not your salvation. The disciplines we discuss are meant to carry you deeper into the truths of the gospel, not to serve as a path to self-salvation. “Focus on the person and work of Jesus in each of the Disciplines.” Whitney said, “Through them, learn from, gaze upon, and enjoy who Jesus is and what He has done. By means of the Spiritual Disciplines, let the truths of the gospel restore your soul.” 

I took part in an eight-week discipleship program earlier this year, in which we read through Donald Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. It was such a great help in my understanding and enjoyment of the Spiritual Disciplines found in Scripture that I’m going to spend the next several weeks discussing them here on the blog.

Here’s how this will work: 

This series will kick off Sunday, August 20th. That Sunday, I’ll publish a post offering some reflections on what Whitney said in chapters 2 & 3. You’ll be able to join in on the discussion—if you’d like—in the comment section below. 

Then, in the week that follows, we will read the next chapter before once again sharing our reflections together. We’ll repeat this pattern until we’ve finished the book. 

If you’d like to read along, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life is readily available. You can find it almost anywhere books are sold. 

I found the best price on Amazon. You can order it here if you’re so inclined. 

Let’s get started

All you need to do is get a copy and read chapters 2 & 3 before August 20th. 
 

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links. I earn a small commission should you choose to use them while making your purchase.