Be still. Slow down. Sit in silence. Pause. Attend to your thoughts. Meditate on God’s Word. Listen for the Lord. Pour out your heart to God.

Stop and read those previous sentences again.

How did that feel? Were you able to breathe a bit deeper and think more clearly? Did stress and anxiety seem to melt away? Did your shoulders loosen? Each of those sentences was merely a prompt to briefly experience a spiritual discipline—sabbath, silence, reflection, meditation, study, or prayer. Throughout the centuries, Christians have embraced these practices (and others) as a means of cultivating the soul—tilling the soil of our hearts to become receptive to God’s Word (cf. Matthew 13). Christians today continue to utilize them as we follow the way of our Savior, who likewise engaged in them.

The world around us moves at a frenetic pace, and the chaos that abounds out there can easily infiltrate our own souls. In an increasingly complex cultural moment, it is not surprising that there is a resurgence among Christians commending the practice of the disciplines. Everything we attend to, everything we do, and everything we experience is forming us, and the world would love to conform us to its own image. The disciplines serve as a bulwark against the tyranny of the world’s desire for our conformity, and they remind us that we were created to reflect another image—the image of God.

Without God, the spiritual disciplines are mere hollow activities through which we vainly feign piety. However, when utilized to invite communion with our Savior, the disciplines allow “God’s life and light to transform our inner spirit so that righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit begin to pervade all we are and think.”¹

I encourage you to read this edition of the Epistle more slowly than you may be accustomed to reading it. With each article, pause, meditate, reflect, and pray over how God is at work within you. Avoid the great temptation to learn about the disciplines, and instead commit to experiencing them. For it is not in learning about them that we are shaped, but in practicing them. Each article offered has been saturated with prayer, and we invite you to reflect this by reading this edition intentionally and prayerfully. May the Lord meet with you as you read.

by Pastor Brad Rogers

 

¹Richard Foster, Study Guide on Celebration of Discipline.