Matthew 11:28-30 (MSG)

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Our goal as Jesus followers is to learn to live life the way that He would if he were us.

To “live increasingly as Jesus would in our unique place – to perceive what Jesus would perceive if he looked through our eyes, to think what he would think, to feel what he would feel, and therefore to do what he would do.”

God uses the Spiritual Disciplines to bring this about.

What are Spiritual Disciplines?

• Discipline defined: “any activity we can do by direct effort that will help us to do what cannot now be done by direct effort.” Helps us to accomplish what willpower alone can’t

• Spiritual Discipline defined: “any activity that can help us gain power to live life as Jesus taught and modeled it.” We can turn most anything that causes us to move closer to the “goal” into a “spiritual discipline”

Henri Nouwen said that a spiritual discipline is anything that helps us practice “how to become attentive to that small voice and willing to respond when we hear it.”

What the Disciplines are not:

• A barometer of our spirituality

• The most tedious and unpleasant activities (we can enjoy them!)

• A way for us to earn God’s favor (they exist for our sake not for God’s. They are a “means of grace” – 2 Peter3:18. Dallas Willard often says that we are saved by grace but too often we are also crippled by it as well. The disciplines do not earn anything for us, but they help us to “grow in grace”. Grace is free but it is not cheap! The opposite of grace is “works” not effort.

Living Sacrifices

Romans 12:1 –

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.”

From the Message version: “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.”

It’s been said that the only problem with a living sacrifice is that it keeps crawling off the altar! That’s why we need the spiritual disciplines.

Spiritual disciplines help us to continually “offer our bodies as living sacrifices”.

They are the means to an end. In and of themselves they have no merit. Their only purpose is to place us before and connect us to God so that God can transform us. They help us grow through indirection (we connect and submit to God and God transforms us).

Training vs. Trying

Think of a skilled athlete & musician – the freedom to perform comes out of their behind the scenes discipline. They would be unable to do what they do if they did not put in the work ahead of time.

It is the same with our spiritual lives. We cannot expect to “perform” like Jesus if we do not do the behind the scenes work of allowing God to transform us from the inside out.

The reality of life proves that “trying” our hardest at something can only get us so far.

Following Jesus simply means learning from him how to arrange my life around activities that enable me to live in the fruit of the spirit. Willard says we must adopt His (Jesus’) overall life-style.

1 Timothy 4:7-8

“Rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”

1 Corinthians 9:25

Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.

2 Timothy 3:16

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,

The disciplines that we will be focusing on:

Prayer

Meditation on Scripture

Silence

Solitude

Slowing down

Celebration

In learning to practice these, we will be intentionally presenting ourselves to God so that He may then do the work that only He can do – inner transformation of the heart. When this happens, the way we live our lives will begin to line up with the way that Jesus would live them if he were us.

Additional Recommended Reading on the Spiritual Disciplines:

Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster

The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg

The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard

Spiritual Disciplines Handbook by Adele Calhoun