Recapturing the Spiritual Disciplines

Sermon by Neil Earle

Summer’s here, and it's not quite as easy these days as when they sang about it in “Porgy and Bess.”

Still, this is a season when most of try to spend more time with nature – in the garden, at the beach or even (cross your fingers) on vacation. This “could” be a time when we have a little more leisure and space to practice the spiritual disciplines.

The Spiritual Disciplines – what are these?

Consider reading The Divine Conspiracy or The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard (pictured, left). Willard died very recently but was considered an authority on the subject. Here’s part of his list:

  1. Silence and solitude: It’s hard to find this in our overcrowded cities but not impossible. Summer camps now regularly collect cell phones from campers before the schedule starts. We all know why.
  2. Prayer and fasting: In the past it’s just possible that our church overdosed on fasting, and now we might find it hard to get back to it (I do!). But all the books mention this.
  3. Meditating on past and present. This will be a challenge in the age of Twitter – “maintain radio silence” seems to have gone out the board.
  4. Celebration: Regular celebrations of our relationship with God includes thanking him for bringing us thus far, reflecting on our successes and failures and placing future plans and challenges in the context of God’s promise to get us through.

Wise old John Calvin wrote: “Even if this life is only a vestibule (to eternal life), we ought to make such a use of its blessings that we are assisted rather than delayed in our journey.” This summer my nephew is getting married, which necessitates a 3500 mile journey on our part. I am already celebrating this event in advance and unless I miss my guess, will mull it over later as a highlight. We must appreciate God’s blessings.

Most of the great theologians stopped to meditate on Christian living.

Escaping Faddism

We’re currently in the age of Christian fads. Our theology is so weak that we can put things on bumper stickers that pass for profound wisdom. Spirituality by Slogans. One is "Just ask, What Jesus would do." Another is: “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.”

How do we live the truly Christian life i.e. being salt and light to the people we meet? Just asking what Jesus Christ would do is not enough. You have to be in training, in the game, like an athlete. You won’t really know what to do in a given situation unless you know what Jesus did and that means reading his story. When you’re in spiritual training the right responses to life begin to flow out of us from the work of the Spirit inside (Romans 5:5). When we have the model of Jesus before our eyes, greeting people the way he would, then we don’t need to ask "what Jesus would do."

But you’d have to be regularly reading the Gospels to keep that image fresh. Otherwise the images we carry are from ESPN or (perish the thought!) CNN.

The great Christian leader St. Paul wrote on what he called “godliness,” living like God. He said in 1 Timothy 4:8: "For bodily exercise profits a little but godliness is profitable for all things."

He added in 1 Corinthians 6:13: “The body is for the Lord.” That’s a challenge Paul sets out here, to align our physical selves with the spiritual life as Jesus surely did in his times of heroic fasting and prayer – 40 days and nights. Jesus spent his life expending himself ceaselessly, healing individuals who came his way, training and retraining his often obtuse disciples, taking time to praise Roman officers and despised lepers and Samaritans.

Ye he still found time to be alone (Matthew 14:22-23).

Jesus Sought Solitude

That’s why when St. Paul was first drafted into Christ’s service he did not go up to Jerusalem or confer with the other apostles right away. He went into out into the desert, to seek God in silence and solitude. “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus” (Galatians 1).”

Jesus, also, constantly sought solitude. Remember, after baptism he went to the wilderness. As his life neared its crisis point, he retreated from busy bustling Jerusalem to Gethsemane. He would withdraw from the crowds, seeking time for prayer so as to strengthen his relationship with God (Mark 1:35-37).

Here’s a man with his priorities crystal clear!

“Quietness and Confidence” (Isaiah 30:15)

It looks like we will have time just to cover one aspect of the disciplines today. So let’s pick solitude.

We all need quiet time to listen to the "still, small voice" inside us. We need to practice spirituality in solitude which is difficult in the 24/7 world. Spiritual writer Eugene Peterson goes so far as to say that Satan’s strategy for our time is to keep us so busy that we have no time to develop deep relationships – with God and with others. The drumbeat of “do, do, do” trivializes our existence. We feel we’re on a treadmill – working harder yet getting further behind.

How can we practice quiet and solitude?

  1. Be intentional. Set aside specific time for God through meditation – a time when we aren’t distracted by cell phones, the internet, our computer, television, etc. For most people that’s early in the morning. For me it can vary.
  2. Return to private prayer. Even church can be a busy busy time when we have so many things and people to pray about and snacks to plan for. But don’t forget Matthew 6:6: "…when you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father which is in secret; and your Father which sees in secret shall reward you openly."
  3. Listen for God. Sometimes pray without speaking. We don’t always have to be talking. God hears us quite well when he reads our thoughts. Read your Bible a bit, mull it over, and then wait and see what God has to say. Believe me, you will get an answer penetrating your consciousness fairly quickly. God wants to talk to you, you see, and he may not have heard from you for a while.
  4. Realize God is always speaking. Jesus talked about meditating on birds and flowers to get more on God’s wave length. How strange that can seem today. Willard says its only by taking a “time out” that we rediscover that the “universe is brimming with goodness.” He adds; “That harassing, hovering feeling of ‘have to’ largely comes from the vacuum in your soul, where you ought to be at home with your Father in his kingdom. As the vacuum is rightly filled, you will increasingly know that you do not have to do these things – not even those you want to do” (page 360).
  5. Maximize lag time. We must learn to treat cancellations and missed appointments as “his appointments.” Dallas Willard told us once in Palm Springs that at airports – where schedules never seem to work – he sits in the waiting room trying to memorize the Book of Philippians. What an example. Have you read Philippians lately? You can see why he picked that book.
  6. In your meditative period, just focus on one or two things. God will lead you from there. You may find some things can be cleared up in prayer or you find you have better strategy to deal with it coming “out the chute.” Check out how Daniel handled a major life and death crisis in Daniel, Chapter 2. You’ll know when you’ve had a good session of quietness – when something concrete comes out of it and you have something specific to carry on and do.

And let’s end with this advice Willard copied from a novelist on how to see God in the everyday. An old woman drinking coffee, “became aware of the world’s tenderness, the profound beneficence of all that surrounded me, the blissful bond that existed between me and all creation, and I realized that joy…breathed around me everywhere, in the speeding street sounds, in the metallic yet tender drone of the wind, in the autumn clouds bloated with rain. I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all or a sequence of chance events, but shimmering bliss, a gift bestowed on us and unappreciated.”

“Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mould” (Romans 12). Try practicing the discipline of quiet and solitude. And reap the blessings this summer.