Stick with me here.
I’m not talking about classroom discipline or how to discipline your child or your dog.
We’re talking spiritual disciplines. Like meditation, prayer, fasting, stewardship, study, contemplation, confession, solitude, gratitude, self-examination, silence, and celebration.
Before you say that these don’t sound spiritual in the Bible sense or maybe you really don’t like the word discipline, let’s talk about why I decided to read these two books.
I was introduced to Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster in college. One of the amazing teachers at the School of Religion had a small group and we read and discussed that book.
For one reason or another, I decided to give it another read, so I borrowed the audio version from my library. While I was searching for it, I found The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard.
I figured I might as well. So I listened to Willard’s book first. If you want a serious, theological look at why a Christian should learn and practice the spiritual disciplines, this is a very good book to read. It’s packed with theology and the Bible and provides a very solid foundation for beginning to practice any of these disciplines.
Foster’s book is more practical, though no less biblical, in its discussion of spiritual disciplines.
For those of you who haven’t really thought about any of these in the context of Christianity, I’ll talk about a couple of them here. Then you can decide if you want to do any more research on any of it.
I’ll start with meditation because of how it’s frequently portrayed and that makes a lot of Christians reject any idea or form of meditation.
Maybe meditation makes you think of what you do in yoga where you just focus on your breathing and keeping your movements in sync with it.
Maybe meditation makes you think of some dude sitting cross-legged on the floor with his hands on his knees, his fingers together, his eyes closed, and saying “Ommmmmmm.”
Maybe you were told that meditation means emptying your mind and keeping it empty.
As a Christian, meditation means a focusing of your thoughts on something about God. Here’s some examples from the Psalms:
Here we have some examples of things to meditate on:
- God’s love
- God’s decrees
- God’s wonderful deeds
- God’s regulations
- God’s splendor and miracles
You don’t have to spend a lot of time meditating, especially when you first try it out. The biggest challenge you’ll have is trying to keep your mind focused on whatever it is you chose to meditate on.
The more you meditate, the more your mind will end up going back to what you were meditating on earlier. And it’s awesome how it will come back to your mind when you need to think it most.
If you’re still here with me, why don’t we talk about fasting.
Like meditation, fasting is often misunderstood. Especially since there are different kinds of fasting talked about out there.
There’s intermittent fasting, juice fasting, dry fasting (no food or water), and liquid fasting.
Each of those fasts has a purpose, be it health or diet.
Please don’t confuse fasting with any sort of eating disorder.
Fasting as a spiritual discipline is done for a spiritual purpose.
One time, my parents were having to make a tough decision, so they talked to me and my siblings and suggested a 24-hour fasting and prayer time. I don’t know how my siblings felt about it, but I was okay with it. So we all did a 24-hour fast. I don’t know about everyone else, but I know that I took extra time for prayer throughout the day.
Technically, I did a fruit and juice fast, because my system can’t handle a total fast.
It was a positive experience. And I’ve done a couple of other similar fasts since then.
There’s one story in the Bible about this queen named Esther. The fate of her people was on the line and she was in a position to be able to save them. But it could cost her life if she tried.
So she asked her cousin to have everybody get together and fast for three days and nights. She and her staff fasted, too.
At the end of her fast, she went to see the king. You can read about the fast here.
She didn’t die. The king heard her requests and her people weren’t killed.