Galatians 6:8 – Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest
decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the
Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit.
You are what you practice regularly.
If
you want to get good at anything, you have to practice. I started training in martial arts when I was
11-years-old. I went to class two or
three times a week until I graduated from high school. I took a few years off, but started back training
again when I was 27. I’m almost
forty-five-years-old now and I still try to train two or three times a
week.
People
sometimes ask me, “Can you teach me something about how to defend myself?” They often have this misconception there
might be some secret karate move that will save them if they ever get attacked. Sometimes, I will show some trick I’ve
learned. But always in the back of my mind
I’m thinking, “You can’t learn one karate move and think it will keep you safe. You can’t even just take one class and expect
to be prepared for a violent encounter.
You have to practice and practice and practice until self-defense
becomes second nature to you.”
Practice
is essential in any sport. Professional football
players run some of the same weekly drills they ran when they were just kids
starting out. Singers and musicians know
how important practice is too. Our
church pianist, Sara Forester, comes out and practices almost every week in the
sanctuary. You will often find her on a
Saturday morning by herself in the sanctuary practicing the offertory or
prelude music she will play on Sunday morning. Our church choir practices at
least once a week, sometimes twice.
Singing in the church choir is probably one of the best ways to really
get better at singing, simply because of the regular practice you get. Your voice
is a muscle that grows stronger and better the more you exercise it.
Can
tell? I’m a strong believer in practice and training. And here’s why: what you practice
regularly comes out when the pressure is on. If you know how to fight because
you practice all the time, your fighting skill will come out naturally in that
unexpected moment when you’re attacked and you need to fight. You won’t have to think about it.
The same is true of the Christian virtues in a
person’s life. You are what you practice and it will come out when the pressure
is on. You might be able to fake being Christian
for a little while when everything is easy; but when the squeeze is on, the real
juice on the inside is gonna come out. When you’re stressed out and under
pressure, who you are on the inside is gonna come out—compassion, forgiveness,
grace, and mercy or frustration, retaliation, unreasonable demands, and a mean
spirit. When someone squeezes you, the
juice that comes out will be from whatever fruits are in your spirit. What kind of person are you when the going
gets tough?
The exercises Christians practice to help develop
their spiritual muscles are called Spiritual
Disciplines. Some of the most useful
spiritual disciplines are: meditation, prayer, fasting, study,
simplicity, solitude, submission, service, confession, worship, guidance, and
celebration. Each of these
disciplines have been used by Christians for thousands of years to nurture the
growth of the fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Over the next few months, I’m going to teach about
each of these spiritual disciplines. We
will try to understand each one better. What
I really want, though, is for you to practice them. What good would it be to know all about
prayer, but never pray? It would be as
useless as a recipe for a pecan pie, but never cooking or eating one.
Two Dangers
There are two dangers I need to point out from
the very beginning in regards to spiritual disciplines. First
off, there is a danger of using the spiritual disciplines for the wrong
reasons. There are many—chief among
these were the Pharisees in the New Testament—who misunderstand the purpose of
the spiritual disciplines. They think
that by their very strict and strenuous practice of prayer and fasting and
study and worship, etc. they might work their way to God’s blessing and
salvation. Remember the prideful prayer
of the Pharisee from Luke 18:11-12? “The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you,
God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m
certainly not like that tax collector! I fast twice a week, and I
give you a tenth of my income.’”
You see, the Pharisee thought his religious
devotion made him special and better than others. When spiritual disciplines are misused in
this way, they actually lead you away from God and not toward Him. Pride is one of the deadliest sins in the
human heart. Fasting and tithing are
spiritual practices that, when used rightly, can help drive pride from your
heart and remind you of your utter dependence on the merciful providence of God. However, if you use your fasting and tithing
to convince yourself you are something special, you have increased your pride
and defeated the purpose for fasting and tithing altogether.
Another common misuse is related and stems
from using the spiritual disciplines to try to impress others. Again, the Pharisees in the New Testament were
very diligent with their prayers, but they did it to impress people. A common practice—which Jesus condemned—was to
go out on a busy street corner and blow trumpets to get everyone’s
attention. Then a Pharisee would handout
charity and pray so everyone could see them and be impressed (Matthew 6:1-6). Jesus said you should pray in private so no
one sees it—except God. In Matthew 6:16,
Jesus said, “And when you fast, don’t make it obvious, as the hypocrites do,
for they try to look miserable and disheveled so people will admire them for
their fasting.” Jesus taught we
should fast in such a way that no one would even notice we are fasting, except
God who knows what we do in private. So we have to be careful not to misuse the spiritual disciplines to
try to impress people or God.
That brings me to a second danger in regards to spiritual disciplines. There is the danger that we neglect the spiritual
disciplines, because we assume we can’t do anything at all to help transform
our spirits. It is true that we are
saved by grace and not by the good things we do. But that doesn’t mean we just sit back and
let Jesus to do all the work without any help from us.
Notice what Jesus said in Matthew 6:16. He said, “And when you fast, don’t
make it obvious, as the hypocrites
do…” He said “when” you fast. He assumed we would indeed fast (which is one
of the spiritual disciplines). He just
wanted to make sure we fast and pray for the right reasons. This applies to all the other spiritual
disciplines as well. The reasons we
practice them make all the difference.
Meditation, prayer, fasting, study, simplicity,
solitude, submission, service, confession, worship, guidance, and celebration open
us up to the power of the Holy Spirit and nurture the growth of the spiritual
fruits in our hearts. The spiritual
disciplines are the means God gives us to receive His grace. They are the
methods by which we place ourselves before God so that He can transform us.
The Spiritual Disciplines are
for Everyone
Unfortunately, people these days often think spiritual disciplines
are only for spiritual gurus or people who live in a monastery. That’s only because so many these days have forgotten
about the disciplines. For centuries, most
Christians practiced these disciplines on a regular basis. They were even incorporated into their
communal life. People automatically knew
it was time to pray when they heard the bells ring in the church steeple. People knew fasting and penance were the
order of the day during the forty days of Lent leading up to Easter. Some of these practices survive today. Most have been forgotten by the masses. And we are weaker for it.
I want to revive these spiritual disciplines as a regular exercise
within our church. And really, it
shouldn’t be too difficult. These
spiritual disciplines aren’t too difficult to understand or practice. It’s just we have to make them a priority in our
busy lives. We have to exercise our
spirit the way we exercise our body.
My hope then, as we go through this series, is to better
understand each of the disciplines in order that we may practice them. But the key is in the practice. Understanding the spiritual disciplines is
not as good as practicing them. Understanding
and practicing them is the best of all.
So I hope we will grow in both understanding and practice together over
the next few months.
