Spiritual Disciplines – Page 5 – LOVE | ACCEPT

Joy, Joy, Joy and the Discipline of Celebration

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. . .

a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance . . . (Ecc 3:1,4)

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Gal 5:22)

Holy delight and joy is the perfect antidote to the difficulties we face in the world and from pure and honest delight comes genuine gratitude. Joy is the end result of the spiritual disciplines, the fruit of a soul transformed by God. Without the effect of the disciplines that we engage, true joy will evade us and we will settle for the shallow waters of fleeting pleasures and mud pies. As C.S. Lewis preached in the Weight of Glory,

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

The modern Church has made an idol of adversity and trouble, misunderstanding the role of evil. We have taken the Lord’s promise of troubles (John 16:33) to be the whole of our lot in life, making it into something to be endured until we can reach the other side. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We were created to have joy and know the bottomless depths of happiness that come from living within the Lord’s kingdom and knowing restored relationship with Him. Pleasure is not a sin. We dishonor God by avoiding and fearing it as much as we would by living strictly for its pursuit or becoming dependent upon it. God’s instruction in Deuteronomy 14 points the way:

Use the silver to buy whatever you like: cattle, sheep, wine or other fermented drink, or anything you wish. Then you and your household shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice. (Dt 14:26)

As His children, his servants, his worshippers we are to know joy always (Phil 4:4). It is to be our mark but instead, we have become dour and puritanical, fearing that any joy or pleasure will lead us into a temptation from which there is no return. We should be thankful that God chooses to challenge us in the various ways that He does. God works all things for good over the span of His view and finite nature of our understanding can lead us to suspect otherwise. Worse yet, in our narrow view it becomes easy to deny the way in which evil infects our world and our minds associate the Father with the source of the most horrible tragedies.

Celebration is the core of the way of the follower of Christ, a perpetual Jubilee rooted in the trust we have in God. Discipline is the way to get there.

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School of Prayer Day Four

[In which we follow the Andrew Murray classic With Christ in the School of Prayer]

This then, is how you should pray: (Mt 6:9)

Because of the new fashion in which He wants His disciples to pray, the Lord offers a model for our emulation. Jesus offers the prayer as a framework through which our own hearts are to poured and our priorities aligned. It was not meant to be simply copied, though that was not prohibited. It is our model, used to teach us how our own prayers are to be formed and it contains ideas new to the first disciples that were stunning in how they change our approach to the throne.

“Our Father in heaven,”…We may take this entreaty for granted having learned this from an early age but, to fully grasp the depth of this adoration we must be mindful that the disciples had never before considered God as their Father. This revelation links us inextricably with the Lord in the household of God—he is our father and the Father of the Son. All that follows in prayer, our trust for provision, our pleas for protection, our expression of confidence, everything is now in the context of the personal. God is not an abstract concept that sits distant from us and deigns to address our words. He is our loving and merciful Father in whom we seek to live our life.

Murray closes with this,

Children of God! It is thus Jesus would have us pray to the Father in heaven. O let His Name, and Kingdom, and Will, have the first place in our love; His providing, and pardoning, and keeping love will be our sure portion. So the prayer will lead us up to the true child-life: the Father all to the child, the Father all for the child. We shall understand how Father and child, the Thine and the Our, are all one, and how the heart that begins its prayer with the God-devoted Thine, will have the power in faith to speak out the Our too. Such prayer will, indeed, be the fellowship and interchange of love, always bring us back in trust and worship to Him who is not only the Beginning but the End.

School of Prayer Day Three

[In which we follow the Andrew Murray classic With Christ in the School of Prayer]

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. (Mt 6:6)

Why does the Lord send us to a secret place to pray? If we read the verse above in its context we find that Jesus wants our prayers to be pure, to be lifted to God’s ears alone rather than simply spouted for show. He wants us to realize the intimacy of the act of prayer. Praying is our time of intimate communion with our Heavenly Father not to be shared with or divided by the outside influences that swirl around us at all times. By entering our prayer closet and closing the door behind us, we are shutting out the world both figuratively and literally. We are alone with God and our beating heart.

Jesus also telegraphs to us His understanding of our fallen nature. He knows that we will either pray for the admiration of those around us in our worst state or we will be constrained by the fear of the crowd’s judgment in our least. The privacy of our closet removes the inhibition that clouds true prayer and the joy of nestling in the Father’s presence, allowing its great comfort and security to wash over us and releasing the prayer of our hearts more than that of our heads.

School of Prayer Day Two

[In which we follow the Andrew Murray classic With Christ in the School of Prayer]

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” (Jn 4:23-24)

Jesus spoke these words to the Samaritan woman at the well, lovingly teaching her the New Way of things. Worship is not constrained by time or place as so much of our Western culture has come to believe. Proper and worthy worship must be aligned with God’s nature which is spirit. It is also in truth, which, in the gospel of John is closely aligned with Jesus (cf 14:6). It will only be through Jesus that we learn to properly worship and pray as a part of that worship.

The Samaritan woman cannot immediately grasp what she is being told and are not automatically able to approach the throne in prayer properly. We need the Spirit through whom Christ will instruct us. He has not left us simply with a set of instructions to follow in the Bible but the Lord has also provided us with a paraclete, a helper who will guide our practice. When we have received this gift is when we are able to pray in spirit and truth, or at least, to begin to.

With Christ in the School of Prayer

We are not naturally inclined to the spiritual discipline of prayer. We are able to develop a habit of speaking prayer forms as we hear them from others but the deep communion of a conversation with God. It is something that we must be taught to do properly just as the first disciples were when they said to the Lord “teach us to pray.” South African pastor Andrew Murray left us with a classic primer with which to guide our training in the discipline. With Christ in the School of Prayer was first published in 1885 and has served the Church since as a basic training manual in how to pray and it will do the same for us as we develop our strength in the discipline.

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” Luke 11:1

As we have seen we delve into the Scriptures, Jesus was The master of prayer. His communion with the Father, unimpeded by sin as our is, was full and deep and perfect. Where prayer before His ministry was to the majestic God of Israel, now the disciples would have been hearing Jesus address God much more personally, as the Father. They also knew the connection between the power of His ministry and His secret prayer life and they desired this same relationship for their own lives. We, like the disciples, begin our own discipline by petitioning Christ to be our teacher as well.

And so we begin, “Lord, teach us to pray…”

The High Discipline of Prayer

“God does nothing but in answer to prayer.” John Wesley

Prayer is the central core of all of the spiritual disciplines. Devotion and practice of the discipline moves us more and more into the state of perpetual communion with the Father that is to mark us as separate from the world. To pray is to change. It is the primary avenue by which the Father molds and transforms us.

A primary truth about the discipline of prayer is that it is both unnatural and natural simultaneously. Putting this discipline into practice requires a concerted effort on the part of the redeemed and a long period of apprenticeship. We must learn from the Master how to pray just as His first disciples did.

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” (Luke 11:1)

The discussion of prayer could take off in so many directions so it will be necessary to limit our attention to a few core topics. This will be a longer series of posts and I hope that some readers will consider the possibility of contributing their own materials so that all of can develop our personal practice of this most important of disciplines.

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Submission to Those in Authority

Submission is among the most difficult of the spiritual disciplines to put into practice. Every time that we place another above self we run the risk that out submission will be abused. The Christian is willing to be obedient to the Lord in this risky venture but we search for limits and these are reached when submission becomes destructive. This point is clear in the words of Christ,

Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Mt 22:37-40)

We are challenged by Peter who described a radical submission to wordly authority in his first epistle. He says “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.” Our submission is a clear sign to the watching world that we see authorities as vested in their position by God. We are obedient up to the point at which the submission is abused and it becomes destructive.

This ‘spiritual authority’ is the key indicator that the modern Christian is alert to. We are deeply aware of the differences found in a world of Christians and those who are antagonistic toward Christ. Are we allowed to refuse to submit in situations where spiritual authority is absent? For the most part, no. We are to emulate the radical submission of Christ to greatest extent we are able until such point that it becomes destructive. Until then, we model the Gentle Soul and pray that their hearts will be touched.

Others First : Submission of Self

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. (The Christ Hymn, Phil 2:3-4)

The spiritual discipline of submission operates on two planes. We first submit ourselves fully to God and His Word and then we follow the example of Jesus and take an attitude of submission to others. Submission is not slavery. It is the willing humility of oneself to another, making their needs paramount to your own in emulation of the humiliation of Christ on your behalf. In addition to imitation, the Christian subordinates themselves to others in love, valuing them and treating them according to kingdom principles.

When this topic is preached in the modern Christian church it is often stated in general terms. We submit to our neighbors and those we encounter in our daily lives. True submission however requires that we be more intentional in our quest. We must remember to practice submission within our families carrying their burdens and being transparent in our own. We are to seek out opportunities to honor the broken and despised by being among them and loving them. Perhaps the great challenge of submission is to practice this discipline within our community of belief. As the Church mirrors the culture and its emphasis on recognition and position, we seek the lowliest ministries far away from the platform to demonstrate the love of Christ within the Body.

The discipline of submission is the least natural of all of the practices. Our self rebels against it, insisting that it get its own way. We train ourselves to control this desire, to understand that the sacrifice made on our behalf by the God of All makes it uneccessary to continue to demand what we see as ours. We can have confidence that as we submit ourselves to others, they may soon do the same for us.

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Submission Before the Cross

“…he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” Phil 2:8

The cross life is for all of us but it also presents us with one of the Lord’s most challenging teachings. His most radical social teaching was that the leader of others would be subordinate to them, he or she must be the servant of all. The cross life consists of your free acceptance of this servant role.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Eph 5:21

We all, at various points in our lives, expect others to subordinate themselves to us and when they don’t do so, we’re offended and even, disrespected. Our difficulty in submission is rooted in this expectation. To consistently and regularly submit to others is not a natural desire, it runs contrary to our self’s desire to gain our own way. Practicing the discipline of submission helps us transition into the cross life and trains our self to put the needs and desires of others in a superior position to our own.

To begin practicing the discipline of submission in the Spirit of Christ, that is to begin the cross life he has ordained for you, requires the first step of submitting to God. You must return to the Cross daily, whispering a prayer that yields body, mind, and soul to God’s purposes before your own. Thomas a’ Kempis left us a morning prayer to be utilized upon awakening; “As thou wilt; what thou wilt; when thou wilt.” This consistent first act of submission builds the strength in our knees to submit to others in a similar fashion. A similar prayer before the long darkness of night reminds the soul in subconsciousness to focus on subordination rather than swimming in dreams of dominance.

Remember that we practice the spiritual disciplines as a means to an end. In themselves they are nothing but soul strengthening exercises. In the case of submission, we seek a new orientation to world that will hopefully be emulated by those that surround us. Our guide in these exercises are the Scriptures. We submit to them. We submit to hearing the Word, to receiving the Word and obeying it. In this way our submission does not become a way to draw attention to ourselves. It becomes a demonstration of the truths of the Bible to a world desperately in need of such truths.

Let’s bend a knee together this morning as the sun lights the sky…

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An Invitation to Submission

The spiritual discipline of submission releases the Christian from the ongoing need to get their own way. When you consider the things that we all in one way or another struggle with — judging others, pride, demanding that we be first, etc. – we discover at the core of each of these the demand that we get our own way in things. Submission is difficult to put into practice because it guarantees we will not get our own way. Letting go of that need/desire is one of the biggest, most challenging steps that the Christian takes.

Submission is at the core of a biblical faith in God. Consider these passages:

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other Gods before me.” (Ex 20:2-3) (This includes the god of ME)

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mk 8:34)

“So the last will be first and the first will be last.” (Mt 20:16)

Submission is all encompassing. We submit to God and His Lordship. We submit to His Word and obey. We submit to one another within the Body, putting others ahead of ourselves. We submit to the world at large, even if they are not a part of the Body. We seek in every instance to reduce ourselves while lifting others. We do this all in the joy of knowing that our salvation and the new life of today and eternity was purchased with the ultimate act of submission.

The practice of submission is often abused and this abuse contributes to the struggles we have in putting it into practice. A prime rule for practicing submission is that we do so until it becomes destructive. That is, we submit to others until the practice becomes a denial of the law of love and our submission threatens to revert to a slavery outside of the boundaries of the Bible. We are then called to speak out and remedy the situation as best we can.

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