A blog by Adam W. Christman

Tag: prayer

  • Spiritual Disciplines: Prayer

    “It is not enough for the believer to begin to pray, nor to pray correctly; nor is it enough to continue for a time to pray. We must patiently, believingly continue in prayer until we obtain an answer. Further, we have not only to continue in prayer until the end, but we have also to believe that God does hear us and will answer our prayers. Most frequently we fail in not continuing in prayer until the blessing is obtained, and in not expecting the blessing. Those who are disciples of the Lord Jesus should labor with all their might in the work of God as if everything depended upon their own endeavors. Yet, having done so, they should not in the least trust in their labor and efforts, nor in the means that they use for the spread of the truth, but in God alone; and they should with all earnestness seek the blessing of God in persevering, patient, and believing prayer. Here is the great secret of success, my Christian reader. Work with all your might, but never trust in your work. Pray with all your might for the blessing in God, but work at the same time with all diligence, with all patience, with all perseverance. Pray, then, and work. Work and pray. And still again pray, and then work. And so on, all the days of your life. The result will surely be abundant blessing. Whether you see much fruit or little fruit, such kind of service will be blessed.” -George Muller, 1805-1898.

    Now that you are a Christian, what is the most important thing you can do? If you took a survey with that question, you might hear responses like “evangelism” or “worship.” I wonder how often you would hear “pray.”

    Prayer can feel very passive. Isolated. When you are new to the practice of prayer, or perhaps during some of the harder times of life, you can feel like you’re sending out signals into an unanswering universe. Jesus wants you to know that this perspective on prayer is not accurate and it is not what he intends for your life.

    In the post where I introduced the spiritual disciplines more broadly, I defined the disciplines as “those behaviors that augment our spiritual growth and enable us to grow to spiritual maturity.” I also offered that these disciplines are “following Jesus in the overall style of life he chose for himself.” Engaging in the spiritual disciplines is for the human soul what watering, pruning, and fertilizing is to a plant. It is the way Jesus modeled how to engage the process of human growth and, for us, transformation. Author Richard J. Foster said, “To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives.”

    I wrote deeper examinations of the spiritual disciplines of studying the Bible and solitude in recent weeks. Today, we move to the discipline of prayer. As with all the disciplines, much could be said. I will endeavor to stay focused on a study of Jesus’ life with regards to prayer. I have placed a bibliography on prayer for further reading at the very end of the post.

    Jesus chose a lifestyle of prayer. More specifically, he chose to pray in the morning, during the day, and at night. He chose to pray alone and in groups. He prayed while fasting and he assumed his followers would fast. He commanded his followers to pray. He modeled prayer and explicitly taught us how to pray. So we see he took a variety of approaches to prayer, rather than one, lone model of prayer. We also see that he both modeled and commanded prayer for us to engage.

    Jesus chose a lifestyle of prayer.

    Richard Foster wrote, “Of all the Spiritual Disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.” Based on what I’ve read in the Bible and my own experiences, I assume that quote to be accurate for my life and for this post. Pastor and author H.B. Charles, Jr., defines prayer this way, “Prayer reflects our confidence in the heavenly Father to care for our needs.”1 Prayer is a method of spending time with God, of us communicating to him and him communicating to us. While it is a rare experience to hear an audible voice, God’s communication to us is real and discernible.

    In the rest of this week’s post, I will examine multiple passages from the eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ life to see the elements of Jesus’ various styles of prayer. Rather than list them all out as I did in the previous paragraph, they will occur together. I’m sure you will see the same thing I see in them.

    The Gospel of Mark, chapter 1, shows us several elements to Jesus’ prayer on a certain day. Jesus had just spent all day healing people and exorcising demons for “the whole town” (Mark 1:33), possibly into the night. Mark 1:35 then says, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he got up, went out, and made his way to a deserted place; and there he was praying.” I have noticed five elements in this verse. Do you see them, too?

    One element of Jesus’ prayer on this day is that it was early in the morning. The text makes this very plain. I am reminded of a famous quote from the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther, who said, “If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer.” In other words, Luther’s habit was to start his day with two hours of prayer, but if he was especially busy, he devoted THREE hours to prayer instead. This choice seems backward to me as a busy, 21st century American. But the more I know the Lord and the more I know the use of prayer, the more I see the wisdom in it. Jesus likely spent signficant time in prayer (more on that in a moment). He knew he needed it. If GOD THE SON needed to pray before he started his day, how much more do you and I need to do the same?

    A second element of Jesus’ prayer on this day in Mark 1:35 is that he prayed by himself. Notice, it said “he” got up and went out. Not “they.” He was unaccompanied by his disciples or family members. Praying in groups is good and right and commanded in the New Testament. But you will benefit greatly from consistent, regular prayer where you are alone with God. He wants you to know him. He wants your heart aligned with his. And he wants to guide your steps. It is difficult in our busy schedules to find time to pray alone. It is tempting to get on our phones or do something else for dopamine. But consistent, regular prayer will result in rich times spent with God. I have experience this truth in my life. I know you can experience it, too. Luke 5:16 reports that this style of prayer was a regular occurrence for Jesus, “Yet he often withdrew to deserted places and prayed” (emphasis added).2

    A third element of Jesus’ prayer on this day is he prayed for a lengthy period of time. He was apparently gone so long, the disciples had to go look for him. We find this in Mark 1:36-37, the following verses. “Simon and his companions searched for him, and when they found him they said, ‘Everyone is looking for you.’” If everyone was looking for Jesus, then enough of the morning had passed that people were up, dressed, had eaten their breakfast, and possibly had done their morning chores in order to be freed up to go find this miracle worker who might do something amazing right before their eyes. As they were looking for Jesus, they probably came to the house that hosted Jesus and the disciples the night before. And so the disciples were motivated to get outside and find Jesus! They found him having spent a significant amount of time in prayer. That kind of behavior may not seem possible for you right now. But what if you chose the rest of prayer over the leisure of Netflix? Are there blocks of time you spend on things that either can wait or that you do not actually need? Could you not re-allocate some of that to a regular prayer time? Time spent in prayer is never time wasted.

    A fourth element of Jesus’ prayer on this day is that he chose prayer over ministry. We get this from the fuller passage, Mark 1:35-38. Here is verse 38: “And [Jesus] said to them, ‘Let’s go on to the neighboring villages so that I may preach there too. This is why I have come’” (emphasis added). Jesus COULD have been performing acts of ministry already on this day. He knew that Capernaum had plenty of people in and around it. He knew there would be more people who were ill. The people of Capernaum were the reason the disciples went and found Jesus praying alone! We know from verse 37 that the disciples had just told Jesus that everyone was looking for him. So Jesus did not leave Capernaum due to an assumption that there was no longer any need in that town. We know, instead, that his primary mission was to preach the Gospel. Rather than spend every possible minute in acts of ministry, he chose to connect with God in prayer. You might even say he left ministry opportunities in order to go pray.

    The fifth element of Jesus’ prayer on this day is that he prayed before the difficult work of ministry. The following passage, in fact the next verse, Mark 1:39, says, “He went into all of Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.” He transitions from a lengthy time of solitary prayer into a period of ministry service that cost him time and energy. Mark 1:39 probably refers to a period of multiple days, if not weeks. Do you jump into acts of ministry without praying beforehand? My friend, don’t do this to yourself. You could be so much more encouraged, invigorated, strengthened, and ready for the task at hand if you would pray first.

    “Prayer—secret, fervent, believing prayer—lies at the root of all personal godliness.” -William Carey, 1761-1834.

    Let us turn to a few more passages from the life of Jesus to see how he handled prayer.

    While Jesus did pray alone many times, he also prayed with others. We see this in a variety of passages, including the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6) and the Last Supper (e.g., Luke 22:17, 19).

    Jesus modeled prayer. He showed how to pray at his baptism in Luke 3:21. He laid his hands on children and prayed for them in front of the disciples in Matthew 19:13. He prayed privately, but his disciples were with him during his individual prayer time in Luke 9:18. He told the disciples of his prayers for them. The Lord tells Peter, for example, of his prayers for him in Luke 22:32. John 17 is a prayer for his disciples and is prayed in their hearing.

    He modeled prayer, but he also gave explicit instructions on how to pray. He taught us how to pray in terms of content in Matthew 6:9-13. That prayer is popularly known as “the Lord’s Prayer,” but some (myself included) have taken to calling it “the Model Prayer.” It is a prayer that WE, the disciples of Jesus, are to pray. Jesus has no debts or need for forgiveness. Those elements in the Model Prayer show that it is really a prayer for us to pray, not his prayer to pray. Directly before the Model Prayer, however, Jesus also taught us the posture of prayer we are to have in Matthew 6:5-8. As you read that passage, you will notice that the posture is not so much whether our bodies are lying down, sitting down, standing up, etc. The posture of prayer is one of sincerity, if I can use a simple term to sum up his teaching in those verses.

    Jesus modeled and assumed his disciples would fast. Matthew 4 famously reports the temptations of Christ by the devil at the end of a forty day period where Jesus modeled fasting and solitude. The Sermon on the Mount shows us that Jesus assumes we will fast when he says, “Whenever you fast…” He does not say “if.” He assumes that we will take up the practice of occasional denial for the purpose of dwelling on the truth that God is always and only our source of provision.3

    Jesus commanded us to pray. This fact makes prayer nonnegotiable for Christians. The joy of it is, though, that prayer is no begrudging duty. It is a powerful privilege to enter the presence of God, knowingly. God told Moses, “No one may see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). But now we have Jesus, Immanuel, God With Us. At the end of prayer we walk away unscathed, but not unchanged.

    He commanded us to pray in such strong terms that he even told us to love and pray for our enemies in Matthew 5:43-44.

    At the end of prayer we walk away unscathed, but not unchanged.

    Prayer changes us. Aligns our hearts with God’s heart as we spend time with him. Prayer is our walkie talkie as soldiers in the field reaching out to our commanding officer for orders. And prayer changes things (e.g., James 1:5). I hope you see the need for daily—or more accurately, constant (1 Thess. 5:17)—prayer.

    I want to close with a story I read in H.B. Charles Jr.’s book.

    A father and his son were riding their bikes together one day. As they rode down the trail, the father eyed a large branch that had fallen in the path ahead. Instead of riding around it, the father decided to use this as an opportunity to teach his son an important lesson. They pulled over, and the father instructed his son to move the branch out of the way.

    The boy pushed and pulled, but was unable to move the branch. “I can’t do it,” he said, exhausted. “Sure you can, Son,” replied the father. “Be sure to use all your strength.” The boy tried harder. But he could not move the branch.

    Near tears, he said again, “I can’t do it.”

    “Did you use all of your strength?” The father asked.

    “Yes,” the boy answered.

    “No you didn’t,” the father replied. “You didn’t ask me to help you.”

    For Further Reading:

    • Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline.
    • H.B. Charles, Jr. It Happens After Prayer: Biblical Motivation for Believing Prayer.
    • Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines.
    • Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy.
    • Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life.
    1. H.B. Charles, Jr. It Happens After Prayer: Biblical Motivation for Believing Prayer. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2013. ↩︎
    2. Luke 6:12 also reports another example of solitary prayer, “During those days he went out to the mountain to pray and spent all night in prayer to God.” ↩︎
    3. You may have dietary or other health complications that may change, limit, or prohibit your ability to engage in traditional fasting from food. If you think this may describe you, ask your physician if there is a form of fasting from food or drink that you CAN engage. If you cannot engage in fasting from food or drink in any way due to your dietary or health needs, leave a comment here or otherwise contact me and I’ll be happy to make some suggestions that do not impact your diet or health in a negative way. You can, for example, change a habit. Instead of watching TV for the last hour of your day, you can give that time to God by spending it reading or more intensely studying the Bible. ↩︎

  • Spiritual Disciplines: Solitude

    “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” —Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)

    The introverts reading this blog post may already be cheering. I’ll pretend I can faintly hear you from this distance! Solitude? Spending time by myself? “Sign me up,” you quietly say aloud as you type it out on your phone. In a busy world, we are all pulled away from this healthy practice by the demands of work, family, friends, and more. But solitude is much more than simply alone time and it is certainly different from doomscrolling alone in your bed at night.

    Two weeks ago, I defined both the spiritual disciplines and, at the same time, any good faith attempt to follow Jesus well, with the statement “following Jesus in the overall style of life he chose for himself.”

    (If you missed it, you can catch it at this link. Last week, our first spiritual discpline was the intense study of God’s Word.)

    There is much that can and should be said about all the spiritual disciplines, but my posts are focused introductions that spotlight our Lord Jesus. He is the only perfect person in all of human history, so those of us who know how very, very good he is desire to become like him in our character. Also, human transformation (changed lives) really can happen. I’ve seen it happen and I’ve experienced it.

    Solitude (and, with it, times of silence) is an old spiritual discipline that does connect back to Jesus’ own practices that we can see in the Gospels. Again, solitude, as a spiritual discipline, is more than being alone. Rather, solitude is a purposeful time spent with God. In many instances, you may spend that time with Christian music playing where you can hear it, even if only faintly. You may spend that time praying aloud to him. But in other instances, you might pray silently and hold back from talking out loud to yourself. (I do encourage you to consider engaging in a time of silent solitude from time to time.)

    Solitude is a purposeful time spent with God.

    Let’s briefly look at five times Jesus spent a period of time in solitude and, potentially, silence. Though each instance is a period of purposeful solitude, each instance will be for a different purpose.

    Luke 4:1-15. This passage is Luke’s account of Jesus’ famous confrontation and temptation by Satan himself. It comes right after Jesus’ baptism by his cousin John the Baptist in the Jordan river. Luke 4:1-2 say, “Then Jesus left the Jordan, full of the Holy Spirit, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over, he was hungry.”

    Between the account in Luke’s Gospel and the one in Matthew’s Gospel, we can see that Jesus does not have his disciples because he has not called them yet. He is completely, one-hundred percent on his own in the wilderness. He participates in this to test himself against the temptations of the Tempter-in-Chief, the Original Tempter, Satan. How well would you and I do against the temptations of Satan himself if he, personally, were the demon testing us? And what if you and I were each on our own for 40 entire days, no cell phone, and worst of all no food? I don’t know about you, but I would probably fold pretty quickly. Jesus, though, proves his character not simply to himself, but to the world!

    In Luke 4, Jesus spent time in solitude in order to prepare for a major task. Specifically, the beginning of his public ministry. As you read, you will see that his return to society leads directly into ministry (Luke 4:14-15) and, soon after (Luke 5), the calling of his first disciples.

    Jesus spent time in solitude in order to prepare for a major task.

    You and I have major tasks in our lives. We begin a new job. Or we begin a new project at work. Maybe you are about to begin the active stewardship of an aging or ailing loved one who needs regular or constant care. That’s a major task! If Jesus spent some time in solitude, it would be wise for you and I to do the same. (I don’t recommend 40 days every time, but who knows? Maybe you do actually need a period of time like that. Most people will occasionally need one to three days, in my rough estimation.)

    In the Gospel of Mark, we see another instance of Jesus seeking a time of solitude. Chapter 6 reports the tragic death of his cousin, John the Baptist. When that happens, Jesus hears about it through John’s disciples (Matt. 14:12). In this period where he would obviously grieve John’s death, as well as the manner of his death, Jesus seeks time alone (Mark 6:32), but the crowds find him. In his great compassion, Jesus puts off rest and serves the crowds by teaching them and ultimately feeding the five thousand men.1

    After the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus sends the crowds home and he also sends the disciples on to Bethsaida by a boat. Mark 6:45-47 show us, “Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After he said good-bye to them, he went away to the mountain to pray. Well into the night, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and he was alone on the land.” In other words, when the work was done, Jesus spent time alone to rest or recharge, as well as to grieve. Please do not mistake my point: not all grieving can or even should be done in solitude. Let the church help you carry your burden (Gal. 6:2)! The point I hope you are seeing is that even Jesus, the only perfect person, chose to prioritize having times of solitude to rest after hard work, and in order to grieve.

    Notice also that “he went away to the mountain to pray” (emphasis added). His solitude for rest and grief was not “alone time.” In fact, he was spending time with someone: Jesus spent time in prayer with God the Father. When was the last time you spent alone time with God instead of with your phone? I don’t mean 5 or 15 minutes in the morning before you go to work. When was the last time you took real time out of your schedule to devote it to one-on-one time with the Lord? Jesus did it. Let’s learn from him (Matt. 11:29).

    Jesus spent time in solitude to rest and, after the death of his cousin, to grieve.

    Turning back to Luke, we find Jesus spending time in solitude before making an important decision. Luke 6:12-13 tells us about that moment. “During those days he went out to the mountain to pray and spent all night in prayer to God. When daylight came, he summoned his disciples, and he chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles.”

    We know from Luke’s Gospel that Jesus has already engaged in truth-telling and preaching. So this time of solitude is distinct from the kind where he prepared for a major task, as discussed above regarding Luke chapter 4. Rather than a major task, this solitude precedes an important decision or question: who will be the twelves disciples raised to a special level of Jesus’ investment in terms of time and mentoring (discipleship)? Time alone with God allowed Jesus the space of prayer and “unhurriedness” to come to peaceful clarity.

    Who amongst us could not use peaceful clarity when making an important decision? Do you remember the last time you were rushed into a truly important decision? It was pretty awful, right? And you might have made the wrong decision in the moment, where you selected an option that seemed good in the moment but when you had more time to consider you realize it was not the wisest or best option. Consider this. Even Jesus needed time alone with God before making an important decision. We are not better or wiser than Jesus. Surely, we need time alone with God before making important decisions, too.

    Jesus spent time in solitude before making an important decision.

    Luke 22 is a powerful and important chapter. Amongst other important parts of the life of Jesus, Luke records another time of solitude, spent for a different purpose than the others we have examined so far.

    Luke 22:39-44 reports on Jesus’ time in solitary prayer on the Mount of Olives just prior to Judas’ betrayal and the arrest of Jesus. (The entire moment covers verses 39-46 before rolling into Judas’ betrayal in verse 47.) Here are the verses: “He went out and made his way as usual to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. When he reached the place, he told them, ‘Pray that you may not fall into temptation.’ Then he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and began to pray, ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me ​— ​nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.’ Then an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him. Being in anguish, he prayed more fervently, and his sweat became like drops of blood falling to the ground.”

    You may already know that by this time in Jesus’ life, he is abundantly aware of what he is about to experience at the hands of the religious leaders and the Romans. He knows the Messiah is to also be the Suffering Servant, who would bear the earthly weight of physical beatings and literal bodily death. He knows the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is the sacrificial lamb, the Lamb Who Was Slain, because the wages of sin is death, which is to say he would bear the heavenly weight of the wrath of God. He would receive in his person the righteous penalty for all the sins of every man, woman, boy, and girl who would put their faith in him. He knew the burden to come. Further, Jesus was and is not just God. He was at his conception and he continues to be fully human, as well. He felt what any other human being would feel in that context. He felt stressed. He felt so stressed that the Gospel reports him sweating blood (Luke 22:44).2

    So, stop and look at what Luke is reporting to us. Jesus felt stress, incredibly high levels of stress considering his near future. What is he to do? Blow off steam with a game? Numb the stress with alcohol or mind-altering substances? No. This person is Jesus. He took that opportunity to spend time in solitude during a time of stress.

    Jesus’ solitude during this time of stress served the purpose of remembering both God’s will and God’s mission. God’s will was that he himself would bear the sins of his people. The judge would get off the judgment seat and put himself in the execution chamber to take the death penalty for the convicted criminal. God’s mission is to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). But he can’t do much seeking or saving if he doesn’t die for the sins of his people. So Jesus’ time of solitude is clearly a time of prayer (Lk. 22:41-42) and it is a time where he can clarify those two issues. There is no doubt in my mind that Jesus sought this time in order to walk with peace, strength, and dignity through his betrayal, trials, sufferings, and death.

    Maybe this example is the easiest pill to swallow. It is common practice even for people who don’t consider themselves Christians to pray to God for help during times of trouble. There is a popular song on the radio nowadays where the American theologian singer and guest wrestler on WWE Jelly Roll says, “I only talk to God when I need a favor, and I only pray when I ain’t got a prayer.” My point here is not to speak against this practice, but rather to encourage it. Pray at all times (1 Thess. 5:17). But when the times are tough, you have to turn to your Heavenly Father. If anyone has help for you and a way out, it is him.

    Jesus spent time in solitude during a time of stress (or, distress).

    We have come to our last passage. I know we have spent a lot of time in the Gospel of Luke, but go into it with me one more time. In Luke 5:15-16, we read about Jesus’ practice after ministry efforts. Those verses tell us, “But the news about him spread even more, and large crowds would come together to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. Yet he often withdrew to deserted places and prayed.”

    I certainly hope you will notice that Jesus uses times of solitude and prayer to rest. (Notice, it shows just him, not Jesus and the disciples.) But I hope you will especially notice in this passage the powerful little adverb “often.” Jesus “often” withdrew to deserted places to pray, it says. How incredible is that? I know it can be hard to imagine or wrap your brain around it, but Jesus really did spend relatively frequent times of solitude for the purpose of prayer. We can barely squeeze in 5 minutes of Bible reading a day, while also spending countless hours listening to podcasts, debating the finer points of our favorite baseball team, or catching up on two to five hours of whatever show has our attention lately. Jesus’s frequent habit of solitude for the purpose of prayer may be a wake-up call kind of challenge, but I think it is the one we need.

    Jesus often spent time in solitude in order to pray.

    “But this is Jesus we’re talking about,” you object. You would be right in that objection if you mean we cannot achieve perfection through our efforts. Jesus, however, calls us to “learn” from him (Matt. 11:29). And we can become like him if we will continue to “follow Jesus in the overall style of life he chose for himself.” He did it. We can do it. Let’s do it!

    Allow me to close with one more question and response. Are any of the situations I described in this post unique to Jesus? Of course not. We all prepare for major tasks, return from hard work, grieve losses, prepare to make important decisions, experience stress, and need to pray. None of us are immune from these areas of life. If we will spend time alone with God, he will guide, encourage, and provide for us like he has done before.

    Sometime soon (maybe today) turn off your phone. Put away the work project. Ask someone to watch the kids for a little bit. And find time to be genuinely alone with the Lord God. He wants you to spend time with him. He wants you to know him better. He wants you to take up his yoke and burden. He wants you to learn from him! He wants to bless you. So take some time very soon and spend it alone. Spend it alone with God and spend it purposefully, for the sake of the richness of your life in Christ.

    Come back next week for another post on a different spiritual discipline.

    1. The Bible reports a count of 5,000 men and mentions that there are women and children, too. We don’t have numbers for the women and children, but it is a safe assumption to estimate Jesus fed anywhere from 18,000 to 25,000 people through that miracle! ↩︎
    2. This occurrence is a real physiological phenomenon. You can read about it in multiple sources, but I was first exposed to this information in an incredible book called The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. I highly recommend it to you. ↩︎

  • An Introduction to Spiritual Disciplines

    You can become more like Jesus in your daily living.

    I don’t mean you can become divine. Rather, I mean you can fulfill God’s empowering call from Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.” But we don’t seek or need a directionless transformation. We need the best direction to head towards. God also said this in Romans 8:29a, “For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…”

    To look like Jesus in our actions, priorities, and choices, and to sound like Jesus in our words and tone of voice, is a tall order. He is perfect and we are not! BUT! Christians do experience change from the old self to the new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). At the same time, Christians do not make good progress merely by accident or via passive accumulation of godly habits. No, our growth in godliness benefits and abounds as we purposefully and actively seek to become more like our Lord Jesus Christ.

    Since our growth to become more Christlike requires our active and purposeful efforts, we utilize the spiritual disciplines.

    The spiritual disciplines can be defined as “those behaviors that augment our spiritual growth and enable us to grow to spiritual maturity.”1 I would also phrase them as following Jesus in the overall style of life he chose for himself. In the rest of this post, I will cover an introduction to the spiritual disciplines, arguing for what they are at a broad level and why we need them. The end of this post will feature a suggested bibliography for further reading on the subject. Future posts will cover specific practices in detail.

    Humanity’s greatest problem has always been and continues to be a spiritual one. Sin entered the world through the choices of human beings. We perpetuate those choices, ourselves, at an early age. Sin’s infection shows itself through things like depression, addiction, anxiety, personal emptiness, consumerism, sex, violence, cultic obsession, and suicide, among other expressions.

    We must take seriously the need for human transformation. We also need to realize and utilize realistic methods of human transformation.

    Some think faith should make us different all by itself, as long as we don’t have to do anything to make it happen. It’s called the Fruit of the Spirit, so the Holy Spirit does all the work, right? Well, as with anything having to do with the lives of human beings, God chooses to work with you and through you. You ever watch Power Rangers? They have this little object called a Morpher. They hold it out after doing a little choreography, say a little something, and poof, they’re transformed into their Power Ranger gear and are ready to call down the Zords so they can save the day. God doesn’t work like that. Nor does he wave a magic wand over you like Cinderella’s fairy godmother. His hand is extended out to you. Take His hand, follow Him, and together you will change your life.

    I want to take a brief moment to comment on the Kingdom of God. It is relevant to this issue. The Kingdom of God is an ongoing spiritual presence. If your faith is in Christ, you are already in the Kingdom of God. You are already forgiven (Eph. 4:32), redeemed (Eph. 1:7), born again (1 Pet. 1:23), as well as a part of the family of God (Eph. 1:5) and a citizen in the Kingdom of Heaven (Phil. 3:20), among other descriptions. God’s presence is with you! Jesus said in the Great Commission, Mt. 28:20, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Where God is, His Kingdom is. If He is with you, then He stands alongside you, ready to empower you and encourage you as you take at least one step every day in your faith journey.

    Now that we know He is with us, we can talk about what His presence and power does for us. We must not take this gracious opportunity lightly or flippantly. Through the spiritual disciplines, you will meet with and dwell with the Triune God! That’s an amazing thing! Further, God designed human beings and how we are best to live. Jesus did it perfectly. He mastered it. Just as an apprentice worker benefits from spending time with a master craftsman, we strongly desire to spend time with Jesus to learn from Him. Spending time with Jesus changes things.

    G.K. Chesterton was a writer in the 19th-20th centuries.2 He once wrote, “Christianity has not so much been tried and found wanting, as it has been found difficult and left untried.” Even as difficult as Christianity is, we love Jesus. And because we love Jesus, we set our will to resolve to be like Him whom we love.

    Jesus said many beautiful things, but I want to highlight one in particular at this point. In Matthew 11:29-30, He said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (emphasis added).

    Isn’t it so interesting that Jesus invites us to learn from Him? We all take up a yoke or burden in life. For some of us, the yoke is parental expectations. For others, it is societal expectations. Maybe it is a career goal, or a life goal like living in a certain city, or a certain style of home. Maybe the yoke is to be “free,” but eventually we find our so-called “freedom” is a shackle to meaningless or mindless consumption of Netflix, sex, or drugs. We all take up a yoke or burden. Why not trade the difficult and heavy yokes of this world for the only one that is easy and light? Joyfully, Christians make that trade. We often mess up and try to pick up the old, heavy burden. But when we repent from sin, we let it drop to the ground again, choosing to continue down the path with our loving Lord.

    Not only are you taking up a yoke in your life, one way or another, you will also learn from somebody, somewhere. If we have learned anything from the age of social media, we have learned how powerful and how easy it is for one person to influence another. A meme goes viral and suddenly middle school kids quote it ad infinitum. A young man who is really good at editing silly YouTube videos gets a new haircut and now you can’t walk through a store or mall without seeing it dozens of times. Or we see a middle-aged adult share a “life hack” or whatever that is supposed to be some health secret. (Remember the “raw water” trend that popped up for a few years around 2015-2019?) More serious examples include isolated individuals who watch social media for an incredibly unhealthy number of hours, weeks, months, or years, and decide to hurt themselves or others with some action (surgical, sociological, political, or violent) they have convinced themselves to take. My point is, you are going to learn from somebody anyway. And what you put your mind on, you become. Preachers often use the phrase, “You become what you behold,” and that is true.

    Since you are going to learn from somebody anyway, why not learn from Jesus? Why not learn from the best human being in the history of humanity? The call to learn is right there in Matthew 11:29. He wants to teach you. Will you not learn from Him?

    We can learn from Jesus by following Jesus in the overall style of life he chose for himself. He told us this in John 10:10, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

    Let’s learn from Jesus. Let’s see what HE did so we can see what to emulate.

    In the coming weeks, we will talk about individual spiritual disciplines as practices we can utilize to realistically participate in God’s plan for our transformation. The spiritual disciplines include reading the Bible and prayer, as you might expect, but they also include times of (healthy) solitude, living simply, living sacrificially, service to others, confession of sin, celebrating what God has done in your life and the lives of those around you, and worship.

    “Ours is an undisciplined age. The old disciplines are breaking down . . . Above all the discipline of divine grace is derided as legalism or is entirely unknown to a generation that is largely illiterate in the Scriptures. We need the rugged strength of Christian character that can only come from discipline.”-V. Raymond Edman

    This series of posts about the spiritual disciplines has concluded. Here are direct links to the rest of the posts:

    For further reading:3

    • Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline
    • Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life
    • Mason King, Spiritual Disciplines: How to Become a Healthy Christian
    • Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
    • Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives4
    1. “What are the spiritual disciplines?” GotQuestions.org, https://www.gotquestions.org/spiritual-disciplines.html, accessed August 19, 2025. That website is a great resource. ↩︎
    2. Best known for his book Orthodoxy, which is easily available online, Amazon Kindle, in paperback, etc. ↩︎
    3. Notice I am not posting links. These are simple recommendations. I won’t be making money off of affiliate marketing with this post. Although if you’re reading this and are interested in asking me to review your book…….. 🙂 ↩︎
    4. If you only have the budget or time to read one of these, pick Foster or Willard. ↩︎