DRAWING CLOSER TO JESUS THROUGH THE SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES

The primary goal of this series is to invite you -with the help of the Holy Spirit- to draw closer to Jesus through engaging in the practices of the Christian Spiritual Disciplines.  The series will encourage you to, with our church community, to see the disciplines as connected with the very heart of the gospel. 

When we call men and women to life in Christ Jesus, we are offering them the greatest opportunity of their lives–the opportunity of a vivid companionship with him, in which they will learn to be like him and live as he lived.  This is transforming friendship...The Spirit of the Disciplines is nothing but the love of Jesus, with its resolute will to be like him whom we love.  - Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives (HarperCollins e-books)

Spiritual Disciplines Are: 

  • Practices and habits taught or modeled in Scripture

  • A means of practicing and seeking God’s presence, not an end unto themselves

  • Activities experienced both personally and collectively in Christian community

  • Beneficial for new and mature believers alike

Spiritual Disciplines Are Not:

  • Something to accomplish or check off a list

  • A type of “advanced” Christianity

  • A means of earning God’s love or dictating how God will work

  • An exhaustive collection of practices for spiritual formation

  • A way to add or take away from the work of Jesus

  • A guarantee that your life will bear a particular result

Our Approach To Studying The Disciplines

In his book The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives, Dallas Willard divides his list of Christian spiritual disciplines into the disciplines of “abstinence” and the disciplines of “engagement.”  The approach of this series will be to learn the disciplines from both of those categories, but in pairs rather than separately.  For example, Solitude will be studied along with Fellowship.  Why?  Well, if you are an introvert, you will likely love solitude, but feel stretched by fellowship.  And if you are an extrovert, you will likely love fellowship but feel stretched by solitude.  But by studying the disciplines in pairs, we will be able to see everyone both encouraged and stretched in their relationship with Jesus at the same time.

In addition, we will look at each of the disciplines as being possible for us only because of the Gospel.  For example, in our solitude, God meets us as our loving Father.  But we can only be still and know that the Lord is our God and Father with confidence because Jesus faced the impersonal solitude of judgment on the cross.  Or we can have fellowship with one another as brothers and sisters rather than as enemies, and draw near to God as our Father both individually and together, because Jesus, our true elder brother, was treated as an enemy of God instead of as a son, in our place.  

As Dallas Willard wrote, “through engaging the Spiritual Disciplines together we are invited into a vivid companionship with Jesus, in which we will learn to be like him and live as he lived.  This is transforming friendship with Jesus.”  

Recommended Resources for the Spiritual Disciplines

She Reads Truth, Faith In Practice: A Biblical Study Of Spiritual Disciplines (Nashville | She Reads Truth, LLC)

Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline (New York | Harper Collins)

Dallad Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives (HarperCollins e-books)

Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (Colorado Springs | NavPress)

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