Spiritual Disciplines

Now that we are just over a week into the new year I want to start talking about spiritual disciplines. You have probably heard that phrase thrown around but may not have had the idea fully explained. It is one of those things that we as Christians like to talk about at a high level but never really explain for those who haven’t been around forever.

Put simply spiritual disciplines are practices that bring us closer to God. We get these practices from the page of scripture either because they are spoken of as things that we should be doing, or we see Jesus doing them in order to sustain his relationship with the Father while he is on earth. These practices include reading the Bible, prayer, worship, silence and solitude, fasting, and Sabbath. Depending on your definition there are other spiritual disciplines, but these are the ones that I want to focus on.

Each of these disciplines can have their own roadblocks to success. They require time and effort. However, participating in these disciplines has tremendous benefits for your spiritual walk. To be fair you might not see these benefits in the short term. It may even take years for you to notice the benefits of these spiritual disciplines but that doesn’t mean they aren’t helping you grow and become more like Christ every time you practice them.

So, I am not going to go into detail in this post about each of these disciplines. What I am going to do is discuss each one of these over the next few weeks. Some may get more than one post, we will see how that works out but I want to do a deep dive into these to show how they can be beneficial to the growth of the Christian.

It is my hope that as we move through this series you will be inspired to at least take up one of these spiritual disciplines on a regular basis and grow in your walk with Christ.