The following is a summary of “Spirit of the Disciplines”, Chapter 9, by Dallas Willard. These are exercises to bring us into more effective cooperation with Christ and his Kingdom. Which disciplines we are to choose for our strategy for spiritual growth is largely determined by our established tendencies to sin. It is our hardnosed response to these sins, supported by infinite grace, that holds the hope for our spiritual growth.
We engage in disciplines conscientiously, creatively, adaptively per our individual needs, time, and place. There is no one-size-fits-all, but a prayerful and experimental approach in choosing our own diet of exercises. There are many spiritual disciplines, the more important ones are listed below.
The exercises are organized into two groups: disciplines of
abstinence (Solitude, Silence, Fasting, Frugality, Chastity, Secrecy, Sacrifice, Watching) and disciplines of
engagement (Study, Worship, Celebration, Service, Prayer, Fellowship, Confession, Submission).
Abstinence and engagement is like outbreathing and inbreathing of our spiritual lives. Purpose is to counteract tendencies to sins of commission and omission. Life derives its power from action, from engagement. Abstinence makes way for engagement.
Disciplines of Abstinence
Definition: Abstain to some degree and for some time from the satisfaction of what we generally regard as normal and legitimate desires. Purpose: To weaken the power of life involvements that press against our involvement with the Kingdom of God.
Need: Do I need to be freed from being locked into patterns of feeling, thought, and action that are geared to a world set against God? This is often the normal course of our day-to-day interactions.
Solitude: Definition: Purposefully abstain from interaction with other human beings, closing ourselves away. Remarks: This is development of real individualism. The desert as a place of strength, Matthew 4:1-11. Nothing but solitude can allow the development of a freedom from the ingrained behaviors that hinder our integration into God’s order.
Need: Do I need some life-transforming concentration upon God? Do I need more strength to do what God wants me to do, to control what I say when I say it, that my tongue does not go off automatically? Do I need to learn to pay less attention to what people are trying to tell me, and more to what they tell me without trying? Do I need to learn to worry only about what God thinks of me? Do I need more inner confidence, become less judgmental, celebrate my own life, worry less about my future, really enjoy God?
Silence: Definition: Close off our souls from sounds (noise, music, words), also not speaking (see James 1:26. 3:2). Remarks: Silence and true listening are often the strongest testimonies of our faith (as opposed to “witnessing”). Watch out when you use words mainly to adjust your appearance or elicit approval from people. If you can’t find a silent spot, try getting up in the middle of the night to find a rich silence for prayer and study without imposing on others. Only silence allows life-transforming concentration upon God, Matthew 12:19. Silence is a way to make solitude a reality.
Need: Do I need to confirm my dependence on God? Do I need to find in Him a source of sustenance beyond food? Do I need to learn by experience that God’s word to me is a life sustenance, Matthew 4:4, John 4:32.34. Do I need to learn that fasting onto our Lord is feasting on him and on doing his will, Matthew 6:6-18, Luke 12:33, Phil 3:19, Romans 16:18. Do I need to practice self denial … that is required of everyone who would follows Christ, Matt 6:24? Do I need to learn how to suffer happily?
Fasting: Definition: Abstain in some significant way from food and possibly from drink as well. Remarks: Fasting easily consumes all our attention. Must practice it well enough and often enough to become experienced in it and use it effectively as part of our direct service to God as in special times of prayer. Examples are desert fathers (bread and water), Daniel (vegetables and water, Dan 1:12, 10:3), Jesus (no food at all, Matt 4).
Need: Do I need to be freed us from concern and involvement with a multitude of desires that would make it impossible for me to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with god, Micah 6:8? Do I need to become more saintly by being freed from indifferent things.
Frugality: Definition: Abstain from using money or goods at our disposal in ways that merely gratify our desires or hunger for status, glamour, or luxury. Staying within the bounds of what general good judgment would designate as necessary for the kind of life to which God has led us. Remarks: Frivolous consumption corrupts the soul away from trust in, worship of, service to God, and injures our neighbor. Luxury in every form is economically bad.
Need: Do I need to learn to not be governed by sexual feelings and thoughts, 1Thess 4:4? Do I need to be confirmed being very close to people without sexual entanglements? Do I need to totally orient my my life towards a goal?
Chastity: Definition: Purposefully turn away from dwelling upon or engaging in the sexual dimension of our relationships to others. Remarks: We are sexual beings. In the full sexual union the person is known in his/her whole body and knows the other likewise, Gen 1:27, 1Cor 6:18. Chastity is not non-sexuality. Much suffering comes from improper abstinence. Aid to fasting and prayer, 1Cor 7:5.
Need: Do I need help to loose or tame the hunger for fame, justification, attention? Do I need to learn to love to be unknown without loss of peace, joy, purpose? Do I need stabilizing my walk of faith in purity and inward trust?
Secrecy: Definition: Abstain from causing our good deeds and qualities to be known. May even take steps to prevent them from being known. Remarks: If it is possible four our faith and works to be hidden, perhaps that only shows they are of a kind that should be hidden, Matt 5:14, Mark 7:24. We allow Him to decide when our deeds will be known. Example: In competitive situation pray that others will be more outstanding, more praised, more used of God than yourself; pull for them, rejoice for their success , Philippians 2:3.
Need: Do I need nourishment of my faith experience by the tokens of Gods care? Learn how unattached, sawn off limbs that we were sitting on, may find strange, unaccountable ways of not falling.
Sacrifice: Definition: Abstain from the possession or enjoyment of what is necessary for our living. Forsake the security of meeting our needs with what is in our hands. Remarks: Abraham sacrifices Isaac (Hebrews 11:19), poor widow (Luke 21:2-4)
Disciplines of Engagement
Definition: Activities undertaken to bring us into more effective cooperation with Christ and his Kingdom. Purpose: To immerse us ever more deeply into the Kingdom of God.
Need: Does my faith need to grow stronger, do I need to become more robust spiritually? Does the meaning of God’s word need to emerge more clearly in my life and form me more?
Study: Definition: Engage ourselves with the written and spoken word of God Remarks: This is the primary discipline of engagement. Read bible, study life of others to see the word of God at work, meditate (prayerfully and steadily focus upon what comes before you). Sit regularly under ministry of gifted teachers who enable our own fruitful study.
Need: Do I need to grow stronger, to be more as He is? Do I need to more perceive and experience God? Do I need some immediate and dramatic change in my life (Isaiah 6:1-3)?
Worship: Definition: Engage ourselves with, dwell upon, express the greatness, beauty, goodness of God through thoughts, words, rituals, symbols - alone as well as in union with God’s people. To see God as worthy, ascribe great worth to him. Remarks: The good we adore enters our minds and hearts. Worship is opened by study (above). Most profitable when centered upon Jesus Christ. Direct divine encounter is not essential to true worship: worship is our part. Revelation 4:11, 5:12-13.
Need: Does my life lack gratitude? Do I need to learn to fear God (Deut 14:23)? Do my deprivations and sorrows seem too big? Do I need to find holy delight, joy to do the will of God?
Celebration: Definition: Dwell upon the greatness of God as shown in his goodness to us(!); enjoy ourselves, our life, our world, in conjunction with our faith. We concentrate on our life and world as God’s work and gift to us(!). Remarks: Celebration is enabled by study and it is the completion of worship. Come together with others who know God, to eat and drink, to sing and dance, and relate stories of God’s action for our life and our people. This world is radically unsuited to the heart of the human person. A healthy faith before God cannot be built and maintained without heartfelt celebration of his greatness and goodness to us in the midst of our suffering and terror, Eccl 3:4. Example: Established feast days in Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions.
Need: Am I trapped in arrogance, possessiveness, envy, resentment, or covetousness? Do I need some help to enjoy my position and work because of its exalted meaning before God?
Service: Definition: Engage our goods and strength in the active promotion of the good of others and the causes of God in our world. Remarks: Strive to meet all persons who cross your path with openness to service for them with ease and confidence. Can be applied by anyone, from lowest to highest position, but most difficult for leaders fulfilling socially important roles. High road to freedom, not as man pleasers but fearing the Lord, Col 3:22-24.
Need: Am I lacking God’s presence in all the little actions I perform during the day? Do I need to bathe my whole life in the presence of God? Do I need more spiritual richness?
Prayer: Definition: Conversing, communicating with God, aloud or within our thoughts. Remarks: Nothing is more relevant to social conditions than the transformation of persons that comes from prayer at its best in the life of the disciples of Christ. Example: Prayer of the heart (Orthodox Church). Prayer almost always involves other spiritual disciplines or activities.
Need: Do I need to leverage the diverse gifts or graces of the spirit that are distributed among the separate members of the body of Christ (1Cor 12:7-11)?
Fellowship: Definition: Engage in common activities of worship, study, prayer, celebration, service with other disciples. Remarks: Members of the body must be in contact if they are to sustain and be sustained by each other. Personalities united can contain more of God and sustain the force of his greater presence much better than scattered individuals.
Need: Am I lacking a sense of being loved, and of humility before my brothers and sisters? Am I in need of psychological and physical well being? Am I challenged to avoid sin? Do I need to lay down my burden of hiding, pretending? Do I need to be engaged in more profound depths of my soul?
Confession: Definition: Let trusted others know our deepest weaknesses and failures. Remarks: One of the most powerful of the disciplines, may be easily abused, requires experience, maturity on both ends. Makes deep fellowship possible. James 5:16, Proverbs 28:13,
Need: Do I need help to do the things I would like to do and refrain from the things I don’t want to do?
Submission: Definition: Engage the experience of those in our fellowship who are qualified to direct our efforts in growth and who then add the weight of their wise authority on the side of our willing spirit. Remarks: Qualification of director is depth of experience and Christlikeness – elder in The Way, who submits to servanthood (not drivership). See Hebrews 13:7, 1Peter 5:2-3, Hebrews 5:5, Eph 5:21, Phil 2:3. Trap is building iron hierarchy, crushing unwilling souls as in human kingdoms.
