Spiritual Discipline

Maintaining a life devoted to practicing the spiritual disciplines is not easy. Most of us are not super disciplined people. Like the cereal we eat, we get bored or distracted and change things up. That's not very helpful when trying to become better prayers and readers of scripture.

I don't have any silver bullet answers to this problem, but there are some things that have helped me as of late:

1. You've got to remove things to add things. You won't be inclined to pray, to read the scriptures, or to meditate if you don't have time to do it. However, if you intentionally remove some things, you'll have the chance to fill that open space with something good. For example, I have stopped listening to the radio entirely. No more politics, no more sports. I don't even listen to music that much. I have filled that void with either (1) silence/prayer or (2) listening to something edifying, like a sermon or the Bible on CD (more on that in another post).

2. Read biographies of Christians who have practiced the spiritual disciplines well. I am almost through with George Mueller's autobiography. He was a truly astonishing man who depended entirely on God for everything. And more importantly, his prayers never went unanswered. That is encouraging to me and makes me want to hit my knees. Other Christians who had great spiritual discipline were A.W. Tozer and Jim Eliot.

3. Listen to and read Piper on prayer. He preaches on prayer at least once a year (maybe twice). It is always a great encouragement to pick up my prayer life after listening to him. Piper's another person with great spiritual discipline.

4. Have people hold you accountable. There's nothing like other people in your life helping you live a life of God-centeredness. Get into a group that will hold you accountable to reading the Bible regularly and praying.