Discipline for Godliness

DISCIPLINE FOR GODLINESS

Many of us have been reading Jonathan Edward's Resolutions all week.
They will help us in our spiritual journey if we use them. If we read them and set them aside, they're of no use to us at all. Like so much in our world, we must choose to put them to work in our lives. The benefit won't occur without effort.

The Apostle Paul tells us to "discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness . . . ." (1 Timothy 4:6 NASB) Since the earliest days of the church, Christians have discovered the benefit of spiritual disciplines that help us fulfill God's design and plan for our lives. Bill Welte has given me the privilege of writing the weekend Freedom Fighters for another month, and I invite you to think about spiritual discipline with me during January.

Dallas Willard, one of my favorite writers, defines a discipline as, "any activity within our power that we engage in to enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort." Growth in Christ does not occur by our own power. We can develop spiritual exercises, however, that give God's Spirit freedom to do in us what our own effort won't accomplish. This is not some new kind of quick-fix or legalism. The disciplines I want to share with you throughout the month have been time-tested through two hundred centuries.

While doing some research for this FF, I ran across two questions I'd like us to think about while we consider the spiritual disciplines. 1) What am I currently not doing that, if I were doing, would open myself up more to God's work of grace in my life? 2) What am I currently doing that, if eliminated, would open myself up more to God's work of grace in my life? The spiritual disciplines will help us add the things that will open us up to God's graceful work in our lives. They will also help us delete those things that hinder His graceful work.

You're probably wondering what kind of disciplines I'm suggesting. Here are the disciplines I want us to consider: solitude, silence, fasting and sacrifice are "disciplines of abstinence." Study, worship, service and prayer are "disciplines of engagement." We'll consider each of them in upcoming Freedom Fighters.

For today, the question we must consider is simple. "Will we choose to 'discipline [ourselves] for godliness'?" (Pastor John Strain - First Baptist of Toms River)

Great Quote: The air which our body requires envelops us on every hand.
The air of itself seeks to enter our bodies and, for this reason, exerts pressure upon us. It is well known that it is more difficult to hold one's breath than it is to breathe. We need but exercise our organs of respiration, and air will enter forthwith into our lungs and perform its life-giving function to the entire body. The air which our souls need also envelops all of us at all times and on all sides. God is round about us in Christ on every hand, with his many sided and all-sufficient grace. All we need to do is to open our hearts.

Ole Kristian O. Hallesby