spiritual disciplines book quote 1

Now that Josiah is sleeping on his own in his own room, I finally have some time back in the evenings to read a book (albeit slowly) for some personal growth. Yay!! I decided to pick back up on Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, by Donald Whitney, since I'm still struggling with my qts. So here are some quotes from the first chapter I really liked that served as great reminders of the goal of spiritual disciplines and why they require.... uh, discipline. =)

God has given us the Spiritual Disciplines as a means of receiving His grace and growing us in Godliness. By them we place ourselves before God for Him to work in us (p. 18).

The expectation of disciplined spirituality is implied in Jesus' offer of Matthew 11:29: "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me." The same is true in this offer of discipleship: "Then he said to them all: 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23). These verses tell us that to be a disciple of Jesus means, at the very least, to learn from and follow Him. Learning and following involve discipline, for those who only learn accidentally and follow incidentally are not true disciples. That discipline is at the heart of discipleship is confirmed by Galatians 5:22-23, which says that spiritual self-discipline (i.e. "self-control") is one of the most evident marks of being Spirit-controlled (p. 20).

Elton Trueblood demonstrates the relationship between discipline and freedom by saying, "We have not advanced very far in our spiritual lives if we have not encountered the basic paradox of freedom... that we are most free when we are bound. But not just any way of being bound will suffice; what matters is the character of our binding. The one who would be an athlete, but who is unwilling to discipline his body by regular exercise and abstinence, is not free to excel on the field or the track. His failure to train rigorously denies him the freedom to run with the desired speed and endurance. With one concerted voice, the giants of the devotional life apply the same principle to the whole of life: Discipline is the price of freedom" (p. 23).

The freedom of Godliness is the freedom to do what God calls us to do through Scripture and the freedom to express the character qualities of Christ through our own personality. This kind of freedom is the "reward" or result of the blessing of God upon our engagement in the Spiritual Disciplines (p. 24).