spiritual disciplines on Activities

What activities did Jesus practice? Such things as solitude and silence, prayer, simple and sacrificial living, intense study and meditation upon God’s work and God’s ways, and service to others.” . R...

Dolce far niente—“the sweetness of doing nothing.” One of the most powerful soul-training exercises I have ever done is a practice called holy leisure. In simple terms, holy leisure is “doing nothi...

We can learn a thing or two about discipleship and the discipline required of a disciple from our fourth-century monastic brothers and sisters. Like them, we do basic, ordinary activities every day. W...

The Spiritual Disciplines are things that we do. We must never lose sight of this fact. It is one thing to talk piously about 'the solitude of the heart,' but if that does not somehow work its...

A piano sits in a room, gathering dust. It is full of the music of the masters, but in order for such strains to flow from it, fingers must strike the keys… trained fingers, representing endless hours...

The life of Christian faith is the practice of many practices

Christian spiritual discipline is a repeated bodily practice, done over and over again in dependence on the Holy Spirit and under the direction of Jesus and other wise teachers in his Way, to enable o...

We keep company with Jesus by making space for him through a spiritual discipline. Our part is to offer ourselves lovingly and obediently to God. God then works within us doing what he alone can do. O...

A spiritual discipline or practice is a way of creating some open and free space in which God can move an speak. For example, the discipline of solitude helps us spend time with God alone and so becom...

God’s primary assessment of our lives is not going to be measured by the number of journal entries…The real issue is what kind of people we are becoming. Practices such as reading Scripture and prayin...

No voluntary act of spiritual discipline is ever to become an occasion for self-promotion. Otherwise, any value to the act is utterly vitiated.

Many of us try to shove spiritual transformation into the nooks and crannies of a life that is already unmanageable, rather than being willing to arrange our life for what our heart most wants. We thi...

The spiritual journey is a marathon of seasons. Sometimes you can hold your own. Sometimes your side aches, you're hot and you can't get your breath. Spiritual disciplines are intentional ways...

What is the relationship between spiritual diciplines and grace? Does participation in the spiritual disciplines mean that we are not resting in God’s grace? Dallas Willard shares the analogy of a bas...

Routines dull perceptions. The purpose of a discipline such as fasting is to interrupt the routines that cushion us from the foundational realities, and so sharpen our awareness of the eternal essenti...

I cannot transform myself, or anyone else for that matter. What I can do is create the conditions in which spiritual transformation can take place, by developing and maintaining a rhythm of spiritual ...

There is so much more to sabbath than what we stop doing, but for the purposes of disciplining power, simply stopping matters a great deal.

Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you're not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline mean...

My central claim is that we can become like Christ by doing one thing—by following him in the overall style of life he chose for himself.

Several times during the day, but especially in the morning and evening, ask yourself for a moment if you have your soul in your hands or if some passion or fit of anxiety has robbed you of it…. If yo...

If our starting place with God is the radical grace extended through Jesus, then the spiritual disciplines are invitations, not obligations—ways of being with God, not appeasing him.

Because we are sinful by nature, we have developed sinful patterns, which we call habits. Discipline is required to break any habit. If a boy has developed the wrong style of swinging a baseball bat, ...

My transition into my 40’s came with the obligatory hip surgery. The only way to stop the cycle of hip pain was to literally carve out some bone. Those parts had to be removed. But recovering my funct...

We can all see God in exceptional things, but it requires the culture of spiritual discipline to see God in every detail.

Disciplines done for the wrong reasons actually sabotage transformation and numb us toward God and the truth. When we use spiritual practices to gain secondary things like spiritual cachet, success, a...

Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone.

Ancient lighting took  Work I remember watching a movie (I think it was The Mummy ) where the protagonists descended into an underground structure built by the ancients. The structure was completel...

The interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in our lives all the time. Sound has the ability to “command” us, to summon a response in us, forcing us to take notice.  Unlike visual ...

A Digital Silent Retreat This spiritual exercise is from Laura Murray, ordained pastor, spiritual director, and TPW contributor. Laura is sharing a "Digital Silent Retreat" with us. We en...

While formally or structurally speaking, there are mechanisms of discipline operative in both the convent and the prison, in both the factory and the monastery, more specifically, these disciplines an...