spiritual disciplines on Uncertainty

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...

Preaching Commentary 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 ...

Brother Lawrence, a 16th-century Carmelite monk, spent his days scrubbing pots and mending shoes. Largely uneducated, he filled his free time writing letters and notes that, after his death, friends g...

Without a balanced approach to spiritual disciplines, we run the risk of cultivating a one-sided spirituality that will disintegrate under pressure from the part of us we have left undeveloped.

As we become more intentional about living according to our deepest desires, it becomes increasingly important to notice the effects of technology on our mind, our soul and our relationships.  The ...

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...

Sorrow and anxiety cannot eat: joy celebrates its feasts with eating and drinking… We are creatures of the senses: our mind is helped by what comes to us embodied in concrete form; fasting helps to ex...

John Ortberg likens the transformative path of Christ to sailing. Sailors can't make the wind show up; the wind has a mind of its own. But that doesn't mean there is nothing for them to do. Sa...

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith provides an important analogy about the importance of spiritually preparing ourselves for the adversity and challenges that come with su...

The caterpillar must yield up the life it knows and submit to the mystery of interior transformation. It emerges from the process transfigured, with wings that give it freedom to fly. . .. A rule of lif...

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 simplest spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it's the hardest, because none of us want to be with someone we don't love. Besides that, we invariably feel bored...

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...

Spirituality is about being ready. All the spiritual disciplines of your life - prayer, study, meditation or ritual, religious vows - are there so you can break through to the eternal. Spirituality is...

It is an immutable fact that we will never get anywhere in life without discipline – especially in spiritual matters. There are some who have innate athletic or musical advantages. But none of us can ...

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...

The Spiritual disciplines are wisdom and not righteousness.

A man who was fishing one day noticed that the fisherman next to him threw the big fish he caught back into the water, while keeping the small ones. This went on all day until the first man couldn’t h...

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 ...

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.

It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God.

The soul’s infinite capacity to desire is the mirror image of God’s infinite capacity to give. . . . The unlimited need of the soul matches the unlimited grace of God.

Jesus could not have imposed anything hard upon us. . Reprint edition. San Francisco: HarperOne, p.2, 1999.

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...

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...

Payton Manning practiced indirection. He was the winning quarterback of Super Bowl XLI. It was a rainy night, and the ball was slippery. Rex Grossman, the quarterback for the losing team, fumbled the ...

Solitude is the most radical of the disciplines for life in the spirit. In penal institutions, solitary confinement is used to break the strongest of wills. It is capable of this because it excludes i...

Before my mentor, Dallas Willard, passed over to glory, I asked him what he thought about the rapid rise of the Christian spiritual formation movement. He said, “It is a wonderful thing, but my fear i...

We cannot adopt his form of life without engaging in his disciplines—maybe even more than he did and surely adding others demanded by our much more troubled condition. . Reprint edition. San Francisco...

In my own pastoral and personal Christian experience, I can say that I’ve never known a man or woman who came to spiritual maturity except through discipline. Godliness comes through discipline.