“This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in
righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but
exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the
process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is
the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.” Martin
Luther
Let’s Review Part 1
Purpose of Spiritual Disciplines:
1. Development and Deepening Our Relationship
with God.
2. Attaining and Maintaining Spiritual Health.
3. Nurturing and Cultivating Spiritual
Maturity.
Spiritual
Disciplines
1.
Study:
Memorize Scripture and expand your universe of biblical study helps.
2.
Worship:
Engage in corporate worship and include worship in your own prayer time.
3.
Celebration:
Practice being grateful and thankful both in your own relationship with Christ
and with other believers. Express
encouragement and thankfulness to others.
4. Service:
Give your time to the church and/or to others. Ponder tithing your time.
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5. Prayer: Take deliberate steps to pray
regularly and with purpose. Praying through the Psalms is a good way to
increase your “prayer vocabulary.”
a. Luke
5:15-16 “But despite Jesus’ instructions, the report of his power spread even
faster, and vast crowds came to hear him preach and to be healed of their
diseases. But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.”
b. Colossians
4:2 “Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.”
c. “Prayer
is to faith what research is to science.” – PT Forsythe.
d. Prayer
changes me on the inside making me a usable vessel of grace.
e. “To pray
is to change. Prayer is the central avenue that God uses to transform us…. In prayer
we learn to think God’s thoughts after Him: to desire the things He desires, to
love the things He loves, to do the things He wills.” Richard Foster – Celebration
of Disciplines
6. Fellowship: to share together, take part
together; to share with” in the sense of giving to others; a partner,
associate, companion.
a. Hebrews
10:25 “And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but
encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing
near.”
b. Acts
2:42 “All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to
fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to
prayer.”
c. Hebrews
3:1, 14 “1And so, dear brothers and sisters who belong to God and are partners
with those called to heaven, think carefully about this Jesus whom we declare
to be God’s messenger and High Priest. 14 For if we are faithful to the end,
trusting God just as firmly as when we first believed, we will share in all
that belongs to Christ.”
7. Confession: Practice confessing your sins to
trusted people who will pray with you and be spiritual allies.
a. James
5:16 “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may
be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and
produces wonderful results.”
b. Like
Marley’s ghost in the Dickens classic Scrooge, we all carry the baggage of
wrongs committed and wrongs suffered, and they drag down the heart and the mind
and the body. There are no tools more readily assessable to the enemy than the
guilt I bear. Wounds partially healed are easily reopened by an opportune knife
thrust by the enemy, and I relive in horrid fascination the things I long to
forget. Jesus died to cleanse me of guilt in wrongdoing and wrong being, and
confession serves to cleanse my memory. (Authentic Discipleship)
c. Confession:
where honesty leads to conviction, conviction leads to confession, confession
leads to sorrow and repentance, and repentance leads to change.
8. Submission: Submit to the proper people in
the proper ways—fight against the sin of pride.
a. Ephesians
5:21 “And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.’
b. “A
Christian is a perfectly free lord of all subject to none. A Christian is a
perfectly dutiful
servant
of all subject to all.” Martin Luther
c. Mark
8:34-35 “Then, calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, ‘If any of you
wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your
cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But
if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you
will save it.’”
d. Submission
is the deliberate act of placing myself under the authority of another as an act
of obedience and worship.
e. Submission
is placing another’s needs or well-being above my own.
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