Recapturing the Spiritual Disciplines
Sermon by Neil Earle

(1 Timothy 4:8): "For bodily exercise profits a little but godliness is profitable for all things."

(1 Corinthians 6:13): The body is for the Lord. We need to be aligning our physical selves with the spiritual in order to be following Jesus Christ.

We’re currently in the age of Christian fads, and our theology is so weak that we can put it on a bumper sticker. "Just ask what Jesus would do."

How do we live the Christian life? Just asking what Jesus Christ would do is "not enough." You have to be in training, in the game, like an athlete. You won’t really know what to do in a given situation unless you’re in training and it just flows from you. When we live like Jesus, practicing brotherly love, then we don’t need to ask "what Jesus would do."

Recommended reading: The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard. Willard is a Baptist who still believes in works.

(2 Peter 1:5-8): "And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge self control; …For if these things be in you, and abound; they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Willard’s list of Disciplines:

    1. Silence and solitude: It’s hard to find this in Los Angeles.

    2. Prayer and fasting: In the past we overdosed on fasting, and now it’s hard to get back to it.

    3. Silence and good works:

    4. Celebration: Regular celebration of our relationship with God.

We need to move beyond fads and legalism to disciplined works. The key to understanding Paul is that he taught and practiced Jesus Christ’s life example. Paul followed Jesus by living as Jesus lived. Paul spent a lot of time by himself.

(Galatians 1:14): "And profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus."

When Paul was first called, he did not go up to Jerusalem or confer with the other apostles. He went into out into the desert, into silence and solitude.

Jesus, also, constantly sought solitude from his baptism to Gethsemane. He would withdraw from the crowds seeking time for prayer and strengthening his relationship with God.

We all need quiet time to listen to the "still, small voice" inside us. We need to practice spirituality in solitude which is difficult in the present day world. Satan’s strategy for our time is to keep us so busy that we have no time to develop deep relationships. It trivializes our existence.

How can we practice quiet and solitude?

  1. Be intentional. Set aside time for God through meditation – a time when we aren’t distracted by cell phone, the internet, our computer, television, etc.

    (Matthew 6:6) "…when you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father which is in secret; and your Father which sees in secret shall reward you openly."

  2. Listen for God. Sometimes pray without speaking. We don’t always have to be talking. Wait and see what God has to say.

    (Hebrews 1:1-2): "God, who as sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things by whom also he made the worlds;"

  3. Just Focus on one or two things. God will lead you from there.

  4. You’ll know when you’ve had a good session of quiet – when something concrete comes out of it and you have something specific to carry on and do.

Don’t laugh! Try practicing the discipline of quiet and solitude.

Sermon summary prepared by local Glendora church members John & Pat Hopkinson.