Quotes about Disciplines

According to the law of requisite variety, the survival of any system depends on its capacity to cultivate variety in its internal structures. Disequilibrium is life ... When I'm in a spiritual slump, nine times out of ten, something sacred has become routine ... one of the ways I snap out of a spiritual slump is by disturbing by routine and experimenting with spiritual disciplines.

I am, of course, aware that for over two hundred years scholars have laboured to keep history and theology, or history and faith, at arm's length from one another. There is a good intention behind this move: each of these disciplines has its own proper shape and logic, and cannot simply be turned into a branch of the other.

Once organizational health is properly understood and placed into the right context, it will surpass all other disciplines in business as the greatest opportunity for improvement and competitive advantage.

Spiritual formation is relational formation. It is easier, and therefore more talked about, to practice spiritual disciplines in an effort to feel God's presence than to practice them in order to draw on the Spirit's power to love well. Spiritually forming people may or may not regularly experience God with them. But spiritually forming people will grow to increasingly reveal God's nature by how they relate.

The Disciplines of Christ-likeness The third side of our triangle is made up of spiritual disciplines. These are special activities, many engaged in by Jesus himself, such as solitude and study, service and secrecy, fasting and worship.

The disciplines are practices that change the inner self and its relationship to the "helper" (paraclete), so that we can actually do what we would and avoid what we would not. They of course have no point apart from the serious intent to obey Christ's teaching and follow his example.

It is almost impossible in the thought climate of today's Western world to appreciate just how utterly unnecessary it was for Paul to say explicitly, in the world in which he lived, that Christians should fast, be alone, study, give, and so forth as regular disciplines for the spiritual life.

The secret of the easy yoke, then, is to learn from Christ how to live our total lives, how to invest all our time and our energies of mind and body as he did. We must learn how to follow his preparations, the disciplines for life in God's rule that enabled him to receive his Father's constant and effective support while doing his will.

But for all of the soul's vastness and independence, the tiny executive center of the person—that is, the spirit or will—can redirect and re-form the soul, with God's cooperation. It mainly does this by redirecting the body in spiritual disciplines and toward various other types of experiences under God.

Full participation in the life of God's Kingdom and in the vivid companionship of Christ comes to us only through appropriate exercise in the disciplines for life in the spirit. Those disciplines alone can become for average Christians the conditions upon which the spiritual life is made indubitably real.

The power of God tenderizes and changes us, not spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines only position us to receive.

Sixth, the Spiritual Disciplines are means, not ends. The end—that is, the purpose of practicing the Disciplines—is godliness.