CELEBRATION OF DISCIPLINE by Richard J. Foster.
Extracts.

They [classics of the faith] possessed a flaming vision of God that blinded them to all competing loyalties. They experienced life built on the Rock [God and the spirit of love].

In our enthusiasm to practice the Disciplines, we may fail to practice discipline. The life that is pleasing to God is not a series of religious duties. We have only one thing to do, namely, to experience a life of relationship and intimacy with God [The focus is not on what to do and not to do, but on why we are to do or not do this or that, and the why is the spirit of God, in a word love].

Paul’s analogy is instructive. A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then the natural forces of the earth take over and up comes the grain. This is the way it is with the Spiritual Disciplines—they are a way of sowing to the Spirit. The Disciplines are God’s way of getting us into the ground; they put us where he can work within us and transform us. By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done. They are God’s means of grace. The inner righteousness we seek is not something that is poured on our heads. God has ordained the Disciplines of the spiritual life as the means by which we place ourselves where he can bless us.

In The Cost of Discipleship Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes it clear that grace is free, but it is not cheap. The grace of God is unearned and unearnable, but if we ever expect to grow in grace, we must pay the price of a consciously chosen course of action which involves both individual and group life. Spiritual growth is the purpose of the Disciplines.

…there is a path, the Disciplines of the spiritual life. This path leads to the inner transformation and healing for which we seek. We must never veer off to the right or the left, but stay on the path. The path is fraught with severe difficulties, but also with incredible joys. As we travel on this path, the blessing of God will come upon us and reconstruct us into the image of Jesus Christ. We must always remember that the path does not produce the change; it only places us where the change can occur. This is the path of disciplined grace.

There is a saying in moral theology that “virtue is easy.” But the maxim is true only to the extent that God’s gracious work has taken over our inner spirit and transformed the ingrained habit patterns of our lives. Until that is accomplished, virtue is hard, very hard indeed.

Divine Love has slipped into our inner spirit and taken over our habit patterns. In the unguarded moments there is a spontaneous flow from the inner sanctuary of our lives of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22, 23). There is no longer the tiring need to hide our inner selves from others. We do not have to work hard at being good and kind; we are good and kind. To refrain from being good and kind would be the hard work because goodness and kindness are part of our nature. Just as the natural motions of our lives once produced mire and dirt, now they produce “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). Shakespeare observes that “The quality of mercy is not strained”—nor are any of the virtues once they have taken over the personality.

…life of hearing [God’s voice] and obeying [his word]…

The Russian mystic Theophan the Recluse says, “‘To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart, and there to stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all seeing, within you.”

Eastern forms of meditation stress the need to become detached from the world… There is an escaping from the miserable wheel of existence. There is no God to be attached to or to hear from. Detachment is the final goal of Eastern religion. Christian meditation goes far beyond the notion of detachment. There is need for detachment—a “sabbath of contemplation” as Peter of Celles, a Benedictine monk of the twelfth century, put it.8 But there is a danger in thinking only in terms of detachment as Jesus indicates in his story of the man who had been emptied of evil but not filled with good… No, detachment is not enough; we must go on to attachment. The detachment from the confusion all around us is in order to have a richer attachment to God. Christian meditation leads us to the inner wholeness necessary to give ourselves to God freely.

William Penn notes, “True godliness does not turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavors to mend it.”

“You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:3). To ask “rightly” involves transformed passions. In prayer, real prayer, we begin to think God’s thoughts after him: to desire the things he desires, to love the things he loves, to will the things he wills.

“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8, [italics added]). The Discipline of study is the primary vehicle to bring us to ‘think about these things.

André Gide describes the time when he observed a moth being reborn from its chrysalis during a classroom lecture. He was filled with wonder, awe, joy at this metamorphosis, this resurrection. Enthusiastically, he showed it to his professor who replied with a note of disapproval, “What! Didn’t you know that a chrysalis is the envelope of a butterfly? Every butterfly you see has come out of a chrysalis. It’s perfectly natural.” Disillusioned, Gide wrote, “Yes, indeed, I knew my natural history as well, perhaps better than he…. But because it was natural, could he not see that it was marvelous? Poor creature! From that day, I took a dislike to him and a loathing to his lessons.”2 Who wouldn’t! Gide’s professor had only amassed information; he had not studied. And so the first step in the study of nature is reverent observation.

The central point for the Discipline of simplicity is to seek the kingdom of God and the righteousness of his kingdom first and then everything necessary will come in its proper order… Everything hinges upon maintaining the “first” thing as first. Nothing must come before the kingdom of God, including the desire for a simple life-style.

De-accumulate! Masses of things that are not needed complicate life. They must be sorted and stored and dusted and re-sorted and re-stored ad nauseam. Most of us could get rid of half our possessions without any serious sacrifice. We would do well to follow the counsel of Thoreau: “Simplify, simplify.”

Every Discipline has its corresponding freedom. If I have schooled myself in the art of rhetoric, I am free to deliver a moving speech when the occasion requires it. Demosthenes was free to be an orator only because he had gone through the discipline of speaking above the ocean roar with pebbles in his mouth. The purpose of the Disciplines is freedom. Our aim is the freedom, not the Discipline. The moment we make the Discipline our central focus, we turn it into law and lose the corresponding freedom.

Jesus called his followers to live the crosslife. “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). He flatly told his disciples, “If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). When Jesus immortalized the principle of the cross-life by washing the disciples’ feet, he added, “I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you” (John 13:15). The cross-life is the life of voluntary submission. The cross-life is the life of freely accepted servanthood.

“…the Son of man came not to be served but to serve” (Matt. 20:25–28) [We are to model ourselves on him].

The “law of Christ” is the law of love, the “royal law” as James calls it (James 2:8). Love is most perfectly fulfilled when we bear the hurts and sufferings of each other…

We want to learn how to live so that our very presence will speak of the love and forgiving grace of God.

Holy obedience saves worship from becoming an opiate, an escape from the pressing needs of modern life. Worship enables us to hear the call to service clearly so that we respond, “Here am I! Send me” (Isa. 6:8). Authentic worship will impel us to join in the Lamb’s war against demonic powers everywhere—on the personal level, on the social level, on the institutional level.

Joy is part of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). Often I am inclined to think that joy is the motor, the thing that keeps everything else going. Without joyous celebration to infuse the other Disciplines, we will sooner or later abandon them. Joy produces energy. Joy makes us strong.

On one occasion a woman in the crowd shouted out to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” Jesus responded, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:27, 28). It is a more blessed thing to live in obedience than to have been the mother of the Messiah!

Paul proceeds to tell us to set our minds on all the things in life that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and gracious (Phil. 4:8). God has established a created order full of excellent and good things, and it follows naturally that as we give our attention to those things we will be happy. That is God’s appointed way to joy. If we think we will have joy only by praying and singing psalms, we will be disillusioned. But if we fill our lives with simple good things and constantly thank God for them, we will be joyful, that is, full of joy. And what about our problems? When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems.

…freed of an inflated view of our own importance, we are also freed of a judgmental spirit. Others do not look so awful, so unspiritual. Common joys can be shared without sanctimonious value judgments.

We all need adequate time for reflection, meditation, rest, conversation. The reasons many of us do not have the time-full life are varied, but the root problem is one of failing to live in the Christian grace of simplicity.

…we are co-creators with God in advancing His Kingdom upon the earth.

The will of God is discovered as we become acquainted with God, learn His ways, and become His friend. As we do this, God will take us right where we are and produce in us the winsome fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). As the friendship grows, as the conformity grows, we will know instinctively what actions would please Him, what decisions would be in accord with His way. Just like our intimate knowledge of and love for our wife or husband guides us to decisions we know they would approve, so our inward fellowship gives an inward knowledge of the ways of God.