3 Essential Practices for Spiritual Disciplines

Where are you in your spiritual life? Are you dry or are you on fire? Do you feel a lack of connection with God and a bit defeated? Do you wonder how to fan the flame of spiritual awakening?

Be encouraged! It is God’s plan for you to be empowered through His Spirit with inner strength from God’s glorious, unlimited resources! God wants your roots to grow down into His love and keep you strong. He wants you to understand and experience the love of Christ – so that you can be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that come from God. (Ephesians 3:16-19)

Are You a Victim or a Victor?

How are the threads of your life story woven? Is it a story of suffering, trauma, and adversity? How do you cope when you face difficulties and stress?

In Christian counseling, along with learning how to manage physical and psychological problems, we also address spiritual issues. Far too often, we neglect the incredible spiritual resources that can give us the resilience we need in the face of adverse circumstances. Even secular therapists recognize the value of the optimism and strength that faith brings when coping with stress and adversity.

Are you going through a difficult period in your life right now – with finances, relationships, work or health? We read in 1 Peter 4:12 that we shouldn’t be surprised when we go through fiery trials, as if something strange were happening. As Christians, we don’t get a free pass from adversity. But God has given us the tools we need to deal with difficulties as a victor, and not a victim.

We can approach adversity feeling stressed, defeated, and believing that life is unfair, or we can approach problems with the confidence and strength that come from God’s glorious and unlimited resources.

How Do I Awaken Spiritually?

Just as light wakes us up physically, the same applies to spiritual awakening. We need to allow the light of God to penetrate our spirit and mind – renewing our thinking and restoring our soul. Rather than focusing on the darkness, we look to the light of the world.

How? By preparing your heart to receive God’s light, so that His Spirit can empower you with inner strength. When your roots grow down into His love and you experience the love of Christ – then you can be made complete with the fullness of life and power.

So many times, people say, “I’m waiting on God…” to bring healing or deliverance or self-control or enlightenment or whatever it is they need. And then, when nothing happens, they feel that God has let them down. But “waiting on God” is not a passive exercise. We need to prepare ourselves to receive what He is longing to give us! We need to do our part in the process of experiencing God’s sufficiency.

Richard J. Foster has written a great book titled Celebration of Discipline, where he explains how practicing spiritual disciplines brings us to where God can transform us. We’re going to look at three of the most important practices that lead to spiritual transformation: meditation, prayer, and fasting.

3 Essential Disciplines for Spiritual Transformation

1.Meditation

Our lives are full of many distractions, and we feel like we must be doing something all the time, and even multi-tasking. The problem is that we’re so busy, and our minds are so occupied with a diversity of things, that God’s still small voice cannot penetrate. Meditation is a way of centering ourselves and receiving what God has to give.

“What a moment!” you might say, “Isn’t meditation part of Eastern religions? Do I really need to empty my mind and sit cross-legged chanting some mantra?”

Rest assured, meditation is a thoroughly Biblical practice.

• Isaac was walking in the fields, meditating when he looked up and saw his new bride Rebekah approaching in the camel caravan. (Genesis 24:64)
• Psalm 1:1-3 says we are blessed if we meditate on God’s Word day and night – in fact, if we do, we are like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding fruit in season, with leaves that do not wither, and prospering in all we do.
• David said that he meditated on God in his bed during the night. (Psalm 63:6).
• David said that he remembered and meditated on all God had done and pondered God’s work. (Psalm 143:5)
• Psalm 105:2 commands us to sing psalms of praise to God and meditate on His extraordinary miracles.
• In I Timothy 4:15 we are commanded to meditate on these things (God’s Word and prophecy and teachings) and be absorbed with them, so our progress will be evident to all.

What does meditation in a Biblical sense mean? It first has the idea of uttering or murmuring or even singing. Generally, it means to recite God’s Word and God’s great works and extraordinary miracles (whether out loud or in song or even in a murmur to yourself).

Meditation means to ponder and reflect on the meaning of what God has said, to commune in your heart with God, to remember what God has done, and to imagine what God will do.

The meditation associated with yoga and Buddhism and other Eastern religions focuses on detachment from the world and emptying the mind. However, as Foster observes, “Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind.”

In Christian meditation we are filling our minds with God’s Word – by reciting and musing upon it – we are allowing our minds to focus on what He has to say to us. We are filling our minds with memories of what God has done in the past – His great miracles in ancient times as well as today, and all the times He’s come through for us. And we are opening up our minds to imagine what He will do in the future. We are fixing our minds on Christ.

Christian meditation is, essentially, reprogramming our brains to not think like the world thinks (attitudes of negativity, worry, defeatism, despair, along with misplaced values and morality). Instead, we are fixating on what God has said and done and what God will do in the future. This opens us up to transformation.

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. – Romans 12:2

Let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. – Ephesians 4:23

2. Prayer

Prayer is critical because it is our communication with God. Can you imagine any sort of relationship (whether with your spouse, your children, or your colleagues) where you never communicated? How would such a relationship survive? How would you know the other’s needs, how would you coordinate things that need to be done, how would you express your love and appreciation?

No relationship can survive, much less thrive, if those in the relationship are isolated from one another. If we are not communicating with God, then we are essentially depending on our own limited strength, resources, and ideas.

If we fail to pray, then we’re cutting ourselves off from God’s sufficiency. We are failing to connect with the One who can do exceedingly above anything that we could ask or think.

Why don’t we pray as often as we should? Perhaps we don’t know how to pray – but the smallest child knows how to reach out to his mother or father for his needs – how is it different with our Heavenly Father? Perhaps we feel unworthy to come to God – yet the story of prodigal son reminds us that God is longingly waiting for the worst of sinners to return, and runs to that person with arms wide open.

Prayer is one of our greatest weapons in spiritual warfare, and prayer opens us up to spiritual awakening. Needless to say, Satan will do everything in his power to keep prayer from happening, and many times he doesn’t have to work too hard as we are driven by “busy-ness” in our hectic culture and are easily distracted by our phones, TV, computers and other devices.

It’s important to remember that prayer is not just one-way. The word used for prayer in the New Testament has the idea of “exchange” – we communicate our needs and desires to God, and He communicates His desires for us as He perfects our faith. The more we communicate with God, the more we are transformed into what He means for us to be.

To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. The closer we come to the heartbeat of God, the more we see our need, and the more we desire to be conformed to Christ. – Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline

3. Fasting

Fasting is a discipline of the spiritual life that has been neglected and misunderstood by most Christians. We are unwilling to practice fasting, even though the Bible speaks of it being practiced by Moses, David, the prophetess Anna, Jesus, the church of Antioch, and Paul, among many others. Jesus gave instructions for fasting, implying that it was an expected spiritual discipline, not an option.

The much-neglected practice of fasting is, in fact, one of the most powerful spiritual disciplines that can open our spiritual eyes, make us more receptive to the Holy Spirit, and strengthen us for spiritual warfare.

Why are we so reluctant to fast? We live in a culture of self-gratification, obsessed with food – our god is our appetite, and our minds are set on earthly things. Paul said that this attitude makes us “enemies of the cross of Christ.” (Philippians 3:18-19). We are only willing to worship and serve God when we can do it in comfort, and as long as it doesn’t involve sacrifice.

In reality, even though fasting does involve a measure of discipline and self-denial, it brings a much greater feast. Subduing our physical bodies allows our spiritual self to expand and thrive. “Jesus understood that when we fast before God we are nourished directly by the word of God, whether spoken or written. Fasting is feasting upon God” (Dallas Willard).

Just as food strengthens our bodies, abstaining from it strengthens our spirits, opens us up to spiritual awakening, and makes us receptive to what God wants to do in and through us. Rather than considering fasting as something to be endured, use the time freed up from cooking and eating and cleaning up the kitchen to pray and meditate! When you feel hunger pangs, use it as a reminder that you are putting your body “under” so your spirit can rise up.

Remember that fasting doesn’t only mean abstaining from food. You can also choose to give up social media or TV or other entertainment for a season, so you can have the time (without distractions) to focus more on meditating on God’s Word and persisting in prayer and worship.

If you are new to the discipline of fasting, remember to take it slowly in the beginning. You might want to start out with partial fasting (giving up certain foods, such as meat or sugar), or fasting for one meal a day or one day a week. As you learn to discipline your body and begin to experience the benefits of fasting, then you will be prepared for more extended fasting.

If you are ready to be empowered by the glorious, unlimited resources of God’s Holy Spirit, then it’s time to engage in the spiritual disciplines of prayer, meditation, and fasting. As you start on this journey, you may find it helpful to consult with a Christian counselor to walk you through implementing these disciplines into your life, so you can awaken to the abundant life God has for you.