Opening Our Souls to God, Part II

III. 2^nd Condition for Spiritual Growth: Discipline

First Timothy 4:7 says to "train yourself to be godly." "Train" translates gymnazō, which referred to the intense discipline of exercise and training to prepare an athlete for a contest. Paul observes that "physical training is of some value" (1 Tim 4:8a). Many of us seek to improve our physical health and self-image by walking, jogging, playing tennis, doing aerobics, or lifting weights. Such physical discipline shows respect and appreciation for the body that God has given us.

Paul is calling us here to be spiritual athletes. He reminds us that "godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the future life" (1 Tim 4:8b). How much more value is there is strengthening our spirits so that we become more like God. Godlike character and conduct affects every area of our lives—not just our bodies but also our relationships, our thoughts, our emotions, our moral actions. Godlikeness improves our lives in the present and also prepares us for eternity in fellowship with God.

The spiritual disciplines are the means by which we train ourselves in godly thoughts and actions. They are spiritual exercises that prepare us for when we are tested. At first these spiritual disciplines may seem awkward, difficult, even meaningless. We are not used to being alone with God. We are not used to dealing with the spiritual world. We are not used to examining ourselves honestly and deeply.

But over time the disciplines become easier and more natural. This is true of any learned skill. I did not pick up the game of golf until I was in my early thirties. Although I consider myself a reasonably athletic person, I found it very difficult just to get that confounded little clubhead on that tiny white ball. First, I would totally whiff. Then I would overcompensate and dig my club into the ground. Even the overlapping grip on the club felt awkward and left sores on my fingers. And what was the deal with keeping that left elbow straight during my backswing? How is that physically possible?!

With time, practice, and repetition, my golf swing became easier and more fluid. By no means have I ever become a good golfer because I do not practice and play enough. But I cannot remember the last time that I whiffed when I swung at the ball.

Almost everything worth doing in life is difficult at the beginning (Willard, 1990, p. 121). I have seen this with my two boys as they have recently learned to ride bicycles without training wheels, write the alphabet and then words and then sentences, read a book, and add two-digit numbers.

Spiritual discipline means that we will study the Bible even if we understand little of it at the beginning. We will pray to God even though it seems like he is not listening. We will meditate even though we never hear God speak to us. Tom Landry, the famous coach of the Dallas Cowboys, said: "The job of a football coach is to make men do what they don't want to do in order to achieve what they've always wanted to be" (Whitney, 1997, p. 18). If we want to grow spiritually, we will make ourselves do things that we would not naturally do, such as get up on Sunday morning and go to worship service, or get up early in the morning to read a chapter in the Bible. We are willing to put forth the effort and make the sacrifice because of the greater good that will come from it.

One of the greatest barriers to spiritual growth is laziness, the deadly sin of sloth. Too often we think that spiritual growth is something that just happens to us because we have been saved. We are like the playwright George Kaufman, who was enduring a sales pitch from a gold-mine promoter. He said: "Why, it's so rich you can pick up the chunks of gold from the ground." "Do you mean," Kaufman said, "I'd have to bend over?" (Whitney, 1997, p. 19). Similarly, we may think that we should grow spiritually without having to expend any effort.

Dallas Willard warns against passivity in the spiritual life: "The general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy. This is the feature of human character that explains why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality" (1990, p. 6). The fact that spiritual growth is the work of God is no excuse for passivity and laziness. It is not enough to intend to grow spiritually. We must do what is necessary for God to give us growth.

IV. 3^rd Condition for Spiritual Growth: Time

The greatest enemy of spiritual growth is busyness. Carl Jung once said: "Hurry is not of the Devil; it is the Devil." By filling up every available waking minute with frenetic activity, we avoid intimacy with God, and we avoid confronting our own inner demons.

If we want to get to know the God who dwells within us, we must focus attention on his presence. We can do this only if we detach ourselves from the outer world and attach ourselves to the inner world. It is a scientific truth that the human mind cannot focus on more than one thing at once. Therefore, in order to focus attention on God, we must intentionally disengage our attention from outer concerns and focus it on God instead. Any relationship develops and matures only with an investment of time, and the same is true of our relationship with God.

We can find so many excuses to fill up our time with busy activities. As Parkinson's Law states, "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." Why do we fill up our time with outer activities so that we neglect our inner life? Because we are afraid to be alone. We are afraid of ourselves. We are afraid of what God might tell us or show us about ourselves.

For positive growth and change to occur in our lives, we must stop running from the truth about ourselves. We can never really get away from ourselves anyway, so why not slow down and deal directly with the aspects of our self that need work? By refusing to deal with garbage within us, we allow it to pile up so high that it begins to burst from within us, spoiling every aspect of our lives and contaminating those around us. We need periods of time in which we allow God to perform a spiritual housecleaning.

The person who thinks he or she does not have time to spend in silence with God should consider this analogy. If your car was not working properly, would you ask a mechanic to crawl under your hood and work on the engine while you continued to drive 65 miles per hour down the highway because you did not have time to slow down? If we really want God to work on the dysfunctional parts of ourselves that are not functioning properly, we need to pull over to the side of the road, shut off the engine for a while, and let him repair us.

We always make time for the things that matter to us. We may say that we believe it is important to grow spiritually. We may say that it is important to get to know God. But our actions show what we really believe. If we neglect quiet time with God, either we do not believe that a personal God who cares about us really exists or we do not believe that we can actually experience his presence with us.

To grow spiritually, to be transformed into the image of Christ, to plug our souls into the power source, we must set aside periods of time on a regular basis to spend in silence, speaking to God and listening to him speak to us. If we do not do this, we will be like the schoolteacher with twenty-five years of experience who applied for a promotion but instead a teacher with only one year of experience as hired. When she asked the principal why someone with less experience was hired, he responded, "I'm sorry, but you haven't had twenty-five years of experience as you claim; you have had only one year's experience twenty-five times."

In conclusion, Ephesians 3:16-21 provides a rich picture of the process of spiritual growth: "I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

Reflection Questions

1. Think about a skill or sport that felt awkward when you were first learning it. How did you overcome the awkwardness? How does this apply to our spiritual life?

2. In what ways do you need to become more disciplined in your spiritual life?

3. How much time do you have available to spend with God in silence? How can you make more time?

Sources:

Whitney, D. S. (1997). Spiritual disciplines for the Christian life. Colorado Springs: NavPress.

Willard, D. (1990). The spirit of the disciplines: Understanding how God changes lives. San Francisco: HarperOne.

Next Topic: Worship: Looking Up to God