As we get to June I thought it would be useful to stop and reflect on our post-Easter sermon series entitled ‘Spiritual disciplines for ordinary people’. This is a nine-week series exploring how people can grow spiritually in our modern world. One of the fundamental outcomes of Jesus’ life is that our lives have the potential for change. But it won’t happen simply through our own efforts, by trying harder, and neither will it happen by accident. Somewhere between the two lies the path that leads to the kind of change that human beings long for. Soren Kierkegaard, a well-known theologian, prayed this prayer: ‘And now Lord, with your help I shall become myself’, which is exactly the point of spiritual growth. Spiritual growth is about that holy mysterious process described by the apostle Paul when he said he was ‘in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you’. Spiritual growth is a moulding process, but it’s a moulding process that we have to participate in if it is too yield any benefit. Spiritual disciplines are those things which allow God to speak to us and to do something with us. After all, the possibility of transformation is the essence of Christian hope.
The practical question for us is: How can we learn to use every moment, every activity of life, for the purpose of being transformed into the image of Christ, as God intended we should be?
The answer is that spiritual transformation is not a matter of trying harder, but of training wisely. This is what the apostle Paul means when he encourages his younger colleague Timothy to ‘train yourself in godliness’. Thinking about how we might engage in this kind of training lies at the heart of the sermon series. Following Jesus simply means learning from him how to arrange our lives around activities that enable us to live the life we were appointed to. The traditional term for such activities is ‘spiritual disciplines’. Spiritual disciplines are not a barometer of spirituality, nor are they necessarily unpleasant, nor are they a way to earn favour with God. A discipline is any activity I can do by direct effort that will help me do what I cannot do by directeffort. If that’s what makes something a discipline, then what makes something a spiritual discipline? So a spiritual discipline is any activity that help me gain power to live as Jesus taught and modelled it.
I hope that as we have reflected on a range of practical disciplines, and maybe started to put some of them into practice, that we have begun to see that potential for change become a reality.
We are made with a hunger to grow spiritually and spiritual growth means becoming more ourself. But spiritual growth is a matter of training not trying.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to hear the series of talks I’d like to recommend the book, ‘The Life You’ve Always Wanted – Spiritual Discipline for Ordinary People’ by John Ortberg.
The Lord be with
you.
Revd Stephen Pullin