Dabblers or Disciples? : Part 5

Intimate Faith: A Woman's Guide to the Spiritual Disciplines
by Jan Winebrenner

(Page 5 of 5)

The rider whose skills include only the obvious basics - walk, trot, canter, mount, and dismount - would never be able to keep her seat over the first obstacle. She would never ride with the joy and liberty of a more disciplined rider. The exuberance of flight on horseback would be for her an elusive dream, her reality marked by boredom, disappointment, and danger.

The parallels are obvious.

We cannot put limits on our discipleship, choosing only to exercise four or five familiar habits. If we want to walk with God and experience his power in our lives, and grow in knowledge of him and love for him, our only option is this: full immersion into the life of Christ, through the exercise of all of the spiritual disciplines.

This was Jesus? plan for us. As he was commissioning his disciples he told them to do and to teach others to obey everything he had taught them. It takes only a cursory look at the life of Jesus to see that he built into his life the consistent practice of many habits. He taught them in his sermons, he practiced them before the disciples and in private hours of fellowship with his Father.

Jesus, fully God clothed in human flesh, saw the need for the disciplines of silence, and simplicity, and fasting, and submission, and the other almost forgotten and ignored habits of heart and hand during his incarnation.

As he exercised the disciplines he testified to his "otherworldliness"; he demonstrated the reality of the kingdom of God; he exhibited his unity with the Father, showing us how to "remain in him," how to live in constant awareness of the Father's deep love.

The practice of the spiritual disciplines does for us what it did for Jesus. The disciplines immerse us in the life of the kingdom. They bring us to the place where we can enjoy intimacy with our Father. They train us to live out the realities of the invisible kingdom Jesus came to display. They strengthen us to withstand temptation. They nurture our spirits here, while we are physically separated from our heavenly Father, and whet our appetites for the things that will truly satisfy us - the things of God, intimacies and realities of fellowship that we will never experience if we only dabble in discipleship.

One Single Duty

These words say it well: "There remains one single duty. It is to keep one's gaze fixed on the master one has chosen and to be constantly listening so as to understand and hear and immediately obey His will."

This is what it means to be a disciple. The spiritual disciplines train us to listen and to understand, to hear and to obey.

Today, in our culture, many of the "ancient paths" seem to have nearly disappeared, but they are there, still, beckoning us with the offer of intimacy with God, of experiential knowledge of his power and love, and the assurance of soul-deep rest and peace.

In the pages of this book, we will dig through the undergrowth to find the ancient paths. We will examine the disciplines that characterized the lives of Old Testament saints, such as Abraham, Esther, David, and others.

We will study these disciplines that Jesus exhibited for us, disciplines that his disciples exercised and taught in the Epistles. We will trace them through the lives of present-day believers, those who falter and fail along with us, yet whose lives speak eloquently of the love and mercy of God, calling us to learn of his grace and discover the joy of his sufficiency.

To Know That God Is Real

Oswald Chambers wrote, "The one thing for which we are all being disciplined is to know that God is real." Nothing is more important. Nothing is more rewarding than discovering that God is everything he said he is: all-powerful, sovereign, yet tender and compassionate, accepting of us in our fragile state, and desiring with all his heart to bring us to rest in him.

Nothing is more important than learning to live in the reality of God's invisible presence.

Equally important is a daily discovery of the liberty of grace and victory over besetting sins. This, wrote Stephen Charnock, is "that which glitters in redemption." Through the exercise of the spiritual disciplines we experience the glory of our redemption, here and now. The sparkle of grace lights our hearts; victory shines through the darkness. We celebrate our redemption with every exercise that brings us into closer harmony with the eternal schemes of God.

If the "glitter" of your redemption has dulled; if you are frustrated and confused about what an "abundant life" looks like; if you are tired of struggling and being defeated; if you are weary with wondering if God is doing his part - join me on a journey through the ancient paths. We will, through the pages of this book, travel "good ways" you may have never before explored. Together we will seek God and find him to be all we could ever need, and more than we ever imagined he could be.

Our map into this extraordinary life: the classical spiritual disciplines.

Copyright © 2003 by Jan Winebrenner

About the Author

Jan Winebrenner is the founder of the Dallas Christian Writers Guild and co-founder of the Writers Roundtable Conferences. She is a frequent speaker and workshop leader for writer's groups and college and university writing classes. Mentoring and encouraging other writers is one of her passions, as is studying classic Christian literature.