Offer God Your Disciplines
Other Posts in this Series
- Offer to God
- Offer to God in Small Ways
- Offer God Your Unique Self
- Offer God Your Disciplines
- Offer God Your Worship
As a young teenager, I developed the habit (or discipline) of reading my Bible and praying every day. It began as the response to a challenge of one of my youth leaders at the church I attended–a challenge to read the Bible through. I started with one of those “Read the Bible Through” calendars and set out to “prove” to myself and my leader that I could do this. I realize this motivation is suspect and I had little more than self-aggrandizing objectives. However, the reading of scripture soon became an end in itself for me.
I was drawn to the stories, the wisdom for life, and the promises of hope I found there. I was also perplexed by the infidelity of the characters, the troubling passages of an angry, destructive God, and the sometimes blatant contradictions in the pages of scripture. Not long after I finished reading the Bible through, my parents gave me a new Bible that had wide margins (one I had requested). While reading the Bible through, I decided that I needed to slow down and take a look at each verse, each word, each context. Over the next several years I read slowly, often just a few verses a day. Then I would talk to God about what those verses meant to me and my life. Finally, I wrote the answer in my Bible’s margin.
The discipline of prayer, listening for God’s voice, and Bible reading formed my life in ways nothing else could. To this day, I continue these disciplines. I’ve learned new ways to pray, new ways to listen, and even new ways to read scripture, but the discipline remains. Each morning I offer these disciplines to God as a way to demonstrate my love. I don’t think there are any better ways to demonstrate my love for God than to take the time to listen to what God has to say to me.
Through the years, I have learned of many other disciplines that have been used over the centuries by faithful believers. Each is a demonstration of our love to God. Currently, I’m reading through Richard Foster and Emilie Griffin’s book, Spiritual Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups on the Twelve Spiritual Disciplines. I’m learning from ancient and contemporary saints how to offer myself to God more fully through meditation, prayer, fasting, study, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, and more. As God speaks to me through the experience and wisdom of others and I want to emulate their example. I want to make offerings to God in new ways.
Currently, I’m working on a variation of fasting, knowing that serious fasting is beyond me yet. Over the last several days I have chosen to discipline my food intake as an offering to God. When I sit at meals I am aware of my diet and the food in front of me. I am aware of God with me and silently offer my diet to God. Rather than gorging myself as I usually do, I have restrained myself in God’s honor. I decided not to make this discipline about me and my weight because then it would not really be a discipline for God. I have not gotten on the scales and when my mind has turned to, “I wonder how much weight I’ve lost?” I’ve turned it back toward God–”I do this for God.”
Whatever our discipline–whether it be setting aside a time for prayer and Bible study, spending time in solitude, or restricting our diet–they are offerings to God. When we discipline ourselves as a means to demonstrate our love, then God is pleased.
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