Practical Spiritual Disciplines: Introduction

May 4, 2018 · 385 words · 2 minute read Practical Spiritual Disciplines   Spiritual Disciplines   Why   Objectives  

This is the introduction to a series which gives practical steps for practicing the "spiritual disciplines" (activities like prayer, reading your Bible, serving the Church, etc). In this post, I lay out the motivation and objectives for this series.

Motivation

In Western, conservative Churches, our knowledge often far exceeds our living. That is, we usually know far more about theology than we live out in our lives. When it comes down to it, most of us know what we are supposed to do (for example: pray, read your Bible, evangelize, etc.) and why we are supposed to do those things, but we still are not doing the things we should. Part of the problem is that we rarely discuss how we are supposed to do something. We talk about “what” you are supposed to do and “why” you should do it, but we rarely discuss how you are supposed to practically do something. This blog series started out of frustration with not being able to find quality, practical guides on how to practice spiritual disciplines in your life. In short, this series is designed to help you learn how to make prayer, bible study, service in the Church, etc. a regular part of your life.

Objectives

The ultimate objective of this blog series is that you glorify God more through your obedience of and growth in Him while also growing in your love for Him. To achieve this end, there are three traits that will characterize every post in this series:

  1. Practical - This series is designed to give you advice you can apply to your everyday life.
  2. Biblical - The advice in this series is based on scripture and assumes that the Bible is a very faithfully preserved and translated copy of the original texts of divinely inspired scripture. It also assumes that the Bible is the absolute authority for how to live a Godly life (see 2 Timothy 3:14-17 and 2 Peter 1:3).
  3. Flexible - This series will provide some very concrete actions you can apply to your life, but I will do my best to build flexibility into the advice so that you can apply the basic principles in different walks of life.

As I mentioned in the previous section, this series is designed to help you make prayer, bible study, service in the Church, etc. a regular part of your life.

Enjoy! If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to contact me.

Otherwise, check out the next article in this series which discusses What is a spiritual discipline?.