Spiritual Disciplines Are NOT Scary
The MOST important thing that will ever happen to you–EVER–is your conversion. Accepting Christ. Not everyone can point to a single day and time; sometimes you just realize that you decided to believe, and you did. Others of us can point to a time or season, place or age. Because when you accept Christ, you’re a whole new creature, a new being. The Bible isn’t being fanciful or metaphoric, that’s exactly what it means.
The doctrine of conversion is called “justification”, because we asked the Lord to forgive our sins and come into our lives.
“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Rom. 10:9)
There is an important thing to do after that, Jesus tells us what it is: becoming Christlike.
“Then Jesus said to them all: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.'” (Luke 9:23)
This is called “sanctification”. It’s not being perfect; we won’t be perfect until heaven. But since we’re forgiven, we live out that forgiveness by becoming like the One we love–Jesus Christ.
What Day-by-Day Sanctification Looks Like
It looks like reading the Word, not just a devotional. It means praying. It means listening. It means making good choices during your day for your own holiness and in loving others. (INCLUDING your enemies. You don’t get a pass because you can’t stand someone; no Christian does.)
It looks like being part of a community of faith. For most believers, that’s church. If you are in a country where the church is persecuted, or you work on Sundays, or you’re an invalid, God understand. He’ll still provide you with a worshiping community even if it’s not Sunday morning church.
One way to think about and practice sanctification (becoming more like Christ) are what the church calls “spiritual disciplines”. You’re probably doing a lot of them already. Richard Foster in Celebration of Discipline identifies the classic classic spiritual disciplines of the Church:
The inward disciplines
Meditation
Prayer
Fasting
The outward disciplines
Simplicity
Solitude
Submission
The corporate disciplines
Confession
Worship
Guidance
Celebration
The spiritual disciplines aren’t meant to make you feel guilty. They’re meant to make you strong, and more like Christ every day. I teach these disciplines as the framework of the Christian devotional/inward life, and the foundation of the great adventure the Lord is calling you to!