Spiritual Disciplines

There are three spiritual disciplines in particular that God impressed on my heart from Foster’s book – meditation, prayer, and fasting.

Meditation
Meditation is what God impressed most on my heart, in particular, meditation on God’s Word. Too often I rush through reading God’s Word without calming my heart first and not thinking about what I read and processing through it afterwards. I treat it like some item that needs to be completed on a spiritual to do list.

I want to be able to hear God’s voice and obey his word. I need to grow in my “familiar friendship with Jesus” and to experience the transformation that comes with this type of fellowship and being in the presence of God. I desire to get into His Word and dwell in the Psalms about the greatness of God or find God’s promises in scripture and call upon their transforming power. I desire to put aside the noise, hurry, and crowds.

Prayer
Foster says, “listening to the Lord is the first thing, the second thing, and the third thing necessary for a successful intercession.” We are often too quick too pray. This is something I had not considered before our speaker on prayer, Sally, brought this out from Foster’s book. Sally really emphasized asking and listening to God about how to intercede for a person/situation before praying. Don’t pray until we hear from God how to pray. That night after class I had a wonderful time of asking God how to pray to different people and seeing how God revealed that to me in a very real way.

Fasting
Fasting is something I have not done before. However, God has impressed this more and more on my heart as I have been seeking His discernment on some very life-changing decisions. Fasting is something I would like to explore more of.

What am I going to do about this?
Grace asked me what I thought about our class on spiritual disciplines after Geno taught that day. I response was, “our lives would be very different if we actually did these”. I think that is so true.

I want to take time and to listen to God in meditation and prayer. I’d like to set aside 30 minutes of calm, quiet time to listen to God and write down what God is saying. I am going to spend time meditating on God’s Word, starting with the Psalms, which describe God’s glory. I am going to seek God and ask Him how he wants me to pray before I start praying. I will consider fasting as part of the process of seeking God in making major decisions.