Spiritual Disciplines Your Momma Never Taught You, Part One

So I'm reading this book again - it's called Authentic Faith by Gary Thomas. Have you ever had the experience where you read a book that is very powerful, very good for you in your personal growth - yet it just wasn't the right time for you to read that book? Perhaps you were in a spiritual "valley" and nothing, not even a great book, could excite you enough to make some changes in your life. Perhaps you just weren't spiritually "ready" to understand its truths.

Well, Authentic Faith is a book like that for me. I picked this book up a couple of years ago because I had read another book of his - called Sacred Pathways - that really revolutionized how I thought of a quiet time. It was a book that revolutionized Bill Hybels of Willow Creek as well, I remember hearing about the book for the first time while listening to a tape of his from the Leadership Summit that they do every year at their church. I picked it up after hearing the tape, and it was an incredible book. The basic premise of the book is that God doesn't care how you spend time with Him, He just wants you to spend time with Him. The problem is that we are taught in churches and Christian colleges that there is one approach to doing a quiet time with God - 30 minutes of Bible study, 30 minutes of prayer - or something of that nature. That might be a formula that will help some people in their development of their relationship with God, but for others, that formula won't work, and these people won't stick with it.

Gary Thomas in his book introduces several different "pathways" that people can use to experience God. By pathways, the book doesn't mean more than one way to God - let's be clear about that right now. He encourages those who have a servant's heart to use servanthood as the pathway to connect with God. Those who are extremely gregarious and outgoing are encouraged to form a Quiet Time Group with two or three people, which makes total sense. I'm not an extroverted person, but I know people who are, and I know the struggles they have of sitting down by themselves, alone, for an hour each day in order to do a quiet time. For those kind of people, that's torture.

As for me, I found out that I'm more of a contemplative/nature pathway person. Which means that in order to have a growing quiet time with God, I need to be holed up somewhere, and I need to be able to experience the beauty of the outside. Which totally makes sense. Which is one of the reasons I struggled in my quiet time in Arizona - let's face it, Arizona (except for Flagstaff and Prescott) ain't pretty. Ever since I've moved to Ohio, my quiet time has improved considerably, because our house backs up to trees and a park, and I can sit outside each night during the summer without vaporzing from the heat (like Arizona) and spend time with God.

Anyway, this entry isn't about that book, as great as it is. It's about Authentic Faith. And the fact that I must be in a better position to understand that this is a great book. I thought as I read through each chapter, that I would give my two cents on how I think it applies to me and what I'm going to do about it. Gary Thomas, in this book, describes what he calls "authentic disciplines" that help us grow in our faith. These disciplines differ from the traditional spiritual disciplines that you usually think of because they are, for the most part, initiated outside of us. God brings them into our lives when he wills and as he wills. We can't make these disicplines happen, they happen to us.

Here's a great quote from the introduction that helps explain:

"The traditional disciplines - fasting, meditation, study, prayer and the like - are all crucial elements of building our faith, but let's be honest. They can also foster pride, arrogance, self-sufficiency, religiosity, and worse. Their benefit is clearly wort the risk, but that's why the authentic disciplines are such a helpful and vital addition; they turn us away from human effort - from men and women seeking the face of God - and turn us back toward God seeking the face of men and women. There's no pride left when God takes me through a time of suffering. There's no self-righteousness when I am called to wait. There is no religiosity when I am truly mourning. This is a spirituality that I can't control, I can't initiate, I can't bring about. All I can do is try to appreciate it and learn from it. The rest is almost always up to Him."

There are two very quick observations that I made when I turned to the first chapter to find out what the first discipline is that he talks about. The first observation is that my last journal entry was exactly what the first chapter is about. The second observation was humorously noting that the first disciplne that is brought up is one that goes against his definition of "authentic disciplines" - the first one is one that we can do before anything is done to us. He calls the first discipline "selflessness".

Here are a couple of great quotes from this chapter:

- When we're at our selfish worst, world hunger could be solved, world peace could be ushered in, and cancer could be cured - all within the space of twenty-four hours - but if our hair doesn't do exactly what we want it to, it's an awful, horrible day.

- The Christ-like life is not simply about practicing impeccable morality and overcoming temptation and faithfully performing a few spiritual disciplines. All of these were done by the Pharisees far more faithfully than any of us will ever perform them, and yet Christ himself said these religious zealots had missed God's intention. To experience Christ's joy, passion and fulfillment, we need to adopt an entirely new mindset and motivation: We are invited to join our Lord in living for the glory of the Father instead of for our own reputation, and we are called to give ourselves over to the salvation and sanctification of Christ's bride, the church, rather than to be consumed by our own welfare. This holy self-forgetfulness is the most genuine mark of true faith, the evidence of God's merciful grace in our lives.

Gary Thomas gives four examples of people who demonstrated selfless living:

1. Paul the apostle

This section of the chapter was eye-opening to me, because Thomas takes a line that Paul wrote - Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible" - and shows how radical that was, especially given Paul's background. As a Pharisee, he would have prayed everyday: "Thank You, God, that I am not a Gentile, a slave, or a woman." So for Paul to make himself a slave to everyone, to decide to be selfless, went against everything he was brought up knowing and believing. Also, even more extreme - Paul was so selfless, that in Romans 9, he was willing to forsake his own salvation - to spend eternity in hell - if it meant that his fellow Israelites could be saved. Paul took his passion for God several steps further than modern society believes is healthy. He was truly selfless.

2. Augustine

This was a great example as well. Augustine became a Christian and devoted himself to being a monk, but because he was noticed by people in high places at church, he was designated as a bishop, which led him into a very public life - the opposite of what he wanted. Yet he responded in obedience, which led him into a life of great joy and purpose, but also ultimately led him to his death. During a war by the Vandals in A.D. 427, Augustine found himself ministering to hordes of refugees from other cities who had fled due to the war. They brought sickness and disease with them and Augustine had to make a choice: did he flee the city himself (as bishop he could have abandoned his post and sought sanctuary somewhere else), or continue to minister to people? He chose the latter and during the third month of the siege, he developed a high fever from which he never recovered.

3. C.S. Lewis

Lewis, already a hero of mine, became even greater in my eyes as a result of this story. During the Second World War, Lewis took in numerous children who were fleeing London and other cities vulnerable to German bombing. Obviously, being a writer and theologian, having a bunch of kids around would be tough, especially considering having to deal with emotions due to missing their parents and such. Yet Lewis kept doing this selfless act - which ultimately would help his writing, because one of the kids grew interested in an old wardrobe and asked Lewis if, perhaps, there was anything behind it - thus becoming the impetus for The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and the other books about Narnia. Would C.S. Lewis have written these books if it weren't for his selfless act of taking in these kids? I highly doubt it.

4. Orel Hershiser

I got to see this guy pitch quite a bit, as the height of his career happened while I was going to college in Southern California. Because of his dominance during that period of baseball, younger players looked up to him and wanted to be like him. After the Dodgers spring training camp ended in 1992, a young skinny pitcher heard that he was being demoted to the minors and was obviously devestated. When his head was turned, Orel quietly slipped a ball into his bag. on the ball, Orel had written "From one big leaguer to another. See you back here soon." The young pitcher's name? Pedro Martinez, now one of the best pitchers in baseball (although he shouldn't have left the Red Sox, grrr.)

What great stories of selflessness! It inspires me to stop spending so much time thinking about me, me, me - and to focus my energy on my commitment to Jesus; and in doing so, I will naturally begin taking my eyes off of myself and begin looking at the needs of other people.

So what am I going to do about this? I think the perfect way to start demonstrating selflessness in one's own life is to do secret acts of service. God has been convicting me of this anyway lately; that all of what I do in ministry benefits myself mostly as a worship arts minister - what I do does benefit the church as well, but it still benefits me just as much. But when I do something that has no benefit other than becoming more like Jesus - those are the things that truly matter.