Month: May 2007

I’m hesitant to direct any to another blog for fear that those thus directed will assume that I am somehow an avid supporter of the author’s every view. So, first, the disclaimer: I’m not.

That said, I read a post this morning that reflects helpfully on a pattern that I see too much in my own life, and which I would like to change. That is, I spend all my time with Christians, and primarily with Christians with whom I am in substantial agreement. According to Scot McKnight, this is not at all a healthy thing.

What happens when we sit at table all the time with those who are just like us? What happens when we are at church, at breakfast and lunch, in committees and at work with folks just like us? Christians and social justice workers and business folks each have this tendency — it is natural and easy for this to happen. But what happens to us when we spend all our time with the same kinds of people?

Read his post here.

In a previous post, I explained how one could subscribe to the sermons of HPC via podcast or RSS feed. I also mentioned how this could apply to this or any other blog. It is far easier to have the blog posts delivered automatically to one’s computer when they are available than searching for them every day to see if anything new has been posted.

In this vein, I have come across an amusing video which should help. It is called “RSS in Plain English“. Click on it, watch it, enjoy it, and if RSS is new to you, maybe learn something.

Some recent discussions have reminded me how much confusion there is regarding where to place a spiritual discipline like personal worship or private prayer into a life of grace.

We must distance ourselves from any understanding of spiritual disciplines which turns them into acts which gain us spiritual merit or which in and of themselves mark us as holy. The fruit of the spirit is ‘love, joy, and peace’, not ‘quiet time, prayer, and grape juice’.

One can be humble, gracious, kind, and Spirit-filled, and never have a quiet time. As well, one can be daily in the word at the crack of dawn, and be full of doubt, short-tempered, and irascible. The mere fact that we have a quiet time does not mark us off as spiritual; its absence does not identify us as lost.

God blesses me way beyond what I deserve. It is such a meager understanding of God for me to think that I will be blessed today because I might have had a good quiet time. He blesses me because he chooses to do so.

Spiritual disciplines, whether public (like worship) or private (like a quiet time) do not mark us as Christians. So do they have value?

Of course they do.

I have said it so often that people will tire of it: the spiritual disciplines put us in the way of grace. If I want to be washed, I must stand in the stream. If I want to experience and grow through the work of the Holy Spirit, it is good that I put myself where he has shown himself to work. If the Holy Spirit nurtures faith through the ministry of the scriptures, then it is good that I often put myself where I am exposed to that word.

I hunger for the grace of God. I long to be changed by him. I long to hear the voice of my Savior speaking to me. I don’t know where else to go to hear that or to find him than at those places where he has promised to meet with me and to speak.

I want us to view the disciplines, such as a quiet time, neither as badges of holiness nor duties to endure. I want us to look at them as opportunities. I want us to see them as opportunities to see the window into heaven cracked just a bit so that we might see Jesus. We should hunger for discipline not because it makes us holy, but because there we come to know our savior.

I am very interested in comments on these thoughts.