We’ve focused for quite a while on having biblical and healthy relationships with others created in God’s image.  Now we are going to turn and look at means to have a healthy and biblical relationship with God, Himself.

We are going to do this through studying the Spiritual Disciplines.  Now, I say “discipline,” and you have a flashback to getting paddled as a toddler…or gradeschooler…or yesterday???  

But that is not the connotation that discipline should have for us.  Discipline comes from the Latin disciplina, meaning instruction or knowledge.  So, to “be disciplined” is to be made a disciple, to be taught.

The fact that these disciplines we will study are “spiritual” should not freak you out, either.  They are not ethereal spankings!  Instead, they are the biblical and traditional ways through which we are taught spiritual things, specifically, about Christ.  Our focus will not be physical discipline (like you do in basketball and golf practice), but spiritually learning how to be a Christian who finds their identity in Christ.

To attain to this “measure of stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13), we will delve into both inward and outward disciplines -

Inward:

• Bible Intake (split into Listening, Reading, Studying, Memorizing, and Meditation on Scripture)
• Journaling
• Prayer
• Fasting

Outward:

• Worship
• Evangelism
• Service
• Stewardship