Celebration of Discipline, Special Anniversary Edition: The Path to Spiritual Growth

This is the kind of searching prayer that should permeate our entire life experience.

We simply do not know how to go about exploring the inward life.

The Bible uses two different Hebrew words (הָגָה and שׂיחַ) to convey the idea of meditation, and together they are used some fifty-eight times.

Another form of meditation is what the contemplatives of the Middle Ages called “re-collection,” and what the Quakers have often called “centering down.”

the meditation upon Scripture, is the central reference point by which all other forms of meditation are kept in proper perspective.

To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives.

It is hard to overstate how saturated we are with the mentality of popular science.

Those who have heard the distant call deep within and who desire to explore the world of the Spiritual Disciplines are immediately faced with two difficulties. The first is philosophic.

The purpose of the Disciplines is liberation from the stifling slavery to self-interest and fear.

One word of caution, however, must be given at the outset: to know the mechanics does not mean that we are practicing the Disciplines. The Spiritual Disciplines are an inward and spiritual reality, and the inner attitude of the heart is far more crucial than the mechanics for coming into the reality of the spiritual life.