Kingdom Comeনমুনা

PRAYER:

God, I want to be more like you. Help me find ways to connect and grow with you.

READING:

Have you ever seen the movie The Karate Kid? It’s the story of a high school kid named Daniel who is struggling with some classic 1980s-style bullies. Daniel soon discovers that the janitor of his apartment complex, Mr. Miyagi, is a karate expert, and Daniel sees the perfect solution for his problem. Mr. Miyagi agrees to train Daniel and sets him to work waxing cars, painting fences, and sanding floors. Daniel works for days doing these exhausting and repetitive tasks. He finally gets frustrated and lashes out at his new sensei about how he’s doing all this work without learning anything about karate. But Mr. Miyagi reveals to Daniel that the repetitive motions he has been doing for days have been teaching him karate! Mr. Miyagi attempts to strike, and Daniel finds he has developed the strength and muscle memory for all sorts of blocking motions that were well beyond his ability just days earlier.

The Karate Kid serves as a great illustration of how spiritual practices work in our lives. We read about love, joy, peace, patience, and many other amazing things we want in our lives. But taking hold of these things isn’t something we can achieve through direct effort. We can’t simply will our way into joy, at least not for long. So how do we, as Paul wrote to Timothy in the passage above, “train… for godliness?” We apply our effort toward spiritual practices. 

Spiritual practices are the Jesus equivalent to waxing cars and sanding floors. It may not seem like you’re accomplishing anything when you spend time each day to quiet yourself before God to read the Bible and pray. But one day, when you’re hit with an unexpected circumstance, you’ll be surprised to find you don’t react the way you used to. Instead, you’ll catch yourself handling the circumstance with patience—and still feeling peace in the midst of it.

Just like physical training and exercise, spiritual practices enable us, over time, to do things that were once well beyond our capabilities. And, no offense to Mr. Miyagi, but spiritual practices do far more than sharpen and strengthen our natural abilities. Rather, they help us tap into the power of the Holy Spirit, who works in us to cultivate more and more of the characteristics of Jesus.

Author Dallas Willard describes spiritual practices, which he refers to as “disciplines,” this way: “The disciplines are activities of mind and body purposefully undertaken, to bring our personality and total being into effective cooperation with the divine order. They enable us more and more to live in a power that is, strictly speaking, beyond us, deriving from the spiritual realm itself.”

So, when you’re tempted to skip out on that daily prayer time and Scripture reading, just remember the words of your teacher: “wax on, wax off.”  Just kidding… the other teacher: “If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit” (John 15:5). 

REFLECTION:

Here are a few selected spiritual practices that have been helpful to Jesus followers over the centuries. They’re divided into two categories, practices of engagement and practices of restraint. Look through the list and consider one new practice you could begin as a way of connecting with God.

Practices of Engagement 

These practices help us by adding new rhythms of connection with God into our regular routines for the purpose of drawing closer to him.

 

• Bible Reading: Spending time reading and reflecting on Scripture to allow God to speak, guide, and teach us. This includes various approaches to reading, studying, reflecting on, and even meditating on the words of Scripture.  
• Worship: Celebrating and expressing gratitude for who God is and what he has done. This can be done privately or corporately in worship services. Worship often includes, but is not limited to, musical expression.  
• Prayer: Talking with God about what we’re experiencing. Prayer can include worship, as described above, intercession (praying for the needs of others), confession, and many other elements. There is no one way to pray, just as there is no one way to communicate with people we have relationships with. Prayer is ultimately about creating an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual connection with our heavenly Father so we can better know and trust his will.  
• Generosity: Our love for God is meant to overflow in love for others. One of the ways we demonstrate that love is by being generous with our time, energy, and resources.

Practices of Restraint 

These practices are ways of denying ourselves something we want or need to make space to focus on and connect with God. Essentially, they help us connect with God by subtracting things from our regular routines.  

 

• Solitude: Pulling away to be alone with God and focus on him and what he wants to say to us.   
• Fasting: Going for a set period without food, or some other desire or need, to better focus on prayer and connection to God.  
• Sabbath/Rest: To regularly set aside time when we will not work or focus on productivity so we may worship, rest, and recharge. God instituted Sabbath for Israel to be observed one full day each week, but the essence of Sabbath rest can be practiced for shorter periods as well.