Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth

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Dallas Willard, one of today's most brilliant Christian thinkers and the author of The Divine Conspiracy ( Christianity Today's 1999 Book of the Year), presents a way of living that enables ordinary men and women to enjoy the fruit of the Christian life. Confession is a difficult Discipline for us because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. He advocates some sound practices, but he cannot avoid throwing in some charismatic nonsense which ends up spoiling much of the batch. The inward disciplines of mediation, prayer, fasting, and study offer avenues of personal examination and change.

He offers crucial new insights on simplicity, demonstrating how the biblical view of simplicity, properly understood and applied, brings joy and balance to our inward and outward lives and 'sets us free to enjoy the provision of God as a gift that can be shared with others.Dividing the disciplines into three movements of the Spirit, Foster shows how each of these areas contribute to a more balanced spiritual life.

I particularly needed to see Foster’s discussion of “true service” as not being about “results” or being a means of manipulation (pp. Foster's list of twelve disciplines, I've learned, is certainly not exhaustive, but they are an excellent place to start in the process of becoming firmly rooted in the Spirit's ability to transform us into the character of Christ. We are told not to act miserable when fasting because, in point of fact, we are not miserable” (p56). To read successfully we need the extrinsic aids of experience, other books, and live discussion” (p68).

The book is inspiring and is a good reminder of the way I can have a more Christ-centered life through discipline. Pick one normal thing you do in the day and decide to turn your heart and mind towards him during it. We who have turned our lives over to Christ need to know how very much he longs to eat with us, to commune with us.