"No Sir! Uhuh!"
EPISODE 171
Understand Spiritual Disciplines
Introducing the Bible Geeks book club! This week we reflect on spiritual disciplines like Bible meditation, prayer, fasting, confession, and service, as we discuss Richard J. Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. We start by anchoring the discussion in our imitation of Christ, as his disciples. Then we go Flyin’ Through the Book, touching briefly on all twelve disciplines Foster encourages. It’s a conversation that raises topics from simplifying our possessions to what happens when we worship together. As the author says in closing, “The classical Disciplines of the spiritual life beckon us to the Himalayas of the Spirit. Now we stand at timber line awed by the snowy peaks before us. We step out in confidence with our Guide who has blazed the trail and conquered the highest summit.” Let’s start climbing!
Takeaways
The Big Idea: We can become more like Jesus by imitating his habits.
This Week's Challenge: Spend some time reading and reflecting on the spiritual disciplines.
Episode Transcription
I got to the section on simplicity and when he talks about giving up coffee, I was like no, sir Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Bible Geeks weekly podcast this is episode 171 I'm Bryan Schiele I'm Ryan Joy and thanks so much everyone for tuning in keen observers of the podcast might realize that at this very moment We are releasing the episode a day maybe even more than a day late It's hard to say at this point There were some wild circumstances that brought this about and I will just reference one of Ryan's recent sermons Living water as he presented it on YouTube. There's a link in the show notes Just go watch that and you will see exactly why we are late publishing this episode It involves a helicopter a flash flood and me getting stuck at a resort with my wife on our 20th anniversary So thanks for your patience Ryan. That was a wild time. Yeah literally an act of God as they call it idiomatically Just adjusted some things and we're rolling with it and everything's good and speaking of wild rides By the way, we are in the midst of the Bible bracket going on right now famous figures of faith and clearly There are a lot of upsets going on. - Barnabas! - Oh, I know, Barnabas, poor Barnabas. But there are a lot of people there on Facebook and Instagram, people talking about how they cannot believe what has transpired here in at least the first two rounds of voting. Thank you so much. It's been so cool to see everybody get involved in that. - It has been so much fun. And yeah, some Cinderella stories, just like the regular tournament. So, it's good. - Yeah, let's get into this episode though, which is the Bible Geeks Book Club. We're doing this thing for the very first time. And I think before we get into this book and talking about the book, let's actually start with Jesus because that's what we always do here on the show. The book we're gonna cover is actually about spiritual disciplines. And we'll talk obviously a lot more about that in a little bit, but how could a study of these kinds of disciplines train us to be more like Jesus? I guess that's the question to kick this thing off. - It's a good question. And let me give two ways that practicing disciplines can train us to be like Jesus. First of all, being a disciple means learning to do what Jesus did. And Jesus practiced spiritual disciplines as a mainstay of his life. He had these practices of obedience and devotion to God, these activities that we imitate. So whether he was with people, serving them or praying with them, discussing the word with them or off by himself, talking to the father, maybe meditating on quotes from Deuteronomy and declaring them to Satan as he did in Matthew four. These are practices that he engaged in. And so we are trying to be like our savior, like our teacher. But secondly, the whole goal of a Christian spiritual discipline is to become more like Jesus. You know, when I pray and I study and I serve, I sing, I confess, I meditate, all of these things, I place myself on the potter's wheel and I invite God to shape me. That's what we do whenever we meditate on scripture, right? That's what we do when we're praying or doing any of these things, saying, "Go to work, Lord, because I know as I draw near to you, you'll draw near to me as I work with fear and trembling. It is," as Philippians 2 says, "You who works and wills for your good pleasure in me." So when we read the gospel, I mean, I just get this picture of Jesus that leaves me wanting to be like him. He brought grace to every interaction. He speaks and acts with this unhurried depth and love. And so I'm drawn to these disciplines because I just want to do what he did and to be shaped like him. I mean, I think that's the essence of the disciplines really is Jesus, who Jesus was and what he did in his life here, who he continues to be. - You're right on. I mean, I think it's modeling our lives after Jesus. I think the final paragraph of the book that we're actually gonna talk about here in a few seconds illustrates this kind of nicely when he says, "The classical disciplines of the spiritual life beckon us to the Himalayas of the spirit." I mean, that's kind of a cool way to think about it. Standing at the base of this huge mountain that we have to now overcome. And he says, "Now that we stand at the timberline, awed by the snowy peaks before us, we step out in confidence with our guide who has blazed the trail and conquered the highest summit." I may not have ever climbed this mountain before. I may not have ever put these things into practice in my life, but I'm following a guide who's done it all and who's done it all perfectly. And like you said, how Jesus incorporated all of these spiritual disciplines into his own life. I can trust him knowing that, yes, he did all of these things, but he did all these things perfectly and he created all these things. So clearly all the things we're gonna talk about here are really worth our consideration because Jesus did them. And if Jesus was willing to do them, I should be willing to do them too, walking and following in his footsteps. - I love it. Hey, let's set out on the Himalayas. Let's start climbing Everest here spiritually. (laughing) - All right, so that's maybe gonna lead us into our Bible Geeks Book Club here, the very first installment that we've ever had. ♪ Take a look, it's in a book ♪ ♪ A reading rainbow ♪ ♪ A reading rainbow ♪ ♪ A reading rainbow ♪ - I love that you didn't show that clip to me first. That's awesome. - It's perfect, yeah, okay. So the book that we're reading, what is the book? It is Celebration of Discipline. What is this whole book about? It's a celebration of spiritual disciplines or practices that should mark every believer's life. It's kind of what we were talking about in that intro, how Jesus did all these things, practiced all these things, and we should want to do them too. And the author covers really a lot of different disciplines here. He starts with internal disciplines, things that we do that are private to us and maybe nobody ever sees them, outward disciplines that people will see, and then he talks about corporate disciplines, or I guess I think of it more like community disciplines, things that we do with each other or for each other. And so this is a book that I've read a lot of times, almost every year since I think you introduced it to me like maybe a decade ago, it's short. It's only about 300 pages roughly. You can probably read it in an afternoon. It is dense though, so I wouldn't recommend doing that. Super practical, not very prescriptive. I mean, he's very careful not to over emphasize and push these kinds of practices that he does talk about. He gets really to the nitty gritty of some things, things like prayer and fasting and submission and worship and a whole lot more. That's really what the book is about at a high level. - Yeah, so Richard J. Foster wrote it in 1978 And it has been updated and reprinted a lot since then. That's the year after I was born. This book is as old as I am. - Wow. - He has a Quaker background. He has this passion you can just see for the devotional Christian classics. And as you can see as you read it, I mean already in the statement you read about the Himalayan summit that we're gonna climb, you can see this passion, this desire to draw nearer to God and to learn some answers and some practices for how to keep moving forward. And that really comes across in the book. - Yeah, I mean, I guess it was our first book in the Bible Geeks Book Club. And as an easy on-ramp for somebody looking to grow in these areas, I think this book really provides a lot of practical how-to nitty gritty details on things that maybe we don't talk about as often or in as much detail. But obviously, as with any other religious book, even with podcasts like ours, people make mistakes and people are wrong and people's conclusions aren't perfect. Despite maybe Foster's kind of idea about things and his take on things, I do think he takes a really refreshing look at some of these areas. - Absolutely, I wanna talk for a minute about the basic attitudes we wanna bring to reading any book. Of course, usually whenever we get into a book, it's really one of 66 books in our Bible and it's right in our name, Bible Geeks. And so reading something or listening to a podcast, for instance, that is not all inspired words, you wanna bring some discernment. I think you wanna mine for gold and just bring that Berean attitude from Acts 17 of searching the scriptures ongoingly daily to see if these things are so. Those Bereans had this openness to what Paul was gonna say, even if it conflicted with what they'd heard before, They had this eagerness to learn, but they weren't just going to swallow everything like the Athenians. They wanted to test it and check it out and see, is this from God? And that's what we want to do. I think if I wanted, like you were suggesting I could, yeah, but my way through this whole book where not everything is said the way I would say it. But instead I found a lot of treasure and growth by listening for that gold. And so I would definitely say someone who isn't anchored in their faith yet, maybe I would be a little more cautious about recommending it. But if you let scripture be your anchor in a reading like this, and you just pull out all the good stuff, I think you'll be blessed by it. - Yeah, for sure. Let's just transition this whole thing into a, I don't know, I guess a segment within a segment here. Let's go to flying through the book. - I feel the need. - The need for speed. So nested segments are never something that we've done before, but now we are going to, within the Bible Geeks Book Club, we are going to fly through this book. And so let us think for just a little bit about the forward and the introduction to this book. My version of this book was Foster's 20th anniversary version. And so he wrote a forward to kind of explain the genesis of where these things came from. And actually funny to think about that was back in the 90s. And he talks about some of the experiences he had when he was writing it in the forward, he had people praying for him and helping him out and even one really cool story about how somebody demonstrated this discipline of confession as basically he was asking somebody to pray for him and this guy instead of praying for him right off the bat started confessing things to him and the end of the whole conversation basically asked him hey are you sure you want me to pray for you which kind of I think opened up his eyes to maybe some of the parts of of this book that we're about to read. So the spiritual disciplines, he begins in the introduction after the foreword, talking about the need for depth. And this is actually a quote, I think that you have latched onto and really run with, I think you even referenced it not too long ago, a few episodes back. "Superficiality is the curse of our age," he says. "The doctrine of instant satisfaction "is a primary spiritual problem." And he says, "The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people or gifted people, but for deep people. And that's really cool. Deep spiritual devotion, it's just for regular people. It's not for scholars. But I think though, sadly, we often have trouble connecting with a lot of the things that he's gonna talk about here, particularly like fasting. There are things that in the Bible, as they were so frequently practiced, that the Bible really didn't need to talk about the details of how to do a lot of these things. And Foster makes that point. He's using this book to explain and draw out some conclusions of things that people back in the first century probably just knew offhand. They knew it because they'd always been doing it. And so this book is a refresher in some of these ideas and how to practice these things. He does also, though, a really good job trying to explain how we find the balance in these practices. They're not going to earn us anything in terms of, you know, doing all of these things are going to rack up credit in God's eyes. but they do, I think, put us in the best possible position for God to create within us something new. And he likens it to a farmer. He's done all this work. He's cultivated the soil. He's put the seed in the ground. And God is the one who takes care of the growth at that point. It's not that we're trying to just do amazing things and have all of this credit and think that we're just so great as people. Really, it's just allowing God to do something within us. And I think that's the focus of the introduction in part. And then finally, I think he closes out the introduction by talking about not weaponizing these things. The idea of weaponizing disciplines like this or practices like this can be so easy, like, oh, well, I fast this way and that person fasts that way, so they must be doing it wrong. That's really not the focus here. If we view them as purely actions that we do externally, I think we risk becoming like the Pharisees and thinking that practicing these things is the end all be all. And that's not the focus, it's really an inward transformation that he's trying to get us to see here. - Yeah, they're not achievements. - Exactly. - They're not to pray for an hour or to fast or something. These are ways of putting ourselves in the path of God's grace, putting ourselves on the potter's wheel or the soil, like you said. There's so much in that introduction. - I know, right? - That story about that guy that confessed all his sins to him whenever he was just asking him to pray for him and it's affected me a lot through the years, just that one little story. And that leads nicely into the inward disciplines, which is part one here of the book. These are things that are practiced generally by ourselves as we try to develop in our time alone with the Lord. And the first one is meditation, which is really an antidote to the noise and distraction our lives. We have so much going on. He quotes Carl Jung saying, "Hurry is not of the devil, it is the devil." Maybe an overstatement, but man, that is so true. We just can't slow down and reflect on God's word and pray to him, that kind of thing. When we're running from place to place and there's noise around us and we're constantly turning the radio, the podcast on or whatever, unless it's this podcast wherein there's a lot of room for God to work. So the idea is we need to let the word sink into us as he says, listening to God's word, reflecting on God's works, rehearsing God's deeds, ruminating on God's law. And he distinguishes this from other forms of meditation. He calls it Eastern meditation. I think he means because Bible meditation is Eastern, It's like it's near Eastern as opposed to far Eastern. But all those kinds that you think about, it's about detachment and emptying your mind. You think of a lot of Buddhist practices or mindfulness practices and Bible meditation, which is not about emptying, but about filling ourselves with God. There is a sense of detaching from other entanglements, but we're attaching ourselves to God. Be still and know that I am God and really reflecting on who God is. on the Word of God. And he talks about using our imagination to let the imagery of scripture, to let these ideas have power in us. One of my favorite sections. Yeah, I love that section. It's yeah, the sanctified imagination. Yep. And I love that too. He gives some suggestions on how to get started on posture, on finding a place of silence. But the point here is to hear God's Word and obey Him, spend time and reflecting, praying, and praying, of course, is a discipline of its own, which is the next one that he talks about, which he calls the central discipline, because as he says, "To pray is to change." Which is great, I love that. It lets you know he's not talking about the Pharisee praying in the temple. It's not just words coming out that are directed loosely towards God. It's realizing who you are, who God is, humbly showing up in God's throne room, not with a list of demands, but with this will to yield to God, to pray God's will into the world. He quotes someone as saying that prayer is to religion as new research is to science. That was really cool. He doesn't give an explanation for what he means by that, but I think what that means is it's the entry point for new openings for life, for discovery, for that power to propel us forward, like science is propelled forward by each new discovery, we find that lifeblood in our time with God in praying to him. And he encourages a lot of different kinds of prayers, but really encourages us to start by praying for others and focus on small things at first. He says, grandma's had that rheumatoid arthritis for 20 years and that's our tendency is just to pray about that. But there's real wisdom and power in learning to notice small things and start there praying for the small things. And so then he goes into fasting, which I found really helpful because like you said, I had no background with this and he gives some helpful ways to get started. I mean, he talks about all the like practical stuff of a juice fast or where to get started, on what time to start and what to think about whenever you're on your lunch break and you're not eating, but you can use that time. But he also of course grounds it in a lot of the biblical background of fasting and emphasizes that it's a voluntary act, it's not a command. In the Old Testament, there was only one day that it was commanded, and that was on the day of atonement. And in the New Testament, it's not commanded at all. We see examples of it, and we recognize that there is value in it, and of course, both testaments. And then the last discipline that he talks about inwardly is study, and this is the discipline that's most natural to me, most rooted in me from an early age, not surprising that there's a lot that I would want to say about this that he doesn't say, but I really love how he emphasizes the way our careful reading needs to shape our worldview. And too often it's the other way around. Our worldview shapes how we read, but we need to let our minds be shaped. Just like our hearts are shaped by meditation on God's word, our minds are shaped, our thinking, way of looking at everything is shaped by carefully thinking through what God is saying to us in the Bible, but I also appreciate his emphasis on reading other classic books of faith, other Christian devotional classic books, contemplative classics, different things besides the Bible. And I've done that, and I think both of us have done that some in the years since reading this and found that helpful. It's just really hard to justify and make time for sometimes when there's always more to learn from the Bible. And so you make room for it maybe next to the bedside table right before bed or whatever, just to have something else brought in. But those are the inward disciplines and then he moves on to those outward disciplines. Yeah. So he begins with simplicity, which this was about the time when I first read this book where I started to squirm. It is a challenge. He talks about this inward expression of simplicity and how it frees us from worry. And he says that freedom from anxiety is characterized by three inner attitudes. If what we have, we receive as a gift. And if what we have is to be cared for by God, and if what we have is available to others, then we will possess freedom from anxiety. And in practice here, he lays out 10 controlling principles. And these are all just super basic things. I like the first three that he lays out here where he talks about buying things for their usefulness. And then he says that rejecting anything, creating addiction within us, which that's a super hard one, by the way. And then number three, developing the habit of giving things away. So you can see just right off the bat, even before you get into all 10 of these controlling principles of simplicity, that they're all really focused on helping us have a better perspective on our stuff. And so he moves on from simplicity to talk about solitude, which I think one of the first times I read this was when I was by myself. And so this also resonated with me pretty well. He talks about heart solitude and outward solitude. Clearly you could be around other people, but feeling isolated, or even you could be all by yourself out in the middle of nowhere, but not really alone, not centered or quiet or still. So he talks about a focus on silence in connection with solitude, how silence and solitude are almost interchangeable here. And I love how he refers to our need for words and how we use our words to manage and control other people. But he says, if we're silent, who will take control? And he says, God will take control, but we will never let him take control until we trust him. Silence is intimately related to trust. which is a kind of a cool way of thinking about that. He talks about practical solitude. He says to take advantage of the little solitudes throughout the day. I think he even talks about developing a quiet place for us to be like, find a chair where that chair is the place where you sit quietly. And everyone knows that when you're sitting in that chair, you are quiet, which is, you obviously did not have as many kids as you have, but who knows? And so he says to try to do things without having to explain them, which man, that is a really hard one. He says to go a whole day without using words. And then he says to withdraw sometime during the year or maybe even periodically throughout the year to just reorient yourself and set new goals and things like that, just time to be alone. And he goes on to talk about submission. Again, all of these things are in our outward disciplines that people see. So they see us being simple, they see us being alone. They'll also see us being submissive. And so he talks about the difference between submission and self-denial and how these things are interrelated with each other. And they set us free really from having to have things our own way. And that is such a problem, right? Like we all wanna have things our own way. We're all very particular about certain things. And when we're submissive, when we deny ourselves, we let other people have their way. And as Christ demonstrated to us, that is really what he teaches us all throughout his life. He talks about submitting to each other and submitting to our government and how far we go in those things. He's going to talk about a lot more practical steps in terms of submission, I guess, in the next section in service when he talks about that. But he does lay out here the order that we should have in submission, that we submit to God first, then we submit to the scriptures, we submit to our family, we submit to our neighbors, to the body of Christ in the church, we submit to those people who are broken and in need of our help, and also to the world. And then finally, the last chapter in the outward disciplines, he talks about service. I love this one. He talks about the ministry of the towel. How as obviously Jesus got down on his knees, put the towel around him and washed his disciples feet, told them to go do that as well. There is quite a danger though in self-righteous service where we want to make a big deal about our work and we want to focus on the results and show people how awesome we are. humility and real service is the better way. As he talks about here, freely chosen to be stepped on. That's kind of an interesting way to think about it. Like you're not just being taken advantage of. You're letting people take advantage of you. You are allowing that to happen just like Jesus did. And so he talks about some practical ways to do this, to be hidden, do things in our service that no one ever may see the service of small things to really focus on, no, not trying to make a giant change in the world, but just doing the small things, guarding people's reputation, the service of being served, learning how to let other people find their role in service in your life, all kinds of things he talks about here. And I love this section on service as a way of finishing up our conversation about outward disciplines, 'cause that is sometimes the best way of reaching out is serving other people. - Yeah, and I feel like where those inward disciplines are really about shaping our thinking and our life to be our heart, to be more like God's. These all kind of feel like ways of having little deaths. (both laughing) You know, dying to yourself over and over again and all these different ways so that we can live. Yeah, the one who would save his life is the one who gives it away. And in acts of service, we're giving ourselves away. Like you said, this idea of freely choosing to be stepped on. That's where joy is found is, no one is taking advantage of me. I'm not a martyr, you can't take my coat and my tunic when I'm giving you more than you're trying to steal from me, you know? And it's really a beautiful way of thinking about it. So where we're shaping ourselves inwardly, it's like those first ones are being, these start to be doing ways of shaping our being. - Yeah, these are definitely a transition into the doing aspect of it. - Right, and then the third part, the corporate disciplines, or like you said, the community disciplines are things we do together. So now that relational element is emphasized even more. And those are confession, worship, guidance and celebration. So he starts with confession and he really grounds the discussion of confession in Jesus' death. He says the redemptive process Jesus brings is the ground upon which we can know that confession and forgiveness are realities that transform us. Without the cross, the discipline of confession would be only psychologically therapeutic, but it is so much more. It involves an objective change in our relationship with God and a subjective change in us. Confession is where we come out of hypocritically hiding our sins and pretending they aren't real and remove the artifice and build our bonds with each other. But more importantly, heal spiritually. I mean, there's real spiritual healing as we settle into the fact of our forgiveness sitting with a brother, as we share with each other. This is something that is true about me and I'm ashamed of it. I hate it, but this is something that is, is part of my story and letting it go and knowing you have God's forgive us so much power in somebody else sitting with you and loving you as these things are out in the open. And I do think he goes a little too far in a few points on this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the force of his argument for confessing to one another just comes naturally from James five without saying believers have the authority to forgive sins from John 20, 23, which to me, as I was listening to it, really carried that idea of Roman Catholic priests authority or perceived authority and confession. But the confession discussion definitely had as much impact on me as the fasting discussion or the meditation discussion. And then he goes into worship and he rightly explains worship as our response to the Father's love. I think he calls it the Father's overtures of love. He says, singing, praying, praising all may lead to worship, but worship is more than any of them. And I think that's totally true. I don't really love his conclusion from that, that we need not be overly concerned with the question of a correct form for worship. I may be taking him out of context there, but you know, I think that God wants us to worship him the way he says, but this idea of, hey, don't get so caught up in the forms that you miss, the heart of the thing is come to God and make him your first priority in life and run to his presence again and again. And I think this chapter beautifully captures that idea. I loved his suggestions for private preparation before a public worship service. He says, "When the people of God meet together, There often comes a sense of being gathered into one mind becoming of one accord. But I've certainly seen the truth of that. It's just so important to me that we see our assemblies as a special moment of grace that we shared collectively in God's presence. So that goes into guidance and he quickly moves from the guidance God gives us individually in scripture to of course, his corporate disciplines. So he encourages groups of people to fast, pray, and worship together until they have discerned the mind of the Lord. And he speaks to the contribution each member of a church can make. We each see a piece of a puzzle. We each bring a different gift and perspective. And so as we kind of seek the will of the Lord together, you know, what should we as a church be putting our focus in this year? Where do we need to take our next step? great powerful questions we might think about. Where are we lacking? What do we need to emphasize? Who should we be reaching out to? Whatever it is, seeking it together. You know, I certainly don't see us looking for a new vision from heaven like John received from Patmos. There's so much wisdom in praying and asking for guidance in community and then talking about it as a circle of God's people. Just trying to figure out together how do we need to grow? How do we individually and how do we collectively need to move forward? And so that leads to the very last discipline, celebration. It starts the chapter with this quote from Augustine of Hippo, "The Christian should be an Alleluia from head to foot." And so that's the kind of joy that he brings to this chapter. And to become joyful, he invites us to obedience. Just like meditation is about obedience and submission and each of these is about obedience. Celebration is about obedience and it's really insightful that he places the chapter at the end because as he says, "We will not know genuine joy until there is a transforming work within us. Many people try to come into joy far too soon. Often we try to pump up people with joy when in reality nothing has happened in their lives." I love this part. So true. "God has not broken into the routine experiences of their daily existence." It's not to say there isn't joy and just salvation and knowing that you're saved, but your joy grows as you grow in your knowledge of the Lord. And so it's such good counsel, not to rush joy, not to force joy or pretend to have joy. He says, our children watch us bless the food and promptly proceed to gripe about it. Blessings that are not blessings. One of the things that nearly destroys children is being forced to be grateful when they are not grateful. If we pretend an air of celebration, our inner spirit is put in contradiction. And then I thought I could close this with a kind of teaser for the what's good series that we just did. He says, if we think we will have joy only by praying and singing Psalms, we will be disillusioned. But if we fill our lives with simple good things and constantly thank God for them, we will be joyful. That is full of joy. And what about our problems when we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems. The decision to set the mind on the higher things of life is an act of the will. So that is where we'll end up this overview of celebration and of these disciplines in the book. It's so full. And so yeah, maybe not flying through the book, maybe meandering slowly through the book as we've done. Trudging up Mount Everest? to climb Mount Everest, yeah, no doubt. Let's get into our last segment here on the episode, and that is our reach out question. ♪ Reach out, reach out and touch someone ♪ So next week we're gonna dive into some of the good stuff that we wanna apply from the book. This isn't really the end of this conversation, this was just an overview, but was there anything that you had difficulty understanding here in the book, or you just disagreed with outright? I know there's gonna be a lot of stuff. We could probably spend the next 45 minutes talking about all the things we disagreed with here. What do you think here in terms of things that you struggled with in this book? - Definitely, this book has been such an impact on me and I think the thrust of all of the main points are just really good. Reading it with a wider audience than just me in mind for this exercise here as we do the book club, there were a few places I thought, ooh, I wish he had left that sentence out. Really, yeah, there was quite a few of those. If I gave my redacted version of the celebration they're disciplined, there'd be like a CIA document or something. For example, I think there's a whole conversation to unpack about hearing God's voice inside you apart from scripture. - That and the miraculous gifts that he references a lot. - Yeah, and I think there's a lot to it. You know, a good friend told me he got stuck on this idea and couldn't go on reading the book. And you know, so it's just definitely an area that we could unpack listening deeply for God I didn't even really think of it that much the first time I read it because I didn't think of it that way. I mentioned some thoughts on confession. He also says some things about tongues. You brought up miracles. I do believe God continues to do. I mean, what's a miracle? It's a mighty work. I think God is working mightily today. He's healing people. He's doing great works in answers to prayers based on passages like Acts 8, Hebrews 2. I just don't see miraculous gifts resting on individuals in the same way they did on apostles and those they laid hands on. And then I wanted this, like you said, there's a lot we could go to, but I want to bring up a conversation we had while we were both reading the book the first time a decade ago. Wow. I remember clearly several conversations we had about this book. I remember this one that we had in a yogurt place by where we used to live. And we were talking about, I have these more detailed than anybody needs, but I just like I'm saying, I see it so clearly. This was just such a moment. I really appreciated your perspective on just how you approach the book and just like really drinking in the good stuff and I was wrestling with whether the introduction promoted a form of Calvinism's this I'm not gonna go into Calvinism but whether it was saying our righteousness is fully from God and all kinds of things that you could get into the weeds with here from that and you just really helped me to find new ground as you've explained what you saw there and just finding basically a more secure footing on God's work in us generally and how our choices Open the way for God to work in us and transform us I love the picture of how we place ourselves in the path of God's grace And I just think it's such a beautiful idea. That's the central idea of these Disciplines is what do we do that allows us to take one step towards God so God can take? 999 steps towards us and close that 1000 step difference it's really neat picture. What about you? Did you what did you find here that you struggled with or didn't understand or disagreed with I got to the section on simplicity And when he talks about giving up coffee, I was like no, sir But no seriously though. I think you know, like you said throughout the book There are some basic issues with Foster's position on how God communicates with us and the role of miracles and prophecy And speaking in tongues and yeah, you did a good job at really covering a lot of that stuff But I think aside from that just maybe in terms of the structure of the book I wish he would have maybe talked more about the Sections themselves because he talked about each of the disciplines quite eloquently But like maybe not about how the inward discipline leads to the outward discipline leads to the corporate discipline You know those kind of things, you know in in a broader picture about how these things all fit together But even beyond that maybe just the way that he talks. I feel like I have whiplash Reading his writing in general because on one hand he is just like very practical like super fundamental Let me tell you about what juice to drink after you, you know Make it to day five of your fast or whatever and it's like, oh, yeah This is great. And then all of a sudden like on the other hand He's like quoting all these classical writers often in a way that just seems so like high-minded and scholarly to me Is this the same guy like he all of a sudden switches from like super lofty to like super super practical on one hand He's telling us that any person in the whole world should be able to do all of these things things and then he's giving us like a list of books to read and people to read that like I've never heard any of these names before and I guess I might have appreciated just a little bit more of a down-to-earth without all of the like high theological you know references to a lot of these Christian classics and stuff honestly if they were like 75% fewer quotes from Augustine of Hippo or Teresa of Avila or Thomas a campus I probably would have been fine but maybe Maybe that's just a stylistic preference. - Yeah, I mean, you know, we obviously lean very heavily in everything we're doing on just going back to scripture and everything else is an illustration of scripture as opposed to finding some authority in those classics. Not that they don't have wisdom, they do as people who are trying to apply scripture and picked up things and have something to share. But yeah, I'm with you there. That was a minor quibble for sure. And obviously I think there are some issues here that you probably need to steer clear of or at least be very prepared for as you read this book. But let's get into maybe our final conversation here as we close out this episode. And that is a challenge. Yes, we do in fact have one today. - I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me. - So the challenge for this week is to spend some time reading and reflecting on these spiritual disciplines. and I think maybe is an app challenge for right about now. Thinking about these things as we've kind of outlined them and laid them all out, like what resonates with you? - Yeah, you won't regret learning how to pray better, thinking about meditation, fasting, study. I'll just go through the list, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, to learn to serve confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. And this is not by the way a comprehensive list of spiritual disciplines. this is how he grouped them, but there's a lot more we could add to this. But all the, any practice that draws you closer to God is a spiritual discipline. And so, yeah, we encourage you to take it on, keep growing in these practices. All right. So this has been our conversation part one of two here on this Bible Geeks book club, where we're talking about celebration of discipline by Richard J. Foster. Thanks so much everyone for tuning into the Bible Geeks podcast. you can find us on our website at biblegeeks.fm. You can also find Jonas for this episode in your podcast player of choice or there at biblegeeks.fm/171. Tune into the next episode, we're gonna continue this conversation. And in two weeks, hopefully Lord willing, we will be putting our Bible bracket review episode out there. Thanks everybody for voting in that. Please continue to do that. And until next week, may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom. [MUSIC PLAYING]