• Celebration of Discipline

    Celebration of Discipline

    This is the classic book on the spiritual disciplines with a chapter dedicated to 12 different disciplines.  Foster describes each one in the detail and goes through some of the practical steps to putting them into practice.

  • The Spirit of the Disciplines

    The Spirit of the Disciplines

    Dallas Willard helps the reader understand how God can use the disciplines to change your life. He points out the difference between willpower and discipline and how discipline can bring about lasting change.  He categorizes the disciplines in ways the strengthen your not doing muscles and those that strengthen your doing muscle.

  • The Life You’ve Always Wanted

    The Life You’ve Always Wanted

    Ortberg calls this book, “Dallas Willard for Dumbies.” He uses some great illustrations and life stories to help make the disciplines applicable to your life.

  • The Good and Beautiful Series

    The Good and Beautiful Series

    Dallas Willard has mentioned creating a Curriculum for Christlikeness. This is James Bryan Smith’s project to surmise all that he has learned from Willard and Foster and put it into a curriculum for life.

  • Eperiential Faith Development

    Eperiential Faith Development

    Discilines are like experiential education. Taking what you think you know about God and experiencing it in real life situations.  Turning the truths you have been taught about God into a rock solid faith.

  • Peter Syndrome

    We can easily make ourselves believe we are way stronger and braver and better than we actually are. My son can spend all day pretending to slay dragons and fight monsters, but can be completely terrified when I ask him to go get something from the basement. We christains can be the same way. Thinking…

  • Giving

    Giving our resources checks to see what we are master by and what we are placing our trust in. Our we letting God be our master by being obedient to him or are we slaves to our money and the desire for more. “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one…

  • Solitude

    Solitude

    Solitude checks to see if we have made the people in our lives more important than God. Are we desperate to get back in relationship with others so we no longer have to be alone with yourself and God. Solitude helps us see yourself. There is nothing that can help us see who we really…

  • Sacrafice Shows our True Treasure

    Fasting sets aside the smaller things in life that we have made big and makes room for is to make a big deal out of God, Our everything in life. Say you haven’t made a big deal out of food. Try fasting for a day or two and then say we don’t make a big…

  • The Gift or the Giver

    We fast from something not because it is bad but because God’s gifts are so good and we can fall in love with His gifts more than the giver. For a short time we fast from one of his gifts in order to check our heart and see if we hunger for God like we…

  • Fasting as Idol Detector

    Fasting as Idol Detector

    Fasting takes truths like “Man shall not live on bread alone, but every Word that comes from  the mouth of God.” songs like, “you are more than enough for me, ” and Psalms like “there is nothing in the world I desire besides you,” and checks to see if you can actually say those words. …

  • Spiritual Beings

    Spiritual Beings

    We have many different aspects of our lives that are our seperate in some reguard, but connected and interacting with each other at the same time.  The spiritual disciplines can help each different aspect of our human being come under the control of our spirit. Fasting helps our body, specificially our appetite learn that it…

  • Locker Room

    Locker Room

    Much of our faith development in churches involves talking, strategizing, developing a plan. We talk alot about what God wants us to do. Like sitting in a locker room, but never playing the game. Most of the time we don’t even make it to practice. Spiritual disciplines are like practice. We wouldn’t expect a very…

  • Training vs. Trying

    Training vs. Trying

    Often our best answer to grow spiritually is to try harder.  We would think it crazy if someone who had never played an instrument stepped on stage trying to play a difficult piece and kept saying I will try harder.  The audience would be waiting for hours.  Dallas Willard says the Disciplines simply help us…

  • Disequalibrium

    Disequalibrium

    I have been curious about how people change. Part of my education has been spent in the camp setting learning why camp can be such an effective change agent in people’s lives.  One of the terms that I have learned is ‘disequalibrium’. This is the idea of taking people out of their comfort zone.  It…