CLFM: tues 11.13.07

Spiritual Disciplines

-Unhurried life is key to the spiritual disciplines

1. Be intentional about time
   -Ortberg: "Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart."
   -Matt 6:21- For where your treasure is, there our heart will be also."

2. Slow down

3. Reclaim the gift of Sabbath rest

4. Be interruptible

What are spiritual disciplines
-"Any activity within our power that we engage to enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort...they are designed to help us withdraw from total dependence on the merely human or natural ....and to depends also on the ultimate reality, which is God and his kingdom." -Dallas Willard
   -an ongoing lifestyle choice
   -not an end to themselves
   -become a regular part of your routine
-Purpose: to create opportunities for God to work
-Goal: freedom to do something you can't do now
   -training for a future need

Ortberg
1. Discipline of engagement
   -Help us reconnect with the kingdom
2. Disciplines of abstinence
   -Help us remove entanglements that hold us back
omission: sinning by not doing something---use engagement
commission: sinning by doing something---use abstinence

Foster
1. Inward disciplines:
   -Meditation
   -Prayer
   -Fasting
   -Study
   -Secrecy (Matt. 6:1-6)

2. Outward
   -Simplicity
   -Solitude
     -"Solitude is the one place where we can gain freedom from the forces of society that will otherwise relentlessly mold us." -Ortberg
     -Mark 6:30-32: "He said to them, 'Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves & rest a while'"
   -Submission
   -Service
   -Chastity

3. Corporate Disciplines
   -Confession
   -Worship
   -Guidance
   -Celebration
   -Fellowship

-Why have a practice of studying the Bible
   -Col 3:16-17: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.
   -Scripture is power of God to transform and shape us
   -As you grow in reading scripture you grow in knowing the heart of God.

Five ways to read the Bible

1. Inductive Bible study method
2. Lectio divina-meditating on scripture
   -"selah" in the Pslams (means to pause....slow down)
     -Ortberg: "the goal is not to get through scripture-but to get scripture through you"
     -Pslam 18-the message
3. Discuss
4. Memorize
5. Imaginative reading?