I agree with your points on spiritual disciplines and how they promote spiritual growth.
The Bible talks in detail about the benefits of spiritual disciples and how they aid
spiritual growth. God even sends a helper to assist with growth towards Godliness. The
Holy Spirit stirs the believer to embrace spiritual disciples that enable one to be more
Christ-like. “The presence of the Holy Spirit causes all those in whom He resides to have
new holy hungers they didn’t have before. They hunger, for example, for the Holy Word
of God—the Bible—that they used to find boring or irrelevant.”[1] So the desire for God
brings the believer to a place where they also desire to know the word of God and the
biblical precepts that transform them into a person that more closely resembles Christ.
You point out spiritual disciplines like prayer and reading scripture in your post. This
point along with God providing the Holy Spirit to help with spiritual disciplines shows the
love Christ has for humanity. Not only does He help us with His Word, but He also gives
us a helper to foster a hunger for growth in God. Thank you for your thought-provoking
post on this matter.It is all about transforming ourselves to be more like Christ so that
we can commune with God on a greater level. Just as sin will cause a person who is
saved to progress further from God, becoming more like Christ we help us to draw
closer to God. If you go to church and look at the members of the congregation, it is like
a majority of them hit a a certain spiritual level, then plateau. They stop after committing
going to church couple times a week, Sunday school, perhaps Bible study which puts
them in church two times a week, maybe three. Churches in our nation plateau, not
because God does not want to do more, the attendants are comfortable where they are
and what they do and never step out of their comfort zone. It does take discipline to go
that extra mile for God. If everybody in the church would just commit to doing more, that
church could storm the gates of hell. Genesis 11:4-7 states, "Then they said, “Come, let
us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may
make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole
earth. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.
The Lord said, If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this,
then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and
confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”1 God said that nothing
would be impossible for them, that is a huge statement from God himself. It was
because they were in one accord, one mind, with one drive, one purpose which would
have been accomplished had God not mixed the languages to where they could not
understand each other. If everybody in the church would get on the same page and
practice the Spiritual Disciplines that Whitney spoke on, Oh my goodness, Satan would
have to retreat in a big way because nothing would be impossible for that church. I am
certain a church that accomplished basic Spiritual Disciplines over a period of time and
God is given full reign of that church, that church would see the dead raised to life,
healings, demons cast out, conversions on a massive level which would expand that
church to a mega-church because they would have no choice but to expand to hold the
new converts. I believe that church are empty because they never hear of signs and
wonders, we do not have signs and wonders because people are not dedicating
themselves to drawing nigh to God on a deeper level. When we decide to give God the
keys to all the doors of our heart which include time, which seems to be a major reason
why we are not as close to God as we can be, then we will see God manifest his power
in a deeper way and on a deeper level. The only way to become more like Christ is to let
God do in our alone time with him that can't be accomplished through the normal
church service and those type activities.
