When Spiritual Disciplines Become "Commandments"

It’s 4:00 in the morning when the alarm goes off. You hate getting up at 4:00, but you do it. You are measuring spiritual growth by a strong quiet time with God – and that quiet time has to be disciplined. Discipline, it seems to you, is the ticket to true spirituality. And you are determined to be truly spiritual.
You are up, bleary eyed, reading (or attempting to read) your Bible, praying (sometimes incoherently, which is how you do most things at 4:00 a.m.), meditating (which looks occasionally like snoozing), attempting to memorize Scripture and being silent before God.
Every morning you consider yourself either a success or a failure depending on whether or not you showed up for work (spiritually speaking).
Eventually, all this may cease to be meaningful – and your deep dark secret is that you don’t know why and, in fact, are beginning to resent the spiritual disciplines.
What are the “Spiritual Disciplines”? Christians have long considered certain behaviors to be the product of Jesus living His life within believers. When we are saved by grace, not by works, God begins to produce His works in our lives (Ephesians 2:8-10). Historically, some of the habitual routines that were considered as products of being in Christ came to be called “disciplines.” Biblical evidence for spiritual disciplines includes: Prayer (Col. 4:2; 1 Thes. 5:17), Bible study (2 Tim. 2:15, 3:16), meditation (Joshua 1:8), silence before God (Psalm 46:10), worship (Psalm 29:2) and fasting (Luke 5:33-35).
God can use such spiritual disciplines in our lives, not only producing them in the first place, but using them as His tools to help us grow in grace and knowledge (2 Peter 3:18).
HOWEVER, if we’re not careful, we can allow the practice of disciplines to become legalism or “commandments” toward self-denial for self-denial’s sake, where we seek to earn God’s favor through rigorous self-denial.
Ironically, as a new Christian before you knew about any spiritual disciplines, you may have read your Bible every night. You may have prayed throughout the day. It seemed so natural – a passion – not a duty.
It was later that things began to get a little unnatural. Slowly the joy seeped out of your quiet times, while ironically, pride seeped in. You became proud of your ability to deny yourself and felt a cut above, spiritually. You were doing God a tremendous favor!
All throughout the Old Testament God continually railed against His people for doing the right things (sacrifices, festivals, etc.) with the wrong motivation. You can see how that happens. Gradually, a seismic spiritual shift can take place where you find yourself spending time with God, not in order to know Him better, but in order to fulfill a spiritual duty or obligation or commandment. It is discipline, but not for the purpose of godliness.
You may begin to see God as a demanding school teacher, checking your homework every morning. If you don’t turn it in, you get a zero for the day and go throughout the day wallowing in guilt. But when you do show up, you get your gold star and are sent to the head of the class. And sadly, you even feel that God likes this arrangement.
If we’re not careful, we can begin to see the disciplines as a way to demonstrate to God (and others) that we’re “on track”. The disciplines can become little more than a measuring stick by which we attempt to measure our spirituality.
The danger is that you can assume that you really are spiritually on track. Yet, if you read the Scriptures but don’t truly seek to listen to God, if you pray in simply a mechanical and passionless way, you can deteriorate spiritually, all the while thinking you’re making great progress.
When we view the disciplines as spiritual measuring sticks, rather than products of God’s grace that enable us to grow closer to and more like Christ, we miss the point. It’s like dating your wife or husband because you know you’re supposed to. But on you date all you do is stare into space, make small talk and glance continually at your watch wondering how long it will be until this drudgery is over. Your spouse would be neither flattered, not fooled. Sadly, God is often on the receiving end of this kind of “spiritual date.”

A Disciplined Life In Christ

The spiritual disciplines aren’t rigid rules we must follow like some complicated tax code, but the natural moving of the Holy Spirit in our lives as we seek Him. And the Spirit in turn leads us to the awareness of our union with Christ so that we can replace our old desires with a desire to seek God and serve Him first and foremost. The spiritual disciplines are designed to help us do just that. However, they are more than a scheduled spiritual pit stop with God.
Here is how I have come to view the spiritual disciplines.
I give God the best of my time (which isn’t at 4:00 a.m.). When I am thoroughly awake and ready to face the day, I sit down and read the Bible. I have read it many times, but I read it for one purpose only now: to hear my Heavenly Father speak to me. The only thing that has changed is my attitude, but that changed everything. Sometimes I read a chapter a day, sometimes two or three. Sometimes I spend two weeks on a Proverb. Sometimes what God is saying takes time for me to understand, so I wait. There is no hurry.
Instead of plowing mechanically through a laundry list of prayer requests, I begin to pray about what Jesus wants, and it gradually becomes a conversation with my Lord, something it was always supposed to be. Jesus raises a topic with me, something for me to consider from the Bible or from the latest news of the world or from my relationships with people. Prayer becomes instinctive and natural, like two people speaking with each other, both intensely involved in the conversation. I then follow up on the topic either by writing an article about it or by taking steps to correct a problem pointed out to me.
It is hard not to get legalistic about the spiritual disciplines. We tend to ask, “Have I done them?” but not “HOW have I done them?” We are used to asking whether or not we did “it” rather than did I HEAR Him? We are used to settling for “mission accomplished” rather than “relationship strengthened.”
God gives us no brownie points for mechanically going through spiritual motions. If He did, He would have praised the Pharisees instead of criticizing them – because that was their modus operandi.
The spiritual disciplines have great value when approached with a passion to grow closer to the great subject of our discipline, Christ Himself. They become empty “commandments” and even counter-productive when we look upon them as spiritual busywork for which we receive great spiritual credit.

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