Carrying on from last week’s entry, thought I would share another good question regarding spiritual formation…this one having to do specifically with spiritual disciplines.
To be sure there is much in the way of spiritualism happening in our world today, especially with new age and eastern thought penetrating our society. Yet perversions of truth don’t discount the truth. For example we don’t throw out prayer just because we see Sunni’s bloodying their backs in their annual pilgrimage of prayer and fasting.
The history of the church is replete with biblical examples and injunctions to enter into certain kinds of disciplines in our relationship with Christ. We don’t earn anything through them, but by them the Holy Spirit cultivates the Christ life within us. Most of these in fact we see in the life and example of Christ – especially those such as meditation, solitude, silence.
We can gain a Christian understanding of meditation (which is used to FILL our minds with the things of Christ as opposed to eastern meditation which calls people to EMPTY their minds of everything) in passages such as GE 24:63, Josh 1:8, Ps 77:12 and 1:Tim 4:15 KJV. We see Christ practicing solitude on numerous occasions as those times when he would steal away to a “lonely place” where He enjoyed intimacy with the Father (Matt 14:23, Mark 1:45, Luke 5:16). And the practice of silence (which involves our closed mouths more than anything since much of the noise we find in our lives comes from our own tongues) is very much a common call of God to His people. I love the words from Isaiah 30:15 – “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…” This is akin to the command to “be still, and know that I am God” (Ps 46:10). The Lord was all the time quieting things – whether winds or demons. One gets the idea that silence creates a good environment for the “still small voice” of God to penetrate a noisy creation and noisy hearts. Hence it is invaluable to our walk.
So what are your questions?