Introduction: Discovering Your Desire

Spiritual disciplines give the Holy Spirit space to brood over our souls. Just as the Spirit hovered over the face of the deep at the dawn of creation, so he hovers over us today, birthing the ever-fresh Christ-life within. The Christ-in-me identity is not bound to a generic one-size-fits-all program for union with God. The Holy Spirit knows the spiritual practices, relationships and experiences that best suit our unique communion with God. He knows how to help us move into the “unforced rhythms of grace” that Jesus offers to teach us.

Spiritual transformation, “recovering your life,” comes from partnering with the Trinity for change. That doesn’t mean we give the Holy Spirit an agenda or a demand. We simply desire. We bring our ache for change, our longing for belonging, our desperation to make a difference. Then we keep company with Jesus by making space for him through a spiritual discipline. Our part is to offer ourselves lovingly and obediently to God. God then works within us doing what he alone can do. Our desires don’t obligate the holy One. God is free to come to us in spiritual disciplines as he wills, not as we demand. But unless we open ourselves to him through spiritual practices, we will miss his coming altogether.

Keeping company with Jesus in the space between wanting to change and not being able to change through effort alone can be a difficult thing to do. Desiring God and not demanding an outcome keeps us in the risky place of waiting and longing. The truth is that we do not know how God intends to conform us to the image of his Son. God’s Spirit of truth may use our spiritual practice to reveal false self-conceptions and idols of our heart. Becoming aware of what is true and false about us is essential for spiritual growth, and it is not always comfortable. So when we find ourselves in the space between desire and demand, when we are waiting on God and nothing seems to be happening, we must remember this space is an opportunity. In the unfixables of our lives we are invited to keep company with Jesus and take a risk that God’s intentions toward us are good. Day after day this is what Jesus did. It is called trust. He calls us: “Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly” (Matthew 11:30 The Message).

I believe the root of all desire stems from our innate need to open our lives to God in worship. Consequently, I have chosen to catalog spiritual disciplines in accordance with the acronym WORSHIP. But there are many other ways of getting your hands around the disciplines. Richard Foster divides the disciplines into inward, outward and corporate. Inward disciplines are practiced in the privacy of our intimate walk with Jesus. Outward disciplines affect how we interface with the world. And corporate disciplines are practiced with others. Dallas Willard distinguishes between disciplines of engagement and disciplines of abstinence. Disciplines of engagement connect us to the needs of others and the call to be God’s heart and hands in this world. They address sins of commission. Disciplines of abstinence detach us from hurry, clutter and busyness, and open us to being with God alone. They remind us that we are human beings, not human doings, and that God is more concerned with who we become than what we accomplish. They address sins of omission.

Worship is not something we work up or go to on Sunday morning. Worship is every discipline’s end game! We miss the point and endanger our souls when we think of spiritual disciplines as ends in themselves. Spiritual practices exist to open us into God. They are never the “be all and end all” of discipleship. The “be all and end all” is a loving trust of and obedience to the God who is within us yet beyond us and our very best efforts.

In worship we live into the reality that the first and best thing in life is nothing less than a transforming relationship with the God who made us, named us and called into being. Worship ignites and attaches us to this truest and best-of-all desire—the desire to let God have his way with us. There is nothing more valuable, nothing more desirable, nothing more worthwhile and nothing more wondrous than the divine life of the holy Three. From the beginning we were designed to be part of their divine community. We are not soul freelancers, but beings created to dance in the arms of the Trinity. And our worship is always a response to the Trinity’s unchanging ardor and desire for us. Spiritual disciplines that do not help us partner with the Trinity in worship are “empty worthless acts and a perfect waste of time.”

Disciplines are intentional ways we open space in our lives for the worship of God. They are not harsh but grace-filled ways of responding to the presence of Christ with our bodies. Worship happens in our bodies, not just our heads. Paul writes in Romans 12:1, “Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.”

Offering our bodies to God lands us smack in the middle of our weakness and limits. We don’t have unlimited energy, time and personal resources. We are finite. We need to be realistic about what our body can do and sustain. Burning the candle at both ends can burn out the soul as well as the body. Spiritual disciplines are ways we give our bodies to unhurried rhythms of grace. They are ways we unhurry our souls before God. It is important to remember that we are not meant to do all the practices at once.

Each letter of the word worship points us toward a particular way of creating space for God in our lives. Within each letter you can find particular spiritual disciplines that stem from your God-given desires. Listen to your desires and desperations. Your desires may reflect

Ask yourself, How do I want to or need to be with God? Circle the letter in worship that most catches your attention.

(If you are not particularly intuitive or find self-reflection on your desires difficult, consider using the Spiritual Health Planner in appendix 1.)

Once you have chosen a particular letter, turn to the list of spiritual disciplines and desires at the front of the book (pp. 11-13) and slowly read through the desires in your chosen category. Which desire catches you? Make a mark beside the corresponding discipline. Remember, you are not choosing a spiritual discipline all on your own or in a vacuum. The Holy Spirit is at work in you stirring up your desire. Because reading about spiritual disciplines can be a great deal easier than practicing them, don’t spend lots of time reading every discipline in the category you chose. Mastery of every discipline is not the goal. Surrendering to God is. Follow your desire to the Trinity. At times you may notice that you are off track and have lost your way. You may find you

Do not berate yourself. The Holy Spirit is helping you recognize how you still try to fix your spiritual life by yourself. Be thankful for what you see, and gently return to God and begin again. The spiritual journey is made in small incremental steps. We rise and we fall and we rise again. Remember the Spiritual Disciplines Handbook won’t make you disciplined, fix your spiritual life or force something to happen in your soul. A book can never make God appear on demand. But this book can give you a way of following your heart’s desire into the arms of God. Let it help you keep company with Jesus through disciplines that give God room to work in your relationships, attitudes, appetites and nature. As you intentionally embrace disciplines that conform you to the image of Christ, you will find that you can learn to live like Jesus did—“freely and lightly.” Ronald Rolheiser, in his book The Shattered Lantern, says, “Freedom is always experienced in relationship to some lord.”

Remember, the discipline you are being called to needs to fit with your life now. It must work within the givens of your human limits. If after reading about your discipline it seems impossible, check out the appendix “Seasons, Stages and Ages of Transformation.”

My life has been shaped by men and women who loved me and handed me something of God in their very human lives. Their spiritual practices were woven into the fabric of their lives on the loom of relationships—both with God and with me. They had no halos. They told me the truth about their good, bad and ugly while passing on the lore of the spiritual terrain they had traversed. I believe this is the way spiritual disciplines are to be learned. We are to learn them in relationships.

For the sake of brevity, this handbook often leaves the stories and relationships surrounding spiritual disciplines for another to tell. For me all these disciplines come with faces and names and times and places. It is my prayer that these thumbnail sketches of spiritual practices will open you to the breathtaking and inexhaustible world of relationship—relationship with God, others and even yourself. Let these disciplines draw you deeper into your life and the people you live and work with. Let them reveal the human, authentic, God-given truth of you that we all long to see.

For those of you with an antipathy to reading a book cover to cover—relax. This is not a book you read from beginning to end. In fact, it’s probably a bad idea to try. The Spiritual Disciplines Handbook is like a compass that gives you your bearings. It provides you with ways of responding to Jesus, the pole star of the soul. Once you figure out how to navigate the material, you can find your way forward from any point on the spiritual journey.

Many of the disciplines found in this book can be practiced alone or in community. Feel free to experiment with the discipline in both contexts. Some of the disciplines could easily be in more than one category. For the sake of simplicity they appear only once. Other disciplines, like community, small groups, retreat, intercession and contemplative prayer, are container disciplines for a number of other disciplines that appear in this book. If you are looking for a particular discipline, be sure to check the index.

Which letter of WORSHIP best matches your longings or hungers or desperations?

The Spiritual Disciplines Handbook invites you to journey with Jesus into the God-given desires within you, to “learn the unforced rhythms of grace.” It is my prayer that Jesus will give you a way of keeping company with him that opens you wide to God.