Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth

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Maybe you’re the woman at the well, or a child that Jesus engages with, perhaps a by stander to a miracle. Over the next 12 weeks we are going to explore the book Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster.

The discussion of celebration, often the most neglected of the Disciplines, shows its critical importance, for it stands at the heart of the way to Christ. I think this book probably functions best as a reference for whichever discipline you might be interested in diving deeper into.Some of the disciplines were more relevant than others and some disciplines I would choose to live out differently in my life. That's how I roll it out in the morning, I give a thankee sir in the evening, and throw out some feelers throughout the day, and it doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. I learned so much about worship in that setting and what I learned has stuck with me for the rest of my life. He is the founder of Renovaré, an intrachurch movement committed to the renewal of the Church in all her multifaceted expressions, and the editor of The Renovaré Spiritual Formation Bible. The inward Disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study offer avenues of personal examination and change.

Part of this is a difference theological emphasis, but I suspect it also comes down to a difference in personality. The discussion on corporate guidance (not the same as in corporate organization) was interesting in that Foster observed how decisions in the early church were regularly agreed upon by using other spiritual disciplines: prayer, worship, fasting, etc.

We begin prayer for others by first quieting our fleshly activity and listening to the silent thunder of the Lord of hosts …. You may unfortunately find yourself, as I did, among a group of people agreeing to experimentally practice these disciplines and see if Foster is not perhaps telling some truths.

For example, the fasting chapter begins with an argument on the prudence of fasting as a regular part of the Christian life, discusses the physical affects of fasting, addresses some of the practical concerns (what to eat before, after a fast, etc. In The Emotionally Healthy Leader, best-selling author Peter Scazzero shows leaders how to develop a deep, inner life with Christ, examining its profound implications for surviving stress, planning and decision-making, building teams, creating healthy culture, influencing others, and much more.In Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, Richard Foster examines three primary forms of Christian disciplines: Inward Disciplines (Meditation, Prayer, Fasting, and Study), Outward Disciplines (Simplicity, Solitude, Submission, and Service), and Corporate Disciplines (Confession, Worship, Guidance, and Celebration). Fasting can bring breakthroughs in the spiritual realm that will never happen in any other way” (p60). The aim of Eastern meditation is to become empty, setting aside ‘self’ and becoming one with the universe. These practices in themselves will not transform us to look like Jesus (only Jesus himself can do that) but what they can do is to bring us in front of Jesus.