Spiritual Disciplines Week 1

Rylie Yount

Professor Kyle Bauer

MIN-230X Spiritual Discipline

13 January 2024

What is a Spiritual Discipline?

When I saw that one of the first classes I was taking at Life Pacific University was spiritual disciplines, I really did not know what to expect. Now learning a bit about the different spiritual disciplines and what they are I have learned that I am more familiar with the term than I thought. In this week's lecture our professor went over what to expect from this class and started to introduce us to what a spiritual discipline is and the importance of them as followers of Christ.

Reflection on SDH (Calhoun)

One of the books we are going through in this course is the "Spiritual Disciplines Handbook" by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun. This week we read through the first 31 pages. At my church we are starting a 21 days of prayer and fasting study together and I have already found what I am learning in this book to be beneficial towards starting this. This Sunday my pastor was talking about the spiritual disciplines needed and used while doing this study and I found myself getting excited at my newfound knowledge and understanding of what that actually meant. My pastor preached on having a hunger for God and it reminded me of a quote from the book that really stood out to me in my reading: "The longing for something more, no matter how weak or crackling with heat, is evidence that God is already at work in your life. You wouldn't want more of God if the Holy Spirit wasn't first seeking you." (Calhoun). It really strikes my heart any time I think about how the Lord desires a relationship with us and is constantly seeking us and all we have to do is respond. How often am I not getting the fullness of what the Lord has for me because I don't have good spiritual disciplines. The way that this book breaks everything down for you is such a good tool to finding what is needed to deepen relationship with Christ and your hunger.

Reflection on GIME (Shigematsu)

The second reading we had for this week was "God in my Everything" by Ken Shigematsu. In the first chapter of this book, he is talking primarily about Monks and connecting it to his history of family who were Samurai. A question presented at the end of this chapter I'll be answering is "When did you first awaken to the belief that a life with God mattered?". I would say for myself I lived 17 years of my life believing in God but not believing that living life WITH him even mattered. My senior year of high school I hit a low and turned to God and started giving up the fulfillment I had in this world for fulfillment in Christ. Once I learned that walking life with him was so much more fruitful my mind shifted and now, I see that life with God really does matter. The dedication that Monks have as talked about in this chapter is one we can look at and admire and strive to pull things we can apply to our own lives from. I know if I dedicated my life to the Lord the way they do my walk with God would be exponentially different.

Works cited:

Calhoun, Adele Ahlberg. Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us. InterVarsity Press, 2015.

Shigematsu, Ken. God in My Everything: How an Ancient Rhythm Helps Busy People Enjoy God. Zondervan, 2013.