I had been ordained about 20 years when the crisis hit. Nothing was going right. Did I really want to be a pastor any longer? In the midst of the turmoil, my mother died. I didn’t know what to do. 

Then I read an article by a Quaker minister, Richard Foster. He wrote: “Fresh out of seminary, I was ready to conquer the world. My first appointment was a small church in a thriving region of Southern California. ‘Here,’ I mused, ‘is my chance to show the denominational leadership, nay, the whole world, what I can do.’ . . . After three months or so I had given that tiny congregation everything I knew, and then some, and it had done them no good. I had nothing left to give. I was spiritually bankrupt and I knew it.”*

Foster’s problem was spiritual emptiness. That was my problem as well. It wasn’t just the difficulty of my job or the loss of my mother that was causing my crisis, but my disconnect from God. Foster’s way of resolving his spiritual bankruptcy led him to write Celebration of Discipline, one of the most influential spiritual books in the last 40 years. The disciplines are spiritual practices that have been common in Christianity, but have been often neglected because they were thought to be the property of religious professionals. They actually belong to all Christians.

A person has to be intentional about growing in relationship to God. We can’t leave it to chance or wait to have a religious feeling move us or put it off because we’re too busy. God loves us right now, this very minute. Do we want to love God in return? Do we want to grow in God’s grace? Then we have to do something about it now. The spiritual disciplines are a means to develop in the relationship with God. We just have to do them. More about them next week.

Read Hebrews 12:1-14, and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne
Today’s Reading:  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+12%3A1-14&version=NRSV
*Foster, Richard. “Seeking and Finding: Learning Discipline .” The Christian Century, Vol. 114, No. 37 (1997).