Spiritual disciplines

One day, a professor in Medical School was discussing a particularly complicated concept in Physics class. One student rudely interrupted him and asked, “Why do we have to learn this stuff?”

“To save lives.” The professor responded quickly and continued the lecture.

A few minutes later, the same student spoke up again.

“So, how does physics save lives?” he persisted.

“It usually keeps the idiots like you out of medical school,” replied the professor.

There are so many things we need to learn in life. There are many other subjects we have to learn to prepare ourselves for survival in the world outside campus, not just our major and minor subjects from our college life.

Why do we have to learn this stuff?       

Learning is a discipline that is important in everything we do.

Young people shun the word discipline. Wait, let me just correct myself; most people I know – regardless of age – do not like the word discipline.

I know the reason why. Discipline is disliked because this word is often associated with punishment.

Eat your food and do your homework or else, you will stand in the corner. That’s punishment. Go to school, break the rules and get suspension. That’s punishment. Go to church, talk things against your leaders and they give you the cold shoulder or banish you from their fold. That’s discipline.

Discipline may be hard to practice but always in the end, the result is good for us. Spiritual Discipline enables us to go through a process which the results provide us the strengthening and rewarding we need.

But then, the paranoid in church worries about legalism whenever spiritual disciplines are discussed. Prayer, study of Scriptures, attending services, and small group meetings, God is not opposed to these, as well as tithing and giving.

Dallas Willard says: Grace is not opposed to effort. But grace is opposed to earning. Effort is action. Earning is attitude.

Grace is God’s action in you, as opposed to “I am doing this so that I can earn God’s love.

Spiritual Discipline, therefore, is effort that allows us to enter something good that will bring us to a better place or condition.

Grace is God acting in your life to accomplish things you cannot accomplish on your own.

Somebody says when a tourist goes to France and he doesn’t speak French, he just speaks English slower and louder. But that does not solve the problem.

Effort needs action and practice.

There is a difference between training to do something and trying to do something. We tend to overestimate what we can do by simply ‘trying to do something’ yet underestimate the ‘training in order to do something.’

Dallas Willard says, “The secret to do this is to embark on an intelligent effort to reframe the way you look at it and the way you deal with it and the way you do it.

Intelligent effort means it has to integrate itself with the realities of the case. The cliché wisdom that most of us accept says, “If at first, you don’t succeed, try and try again.” This is not true. If at first you don’t succeed, find out what’s wrong and fix it then try again.

Spiritual Disciplines are not deeds of righteousness, they are wisdom.

You should approach it experimentally, and that involves intelligence; learn why it helps you.

Spiritual Disciplines are processes of engagements where you begin to study your spirituality more. And it puts your life in order.

Be disciplined and be gracious. This is the key.

(You can connect with Francis Kong through Facebook at www.facebook.com/franciskong2 or listen to his program called “Business Matters” from Monday to Friday at 8 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. in 98.7 dzFE-FM ‘The Master’s Touch’, the classical music station.)