Hitting Pause

When you spend time thinking about discipline and striving to live a life made better by its presence, you seldom think of it as anything other than doing.

There’s more to discipline than action though.

Sometimes the most disciplined thing you can do is rest, relax and recharge.

And that’s precisely what I’ll be doing the remainder of the week; unplugging from the world, and spending quality time with my wife and son.

I’ll return to the blog on Sunday with the next chapter of our swim through Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life.

Hold down the fort while I’m away. Stay the disciplined course and take ground these next few days.

Can’t wait to be back and finishing 2017 bigger, stronger and most importantly better than ever.

Spiritual Disciplines: Journaling

We continue our reading of Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life together this week by turning our time and attention to the topic of Journaling.

If you’d like to know more about what we’re doing, you can read about it here. Last week, we discussed Fasting. In that post, we discovered that meditating on Scripture is unlocks yet another door to experiencing more of God. As we dwell on His Word our affections are stirred towards worship.  

Each week I issue something similar to the following reminder: Simply walking through the motions won’t help you grow in godliness. Engage in the Spiritual Disciplines because they get you more of Jesus helps you become more like Him. Keep this in mind each week as you study and read. 

Summary

Whitney’s reference to the bends and hazards of life’s great adventure towards the Celestial City is a welcomed introduction to a topic we’ve each heard and read far too much about. This quick tip of the hat to John Bunyan’s classic work, Pilgrim’s Progress, sets the stage for the most useful and encouraging writing on journaling I’ve read. 

What could have been boring and lifeless, is quickly livened by drawing our attention to the immediate good this discipline provides the Christian—namely, a written record of their adventures. “Specifically, your journal,” said, “is a place to reflect upon God’s Word and the riches of God’s grace to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and how we move forward in enjoying those riches.” 

While not expressly mentioned in Scripture, keeping a written record of life’s happenings, your heart’s response to them and reflecting upon your growth in Christlikeness—or lack thereof as is often revealed—is a special gift for us to enjoy. Not all followers of God throughout history have had the means or ability to chronicle their days in such a fashion, but some did. 

“A journal can be,” Whitney said, “the means by which the Holy Spirit shows us areas of sin or weakness, the emptiness of a path we have chosen, insight into our motives, or other things that can transform the journal page into an altar of seeking God.” What are the Psalms then, but a record of regular meditations on Scripture, prayers and thoughts expressed in poetry and writing? When we read them we are in a sense reading David’s journal. Our words may not be inspired as it is by the Holy Spirit, but they most certainly may be prompted by His work in our hearts. 

We’ve seen throughout our reading that Whitney believes meditation upon Scripture to be of special importance to our spiritual progress. In chapter after chapter, we see him weaving a case that it is the interconnecting practice of all the disciplines. I’ve often thought the title should have included a subtitle to this effect; perhaps something like, How the Discipline of Meditation upon Scripture Transforms the Christian life. 

Either way the principle stands as firmly fixed as anything I’ve observed in reading this or any other book. “Meditation on Scripture,” Whitney said, “is the single greatest devotional need of most Christians...Perhaps the most valuable contribution the Discipline of journaling makes to the pursuit of godliness is how it facilitates meditation on Scripture.” Cast in this light, journaling can be a method for reflecting upon God’s Word and allowing it to marinate in our hearts. Like all the Disciplines we’ve studied, purpose matters. Just as skipping a meal isn’t fasting, so writing about your day isn’t journaling for the purpose of godliness. No, we must be intentional and allow the words we scribble out to overflow from our time in Scripture and for what God is doing in our hearts to be worked out on the page.  

“We tend to feel most deeply,” Whitney said, “about what we think most deeply about.” As we dwell upon God’s Word it will come pouring out of us like tea from a kettle. But first we must let it steep, which is exactly what Scripture memory and journaling allow it to do. 

“Writing in a journal provides an opportunity,” Whitney said, “for the intangible grays of mind-work and heart-work to distill clearly into black and white.” Writer upon writer conveys this simple truth; writing is refined thinking. The process of putting words on the page aides the writer in moving from vague notions to concrete thoughts about a thing or event. What could be more beneficial to the heart and mind of the Christian pursuing Christlikeness? 

A journal can be a place of reminder for things we want to emphasise, as well as a place to track our progress in areas such as the Spiritual Disciplines. The discipline of writing down the things swimming around in our heads and hearts, and asking ourselves questions about it, can propel us onward in our journey towards being more like Jesus. This style of introspection can be good and healthy as one questions and analyzes their motives, thoughts and actions through a biblical lense. 

“Specifically, your journal,” Whitney said, “is a place to reflect upon God’s Word and the riches of God’s grace to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and how we move forward in enjoying those riches.” That’s the crux of the matter with this, and other, Spiritual Disciplines—to what end do we pursue these them? Is it to check a box, be seen in a certain light or is it to get more of Jesus? The latter is means of turning the works of our hands and hearts into worshipful pursuits of godliness. 

Whitney doesn’t go into methods or means of journaling in this chapter, and for good reason. “The method you find most edifying and useful in your pursuit of godliness,” Whitney said, “is the way you should keep a journal….Use the method that works best for you.” Getting started tends to be the largest problem, so find a manner of journaling that works and stick to it. 

Reflection

I’ve had an on again off again relationship with journaling for years. I’ll do well for a season, only to fall off the wagon, so to speak, at some point down the road. I take great comfort in not being alone on that point. Quick glimpses at the journals and diaries of men such as David Brainerd, Jonathan Edwards and the like show great gaps in their record keeping as well; however these men continued to show up and put pen to paper; and that’s exactly what I’m going to do for as long as I can. 

The how, when and what of my journaling is as ever changing as the tide—one month it may be free form, while the next it could be answering a list of questions and the one after that might only be a listing of events and activities. Those things don’t ultimately matter, showing up to put thoughts, memories and insights down for future me or future Hagamans does. 

My wife Hannah is great about remaining consistent in this discipline. She journals every morning without fail. As the sun rises, there she sits her coffee in hand, pouring her heart out to the Lord on the page. Every now and then she’ll look back at what she’s written from days and years past, to find a fun memory or prayer we shared once upon a time. It is so fun to see this record of the Lord’s faithfulness through life’s ups and downs. Her journals will most likely be the ones our kids run to after we’re gone. Within their pages they’ll find an honest pursuit of Christ throughout a lifetime. 

Next Week

We will continue with the next chapter (chapter eleven) of the book next Sunday. We may be in the midst of reading Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life together, but it’s not too late for you to jump in. In fact, I’d love nothing more than for you to grab a copy and join in. Click here to see what ground we’ve covered so far. 

Your Turn

I’d like to hear what stood out to you this week. Please feel free to post your reflections, and thoughts in the comment section below. If you have shared your thoughts on your own blog, please link to it as well. Do not feel the need to be profound or to share something new. Simply share what caught your eye, or stirred your heart as you read. 

Life of the mind

There is a flow to your life and much of that flow is found within the thoughts that fill your mind. 

Those thoughts are wholly your own. No one else thinks the same as you. 

Your thoughts and ideas are unique and truly yours. 

Their subject determines so much about your life. 

How often do you stop and ponder exactly what does go through your mind? 

Do you hold thoughts captive? 

Do you strain your mind to control its contents? 

With so much riding on the ideas rolling around in your mind, it makes little sense not to. 

Successful men and women don’t allow thoughts to stride through their mind willy-nilly. No, they expend great energy to inform their minds. 

Take a play from their playbook and do the same. 

If life is foremost the life of the mind, success if anything else comes from disciplining your mind.  

Guard your heart

Your heart is filled with many desires. 

Desires yearning and pleading to be fulfilled. 

Desires for food, drink and a hundred other things.

Not all of your desires are good, however. 

Some of them are dark, twisted and evil. 

Which is why you must stay on guard and sift those desires like wheat. 

Not all of the desires of your heart need find fulfillment. 

Many of them must be shattered, broken and defeated. 

Knowing the difference is the key to a happy and joyful life. 

Spiritual Disciplines: Silence and Solitude

We continue our reading of Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life together this week by turning our time and attention to the topic of Silence and Solitude. If you’d like to know more about what we’re doing, you can read about it here.

Last week, we discussed Fasting. In that post, we discovered that few disciplines go so radically against the flesh and mainstream of culture as fasting. We also learned that few things can focus our minds on spiritual things like fasting.  

Forgo ritual and routine and instead pursue the things that lead to godliness. While the Disciplines we are discussing are meant to do just that, we must lend special care that they don’t secure a noose about our necks. Engage in them because they get you more of Christ, and not for any other purpose. In so doing, you’ll avoid the lifeless twitch awaiting at the end of the rope. 

Summary  

If you were to get up early, while the sky is still dark, and before the rest of the world starts to move, you'd notice something so special and unique you'd most likely miss it if you encountered it at another point in the day. In fact, it might strike you as awkward and uncomfortable at any other moment in your day. An attractive stillness and quiet dominates the early morning hours. The mass of humanity hasn’t stirred from its slumber and cars aren’t rushing to and fro—hurriedly trying to get to one place or the next. No the majority of the sights and sounds of our day have yet to begin. It's a peaceful scene, when you stop to think about it, just you, your thoughts, a warm cup of coffee, and the hushed silence of early morning. Such a picture sets even the most troubled heart to rest. Once the sun creeps over the horizon, the gentle sounds of silence are gone—they are washed out by the rapid squeaks, hums, and horns of another day. 

“There is something,” Whitney said, “both appealing and transforming about silence and solitude.” While many are overcome with discomfort at the silence in social settings, and may even cringe at variable moments of quiet during outings, we find the twin disciplines of silence and solitude the perfect recipe for what ails our soul in troubled times. Whether it is a glass of sweet tea in the rocking chair on the back porch late at night, or a hot cup of coffee watching the sunrise, Whitney is right—we treasure those moments of quiet and stillness.  

Simply sitting in silence may have a calming and relaxing effect upon us, but as with the rest of the Disciplines, purpose matters. “The Discipline of silence,” Whitney said, “is the voluntary and temporary abstention from speaking so that certain spiritual goods might be sought.” We would do well to note that a lack of outward expression should be replaced by a flurry of internal activity. Silence could be observed for Bible reading, prayer, journaling, or meditation upon Scripture. Our retreat from the noises of life can be leveraged towards so many varied goods.  

“Solitude,” Whitney said, “is the Spiritual Discipline of voluntary and temporary withdrawing to privacy for spiritual purposes.” Our world makes it difficult to practice many of the Spiritual Disciplines, or simply be alone with God, there are too many interruptions. The amount of time we spend apart from the world to engage in the Disciplines is of little importance, rather the regular practice of doing so is. There are times when we need to be alone, away from the distractions of life, away from our many responsibilities, and away from every other thing but our Maker. 

Silence and solitude are twin Disciplines, they compliment one another perfectly. While they can be separated and enjoyed apart, they work best as a pair, and that is exactly how Whitney addresses them in this chapter. Rather than approaching them as unique and varied Disciplines, he presents them as a unified team seeking to make you more like Jesus. 

“We live in a noisy, busy world.” Jean Fleming said, “Silence and solitude...fit the era of Victorian lace, high-button shoes, and kerosene lamps better than our age of television, video arcades, and joggers wired with earphones. We have become people with an aversion to quiet and an uneasiness with being alone.” Our culture conditions us to be more comfortable with noise and crowds, than with silence and solitude. 

In light of our learned aversion to these twin tasks, Whitney presents nine, “biblical reasons for making priorities of the Disciplines of silence and solitude.”

1. To Follow Jesus’ Example - “To be more like Jesus,” Whitney said, “we must discipline ourselves to find times of silence and solitude.” Again, again and again, we see Jesus withdrawing to a desolate and quiet place to commune with the Father and He taught the same practice to His disciples. It’s part of being a follower of Jesus. 
2. To Minimize Distractions in Prayer - “Many of us,” Whitney said, “need to realize the addiction we have to noise. It’s one thing to listen to the television or another device while doing housework or chores, but it’s another to be unable to stay in a room for a while without it. Even worse is the requirement of background noise during Bible intake and prayer.” 
3. To Express Worship to God - “Regardless of the state of your emotions,” Whitney said, “there is always a place for wordless worship, a God-centered silence based upon what God has revealed of Himself in His Word.” 
4. To Express Faith in God - “Verbalized prayers,” Whitney said, “can sometimes be filled more with fear and doubt than faith; silence before the Lord can sometimes express more faith and submission to God’s providence than words.” 
5. To Seek the Salvation of the Lord - “Times of silence and solitude to seek the salvation of the Lord,” Whitney said, “can refer either to a non-Christian seeking salvation from sin and guilt in Christ or to a believer seeking God’s salvation from certain circumstances.”
6. To Be Physically and Spiritually Restored - “Everyone has a regular need for restoring the resources of both the inward and outward person. It was true even for those who lived most closely with Jesus.” And it is most certainly true of me and you. 
7. To Regain a Spiritual Perspective - “What we are in them [solitudes],” John Owen said, “that we are indeed, and no more. They are either the best or the worst of our times, wherein the principle that is predominant in us will show and act itself.” Habitually seeking God in stillness and quiet helps us to see ourselves rightly and therein appeal to His grace afresh each day. 
8. To Seek The Will of God - The most common reason believers get alone with God is when Christians need to make a decision and aren’t sure what to do. Few things serve to get the believer’s attention like a good crisis. 
9. To Learn Control of the Tongue - “There’s no doubt that learning control of the tongue,” Whitney said,  “is critical to Christlikeness. The Bible says that the religion of the person with no tongue control is worthless...Godliness, therefore, involves learning when you shouldn’t talk as well as when you should.” 

“One reason why the dual Disciplines of silence and solitude can be so thoroughly transforming,” Whitney said, “is because of how they connect us with the other Spiritual Disciplines. They should normally be the context, for example, where we engage in personal Bible intake and prayer.” Whitney makes a wonderful point on this score. The Disciplines we are studying in this series, are meant to interconnect, one is set forth for the very purpose of bleeding over into the next. No Discipline sets you up for success in the enjoyment of other Disciplines like the dual Disciplines of silence and solitude. 

If our goal is Christlikeness, few Disciplines could have as deep and profound an impact on to what extent we attain that end, as these. 

“It has been said that no great work in literature or in science, Austin Phelps said, “was ever wrought by a man who did not love solitude. We may lay it down as an elemental principle of religion, that no large growth in holiness was ever gained by one who did not take time to be often long alone with God.” 

Reflection

How often do we sit in complete silence for more than a few seconds? Not nearly often enough, if we’re anything alike. “Many of us,” Whitney said, “need to realize the addiction we have to noise. It’s one thing to listen to the television or another device while doing housework or chores, but it’s another to be unable to stay in a room for a while without it.” 

I’m addicted to noise; whether it’s music or a podcast interview. Two little white earbuds sit firmly fixed in my ears all day long. Any serious session of activity—whether house related or work-oriented—requires background noise of some sort. I’m rarely comfortable cleaning, typing or walking without some sound filling the air. 

I would fill any lull in conversation when Hannah and I were first dating. It used to drive her crazy. “Do you have to always be talking?” she’d ask. I didn’t even notice myself doing it most of the time, but her pointing it out helped me see that silence made me uncomfortable. It left me alone with my thoughts and that’s something most of us tend to avoid. 

Six years later, I’m usually comfortable with silence—meaning I don’t immediately jump to fill quiet moments—but still have far to go in leveraging it for spiritual purposes. Most mornings I wake up around 5:30 am, pour my coffee and spend an hour in silence writing, but when I turn my attention to reading the Bible and working on Scripture memory, the headphones quickly get popped in—usually softly playing Psalms Live with Shane & Shane. Rarely do I sit in the same silence I devote to writing during this time with God. Sound and song crowd my mind, sometimes distracting me from meditating on God’s Word. 

This has to change. Not every moment of life requires a soundtrack, nor should it. Just as I have grown to appreciate the natural lulls in conversation, I must learn to crave silent time alone with the Lord. 

Next Week

We will continue with the next chapter (chapter eleven) of the book next Sunday. We may be in the midst of reading Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life together, but it’s not too late for you to jump in. In fact, I’d love nothing more than for you to grab a copy and join in. Click here to see what ground we’ve covered so far. Each chapter can be read on its own, so jump in with us this week as we read about journaling. 

Your Turn

I’d like to hear what stood out to you this week. Please feel free to post your reflections, and thoughts in the comment section below.