Pastor’s Pen: Spiritual discipline

Self-denial is a concept foreign to most modern westerners and even to followers of Jesus. Our society, and our even our church culture by association, is consumer driven with a seemingly insatiable hunger for satisfaction. The poverty that this brings to Christianity is manifest in unsatisfied church consumers that float from church to church and pass judgement on the worship, the sermon and the people of the various denominations on offer. But even we who are committed into the life of a local church can fall prey to believing God’s higher priority is satisfying my desires and that He couldn’t possibly want or expect any sort of self-denial to be part of the “Grace” filled life He has called me to.

In Leviticus 23:27, on the Day of Atonement, the Israelites were told to, “Hold a sacred assembly and deny yourselves and present an offering…”  Interestingly all three of these disciplines are commonly rejected by modern believers, possibly arguing the irrelevance of such calls in the Old Testament to New Testament Saints. Yet for followers of Jesus, there are some principles that can instruct us to serve/worship the Lord with an increasing depth of spirituality. A New Testament passage containing the words of Jesus adds greater weight to this topic. In Matt 16:24-25 we read, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”

If Jesus thinks self-denial is an important part of developing as one of His followers we should take stock and discern how we might be best served to exercise spiritual discipline; to make some sacrifices in order to grow in faith and spiritual maturity. Self-denial can come in many forms. But as preliminary suggestions we can go back to Leviticus 23:27 and see that being committed to taking part in the assembling together of the Saints is one, while contributing to the offering is another. Beyond this we may be led by the Spirit of God to fast from food or even TV or other pleasures for a season to prepare our hearts to worship Him. As we grow in this we may even be called to make some choices that affect our comfort level as God may lead us into spheres of service that mean we have to go without.

There is no one size fits all here, but rather an attitude of worship and service that is prepared to trust God and put our own desires second in order to see the power of the Holy Spirit manifest in our lives individually and among us as a community corporately. My God bless us in our spiritual disciplines as we make the conscious decision to deny ourselves and follow Him!