Quotes About Spiritual Disciplines

#1. The power of God tenderizes and changes us, not spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines only position us to receive.

Mike Bickle

#2. It is essential to practice spiritual disciplines along with academic studies.

Sai Baba

#3. It's too bad prayer comes bundled in a package of 'spiritual disciplines.' Really, we should see prayer as a spiritual privilege. We don't do it as a callisthenic exercise to gain points with God; we do it, because it is good for us in every way.

Philip Yancey

#4. I am so glad that Jesus does not say, "Practice more spiritual disciplines." He says, "Come to me ... and I will give you rest.

Colin S. Smith

#5. Perhaps nothing helps us make the movement from our little selves to a larger world than remembering God in gratitude. Such a perspective puts God in view in all of life, not just in the moments we set aside for worship or spiritual disciplines. Not just in the moments when life seems easy.

Henri Nouwen

#6. Routines are normal, natural, healthy things. Most of us take a shower and brush our teeth every day. That is a good routine. Spiritual disciplines are routines. That is a good thing. But once routines become routine you need to change your routine.

Mark Batterson

#7. Meditation while walking has a long, noble history in ancient spiritual disciplines.

Andrew Weil

#8. Journaling is one of the most overlooked and undervalued spiritual disciplines. In my estimation, it's on a par with praying, fasting, and meditating. It's the way we document what God is doing in our lives.

Mark Batterson

#9. Spiritual disciplines answer the shallow world.

Richard J. Foster

#10. Common sense is the fundamental factor in all spiritual disciplines. No rule is an eternal rule. Rules change from place to place, time to time and from one condition to another condition.

Sivananda

#11. Through the ages, countless spiritual disciplines have urged us to look within ourselves and seek the truth. Part of that truth resides in a small, dark room
one we are afraid to enter

Matthew J. Pallamary

#12. Spiritual Disciplines involve doing what we can do to receive from God the power to do what we cannot.

Richard J. Foster

#13. It is quite easy to allow the gospel to become overshadowed by our own efforts to grow spiritually. Spiritual disciplines serve as gateways to cherishing the gospel, not as substitutes for the gospel.

Gloria Furman

#14. The Spiritual disciplines are wisdom and not righteousness.

Dallas Willard

#15. I have long profited from Adele Ahlberg Calhoun's gifts in the field of spiritual development, and I am delighted that she has compiled her experience with spiritual disciplines into book form. I highly recommend it and I look forward to using it as a resource at our church.

Timothy Keller

#16. Of all spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.

Richard J. Foster

#17. But if roteness is a danger, it is also the way liturgy works. When you don't have to think all the time about what words you are going to say next, you are free to fully enter into the act of praying; you are free to participate in the life of God.

Lauren F. Winner

#18. When a person eats shortly before going to bed, digestion accompanies sleep. The two great physiological functions are completed together, leaving the maximum of freedom to the mind during the day.

Adalbert De Vogue

#19. Fasting is meant to take you, temporarily, out of the realm of the physical and focus your attention heavenward; as one Jewish guide to fasting puts it, 'at the heart of this practice is a desire to shift our attention away from our immediate needs and to focus on more spiritual concerns.

Lauren F. Winner

#20. Fasting gives me singularly happy afternoons.

Adalbert De Vogue

#21. Spiritual discipline: any activity I do by direct effort that will help me do what I cannot now do by direct effort.

Mark Buchanan

#22. Let us be among those who believe that the inner transformation of our lives is a goal worthy of our best effort. -P. 11

Richard J. Foster

#23. I must take care above all that I cultivate communion with Christ, for though that can never be the basis of my peace - mark that - yet it will be the channel of it.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

#24. True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace. It can come to us ONLY as a gift, and not as a result of our own clever use of spiritual techniques.

Thomas Merton

#25. Holy habits are that: the disciplines, the routines by which we stay alive and focused on Him. At first we choose them and carry them out; after a while they are part of who we are. And they carry us.

Mark Buchanan

#26. Cleaning is considered a vital part of the training process in all traditional Japanese disciplines and is a required practice for any novice. It is accorded spiritual significance. Purifying an unclean place is believed to purify the mind.

Mineko Iwasaki

#27. It is not that the university as such is against spiritual formation. It is just that often the university does not know how to integrate spiritual formation within its academic disciplines.

Henri Nouwen

#28. The secret to extraordinary faith is fully engaging our MINDS, as well as our hearts, because DYNAMIC FAITH REQUIRES A HEALTHY BALANCE OF BOTH.

Patty Houser

#29. In the afternoon the digestion of the meal deprives me of the incomparable lightness which characterizes the fast days.

Adalbert De Vogue

#30. God has given us the Disciplines of the spiritual life as a means of receiving his grace. The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us.

Richard J. Foster

#31. Too often in the west we fail to realize that even in eastern disciplines the spiritual life is not meant as an escape from the worldly life. There is karma to be fulfilled on earth, within the dharma of necessity.

James Hillman

#32. In the words of Jewish liturgical scholar Lawrence Hoffman, 'Jews do offer freely composed prayers ... But overall, it is the fixed order and content of Jewish prayer that gives it its distinctiveness and that demands the personal commitment to prayer as a discipline.

Lauren F. Winner

#33. From matters as crucial as the death of Jesus, to those as mundane as eating and drinking, the Bible presents the glo ry of God as the ultimate priority and the definitive criterion by which we should evaluate everything.

Donald S. Whitney