Discipline & Rest: A new series

When you read the words discipline and rest, do you think they are antonyms? Discipline implies work, focus, and intention. Rest kind of seems the opposite.

And yet, maybe in the context of sacred resting, they are not so different. As our women’s community continues through a year of learning about rest, maybe there’s more to learn in the being still. Maybe we can rest more fully through a little intention.

I continue on my hope to learn how to rest more fully, more intentionally. As I’ve been praying and thinking about this as the summer wore on, I think there is something to practicing more of the spiritual disciplines in hopes to know God more fully and to rest in His truths, his love, and his grace.

When I want to review more about spiritual disciplines, I start by pulling out my ol’ copy of Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. This book was published originally in 1978, but continues to be a good summary of the classical spiritual disciplines.

In his introduction, Foster states, “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.” He goes on to walk the reader through twelve different spiritual disciplines: meditation, prayer, fasting, study, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, confession, worship, guidance, and celebration.

The sheer number of these are daunting to me, but I love that God creates each of us to experience him and know him uniquely. I think each of us leans towards certain disciplines that we hear and experience God’s presence more readily or easily, although there’s much to benefit in practicing or experimenting with learning more about each one.

As we continue to journey through this year of rest, look for more blog entries about these disciplines. Our hope is to have people who love to practice a certain discipline share more about what it is, what it looks like in their life, and how they rest more by their practice. Our desire is this will lead to more true, deeper, connected, sacred rest for each of you.

Interested in sharing your experiences with one of the disciplines mentioned here? Contact libba@warehouse242.org, we'd love to hear from you.


Written by: Jennifer Coggins