Richard gave us a disciplines project where we evaluate where we currently stand in spiritual disciplines and try to develop a strategy for improvement. The exercise is to write down where we think we currently stand and then see if we can prayerfully come up with a strategy to improve and write that down as well (if we’re having difficult with our strategy, we’ll be discussing it at the core group meeting on Tuesday). I thought that it would be good to put this down on the blog…

  1. Prayer – This has been a very difficult thing for me. Praying throughout the day at different points for different things is fairly easy… but the focused concentrated prayer is quite difficult. The strategy I’m taking is to make this part of an overall plan of 15 minutes of focused quiet time with either prayer, reading, or meditation/memorization as the primary focus of that 15 minutes.
  2. Meditation/memorization – Daily “throughout the day” meditation comes pretty easily, but, again, the focused concentrated time of meditation or memorization is very difficult – apparently focused and concentrated time on anything is very difficult for me. This is part of my new commitment of 15 minutes of dedicated time already mentioned.
  3. Fasting – Ugh – so very hard. Giving up food for any prolonged period feels like utter torture to me. I’ve discovered that I can fast other things with little effort… so, I feel that fasting for me (in order to be a discipline) will have to involve food due to the immense effort it seems to take. My commitment is to fast for six hours within the next month from (after breakfast on a work day to the point where I get home) while taking a solid lunch break with a focus on spending time with God (using prayer, reading, and meditation).
  4. Confession – This one tends to come more easily for me, but it isn’t consistent. I’ve recently made a commitment to engage in a monthly prolonged discussion with a brother with a specific bent toward mutual confession and correction seeking.
  5. Solitude – I don’t like to do this. Being alone for the specific intention of being alone with God is not something that I enjoy… mainly because I don’t trust myself. When I’m alone for too long, my mind wanders to things that tend to lead to sin rather than to God. My strategy for the moment is to train myself to spend quiet alone time with God with the hopes that He will train me to incline my will and my mind to Him in eager anticipation.