Worth Celebrating: Celebration of Discipline

I once blogged through a list of 20 questions from readers, family, and friends. Question 11 asked: What is one book (besides the bible) that has had the greatest influence on your life? I gave my answer in two parts: The Screwtape Letters because of how it set me to reading so many other great books. The Celebration of Discipline because of how it guided and formed my walk with God. I stand by this answer. 

The Screwtape Letters, as I noted in my last blog post, brought with it a new awareness of sin in my daily life. This is an incredible gift, but it comes with an immediate question: What do I do about it? How do I respond to this when part of the problem is how sin is so baked-in? 

I tried the whole "will it away" approach. I'm going to be more patient! I'm going to work really, really, really hard at it! And, by all that is holy, I'm going to start getting this right! 

I think we all know how well that went. 

Imagine trying to train for a marathon without a working knowledge of your cardio-vascular system, or the appropriate training periods and pacing, about how to work you way up to a marathon length run, about nutrition and rest, and everything else you can find in a marathon training manual. Then imagine someone coming along and giving you such a manual. You were already dedicated to running a marathon. Already training as hard as you could. But such a book would breathe new life into your routines, renew your passion, and, if accurate, bring you joy through the fruit it bore in your life. Running would still be the heart of it all, but that manual would have freed you to enjoy and grow in running more than before. 

That is what Celebration of Discipline was for me in my faith journey. God, and His word, remained at the center of it all (they still are!), but this book freed me to enjoy and grow in Him more than before. 

Dallas Willard, rather than Richard Foster, provides the analogy I still use today. If you want to get stronger, by lifting weights for example, you work through indirect effort. You do what you can do now in order to grow into what you can't do yet. If your goal is to lift 200 lbs but right now you can only lift 100, you don't find 200 lbs and then grunt and groan and strain with all of your effort, day after day, hoping that some day that weight will move. Instead, you work your way up in increments. 100 lbs many times. Then 105. Then 110. Until one day you hit 200.  

Spiritual disciplines, on this analogy, are like training. I may start out terrible at saying no to myself when I really want something. But, through the practice of fasting, I can learn to control my desires instead of allowing them to control me. They are also much more than that. And that is where Richard Foster comes in. 

Celebration of Discipline is a book that outlines twelve key spiritual disciplines in the Christian life. Each one is a training activity. A way in which I can do something now that will, over time, lead to growth. Each one is also a way to open ourselves up to the work of God in our lives, a method for plowing the tough and rocky soil of our hearts to make it ready for the seed of the gospel. 

For a young-man eager to act upon the new conviction found through the work of C.S. Lewis, this book hit like an arrow to the heart. Most of what Foster writes about was new to me. I knew about prayer and scripture reading and singing together on Sunday. Nothing else. After reading this book I began to explore and practice other disciplines. I also dove head first into the literature of spiritual formation, both modern and ancient. And so, as with The Screwtape Letters, part of the formative influence of this book was to lead me to other books. This, I think, will be an ongoing theme as I reflect on these forty books. 

Note: This post is part of a series which I began here. To see all the posts in the series click the label at the bottom of this post "20yrs40bks".