How Do I Make a Spiritual Discipline a Joyful Habit?

These past two weeks, we’ve explored twelve key disciplines from Richard Foster’s The Celebration of Discipline. These include the inward disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study; the outward disciplines of solitude, submission, and service; and finally, the corporate disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration.

By now, you might be saying, “Ezra, this feels like a ton of work and not very much fun! I became a Christian because I was told this was the key to freedom, but you’re making it sound like more trouble than it's worth.”

I get it. But what I’ve discovered is that the difference between a life-giving discipline and a death-giving discipline is perspective. If I see it as something I have to do, I’ll hate it. If I see it as something I get to do, I’ll enjoy it (or at least I’ll hate it a little less).

Several years ago, Janan and I moved into a house that was covered in 1970s-style wallpaper. There was scarcely a square inch, including the furnace, that wasn't untouched. It was so crazy that after we moved in, we discovered a whole additional room in the house that we didn’t even know was there. (You can see it if you look closely at this picture I took of my father-in-law, who gave us a hand)

Apparently, the previous owner—who was a wallpaper artist (go figure)—thought he’d demonstrate his craft. Peeling off layer after layer took painstaking work, but what kept us going was the joy of being in a new house. We knew that as we peeled each layer off, we could turn this house into what we envisioned it could be.

This illustration reminds me of 1 Corinthians 4:16, which says, “Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day.”

Spiritual formation is a process. It takes a lot of time and a lot of God chipping away at our character to make us more like Christ.

So, what’s the key to making spiritual disciplines stick?