This Week: The Spirit of the Disciplines
by Dallas Willard

Come back tomorrow for a selection from a new book!

n service we engage our goods and strength in the active promotion of the good of others and the causes of God in our world. Here we recall an important distinction. Not every act that may be done as a discipline need be done as a discipline. I will often be able to serve another simply as an act of love and righteousness, without regard to how it may enhance my abilities to follow Christ. There certainly is nothing wrong with that, and it may, incidentally, strengthen me spiritually as well. But I may also serve another to train myself from arrogance, possessiveness, envy, resentment, or covetousness. In that case, my service is undertaken as a discipline for the spiritual life.

Such discipline is very useful for those Christians who find themselves—as most of us by necessity must—in the “lower” position in society, at work, and in the church. It alone can train us in habits of loving service to others and free us from resentment, enabling us in faith to enjoy our position and work because of its exhalted meaning before God.

Paradoxically perhaps, service is the high road to freedom from bondage to other people. In it, as Paul realized, we cease to be “menpleasuers” and “eyeservants,” for we are acting unto God in our lowliest deeds: “Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not with eyeservice, as menpleasuers, but in singlenses of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you are serving the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:22-24, RSV).

Chapter 9: Some Main Disciplines for the Spiritual Life ||  Page 182
Copyright © 1991 Harper Collins

Available in the Pavilion
Topic: Spiritual Disciplines