Discipline

I'll admit, it's been a long time since I've read my Bible. I haven't been very good at keeping that as a discipline. Truthfully I've stopped feeling guilty about that. I found that in forcing myself to read it, I didn't get much out of it. I would scan a page, realize I had heard all the stories before and heard six different, conflicting sermons on the same passage. I've been over-indoctinated, and for a long time I've found it impossible to read my Bible without reading all the varying historical-critical interpretations I've been told for so long.

I've actually been on this hiatus for a few months now. Of course I would read a few pages scattered over a month, but I just haven't had any hunger to read consistently. I've gotten a lot of Bible through various other books I've read. I would read someone else's interpretation. Sometimes in doing so, I would get really excited about what they said, and enthusiastically pick up my Bible to start again. . . a few paragraphs later I would realize why I haven't read it much on its own. Maybe I should be more worried about this than I am, but I'm not.

Last week I went to UTD to worship with some friends I hadn't gotten to see in a long time. It was cool. These friends are all charismatic/Spirit-filled. It's cool being around them. I always leave refreshed. I used to be uncomfortable around them, now I love it. All the things that used to make me cautious were mostly because of misunderstandings I had. We prayed for each other like we had done before. I told them before that I had felt like I was spiritually anorexic; I just hadn't been very hungry for God in a while. They prayed for that. One girl Anita, said she got this vision of me asking for a candle and getting a furnace: I want that hunger, I'll be overwhelmed by it. I hope so.

I'm not there yet, but I think I'm starting to at least get an appetite back. I started reading Luke through. It's been cool. I've been getting some more vivid pictures of Jesus and the people he's around. For the past months I would read and didn't picture a thing. Now it's like the characters are actually developing a bit.

Discipline is life or it is death. It will bring you one or the other. Dallas Willard poinst out that Jesus calls his way easy. Jesus led the most disciplined life of all, but he claimed in doing so we would be releaved of our burdens. I'm not really that disciplined of a person, no matter what others may think. I think the only way I will be is if the things that I view as religious burdens all become connecting points to God. I've always thought I need to read more, fast more, pray more, do something. I don't think that now. I think that attitude is one that turns discipline into a way of death. Now, I'm increasingly of the opinion that I need God more, and if/when I find religious practices help out to that end I'll do them. That's discipline that brings life.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I used to think that discipline was a way to get close to God. I would read my Bible as a means to connect with him, and feel disappointed when it didn't really help me feel any closer. I think that's wrong. I'm starting to understand that I am close to him. That fact is not contingent on my discipline, nor proved/disproved by my feelings. God's presence is not the goal of discipline it is the foundation of it. If I read to be with God, then reading will always be stale and leave me more burdened, confused, and hungry than when I opened up my Bible. I am with God, so I read, and in doing so become (painfully slowly) who I have wanted to be. God remains who he has been all along.