The Spiritual Disciplines

The spiritual disciplines, however, open the federal agency to receiving the gift of inner righteousness--a point that is stressed by capital of Minnesota who promised that "the free gift of righteousness [shall] reign in disembodied spirit through the one man deliverer Christ" (Rom. 4:17). Without this gift our efforts usually end in moral failure and it is the use of the spiritual disciplines that allow us to escape this fate. This suffice is described by Foster as "the path of discipline grace" because grace is given freely by god while it is "disciplined" because "there is something for us to do" (pp. 7-8).

2. supposition is the simplest of the Inward Disciplines and consists of "the ability to hear paragon's voice and obey his reciprocation" (p. 17). surmisal in the Christian sense excludes the many ritualized behaviors that construe with traditional Eastern meditations and unlike Eastern practices, which are aimed at emptying the mind, Christian meditation is the attempt to fill the mind.

Meditation is practiced by many persons in the Bible and Jesus himself frequently withdrew to "a lonely place apart" (Matt. 14: 13) in order to be with God. This communication with God is iterate throughout the Acts of the Apostles and the repeated accounts of "God's multitude learning to live on the basis of hearing God's voice and obeying his word" is sufficient apologize for the practice of meditation (p. 18). The great difficulty of meditation today i

Foster explains how the concerns of individuals can reverse the concerns of the group and how the decisions made by the group, any group, can be transformed if they are made in the spirit of respect to God. The agreement among any group as to their "sincere require to hear and obey the will of God" will be productive of consensus and a united sense of direction and, tear down when some people object to the direction eventually interpreted by such a group, the desire exists to labor to treasure the sense of God's leading that is apparent to the rest.

Foster in any case promotes the bringing close together of spiritual directors within groups as "a beautiful contemplation of divine guidance through the help of our brothers and sisters," save cautions readers closely the dangers of corporate guidance that is manipulative and self-serving (p. 185).

12. Like Confession, counsellor is a Corporate Spiritual Discipline that has both common soldier and communal aspects. The world is waiting for "a Spirit-led, Spirit-intoxicated, Spirit-empowered people" who " do it in this life the life and power of the kingdom of God" (p. 175). The individual, of course, obtains the direct, leading guidance of Jesus through the practice of the Disciplines but this is not sufficient and individual guidance has to give means to corporate guidance. Our cultural tendency toward individualism has led to an violence on private guidance but--taking the apostolic band, prepared by the infusion of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, as a model--it is possible to see the importance of "a prepared people" who can work together toward salvation (p. 179).

Solitude is also connected with inner silence and their combined purpose is "to be able to see and hear" in spiritual ground (p. 98). This inner silence also has an outward form in the individual's attempt to limit her/his dependence on words--a dependence that is close to absolute for most people who necessarily rely on words "to manage and control others" (p. 101). The fear of abandoning words is
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