Quotessence
Home / Topics / Spiritual Disciplines Quotes

Spiritual Disciplines Quotes

Browse 141 quotes about Spiritual Disciplines.

Related topics

Discipline

Spiritual Disciplines Quotes

“As I grow in my prayer life, my soul becomes a delightfully cluttered attic, filled with random graces that do not all fit together in some perfectly ordered system. The purpose of some graces will be immediately apparent in my life, but the meaning of others might evade me for a while. I must resist the temptation to clean up the messiness of my graces and must not try to come up with immediate answers for the questions that arise from them.”

PrayerSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionSelah
Book:Armchair Mystic: Easing Into Contemplative Prayer
Create image

“Prayer is for listening; review of prayer is for discerning. It is important that I resist the temptation to analyze what is going on. During prayer, I will be tempted to play the sports commentator, reviewing every move with instant replay. I will be tempted to ask myself if the prayer is going well, if it is really God speaking or merely my imagination, if I'm handling this conversation well and so on. This ongoing analysis will only distract me from listening for God with my full attention....I may miss God's voice because I am too preoccupied with evaluating the prayer then and there. During the prayer itself, I must simply be present and listen attentively to whatever is said by whomever. There will be plenty of time to sort it all out later.”

PrayerDiscernmentSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionSelah
Book:Armchair Mystic: Easing Into Contemplative Prayer
Create image

“The purpose of spiritual direction groups is formation. Spiritual formation is "a process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others." The intentional goal of group spiritual direction is to help each participant become more aware of God in their lives, for the sake of others.”

Spiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionSelah
Book:Seeking God Together: An Introduction to Group Spiritual Direction
Create image

“...good listeners have a humble perspective. Humility in listening means that we let go of preconceived opinions, we let go of the need to be right, we let go of our own insecurities, and we let go of the need to appear wise, good or spiritual. In short, we let go of ourselves in order to be present to the other. This is a high calling and a commitment we will need to return to again and again.”

Spiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionSelahListening Prayer
Book:Seeking God Together: An Introduction to Group Spiritual Direction
Create image

“Each moment of our days--our meals, our conversations with friends, our escapes, obsessions, romances, and distractions--is what we make of our lives. Our habits and rhythms of life are formative not only of who we are but how we know the world, including whether we know it to be a place where God is present or absent.”

HabitsWorldviewSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual PracticesLife With God
Book:Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World
Create image

“You must remain in the Word. Five minutes of nibbling on a verse in the morning won’t fill you up and fuel you through the other 1,435 minutes of the day. You need a continual feast to carry you through long fasting days. First Thessalonians 5:17 tells you to “pray without ceasing.” If praying is talking to God, then reading God’s Word is listening. Let’s make the conversation a continual feast! Read and pray, then read and pray some more. Let your fasting days propel you into a feasting life.”

Christian QuotesFastingBible QuotesSpiritual DisciplinesFastDaily Devotions
Book:The 40-Day Sugar Fast: Where Physical Detox Meets Spiritual Transformation
Create image

“The reward for giving and praying and fasting is found in the giving and praying and fasting. Because fasting and praying and giving allow us to experience more of Him. And He is everything. Our reward is the intimacy forged in prayerful conversation with the One who stitched us and knows us and sits enthroned within us and over us.”

GivingPrayerFastingSpiritual DisciplinesFastSugar Fast
Book:The 40-Day Sugar Fast: Where Physical Detox Meets Spiritual Transformation
Create image

“Scottish minister Andrew Bonar said, “Fasting is abstaining from anything that hinders prayer.” Not just food. Anything. As a matter of fact, Bonar often fasted from reading in order to spend more time with the Lord. Reading! His example ought to challenge us to consider what else might be hindering our intimate friendship with the Lord. If we want to experience His sustaining hand in our lives, it may be a good idea to take a season to set aside anything that might be in our hands. I like to say it this way: We abstain so that He might sustain. This isn’t just about food. We don’t just run to the pantry—we run to online games, we run to romance novels, and we run to Starbucks too.”

Christian QuotesFastingSpiritual Disciplines
Book:The 40-Day Sugar Fast: Where Physical Detox Meets Spiritual Transformation
Create image

“So many of us have found that it is quite helpful - essential to our well-being, in fact - to craft and actually write down a rule of life. The purpose of this rule is to keep us clear and attentive, to enable us to live contemplatively in the midst of activity. The temptation, of course, is to to be overambitious and to set ourselves impossible goals - and then to fail. I think of this as the "first week of Lent syndrome": what begins a bracing change of pace and priorities turns into a real drag after about two weeks. There is also the danger that the structure will become an end in itself so that our spirituality becomes joyless, life-denying, and self-centered. Particularly in regard to "spiritual disciplines," less is frequently more. A good rule can set us free to be our true and best selves.”

Spiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Book:At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us
Create image

“[My students} ... presented me with thoughtful and candid papers. They had examined their use of time and energy, reflected carefully on their relationship with those whose lives touched theirs (including the difficult and incompatible ones), scrutinied their performance as custodians of God's creation. All in all, it was exemplary work except for one thing: these were grim, dreary schedules that allowed no place for fun. No room for holy uselessness or the joyous and restorative wasting of time, a spiritual discipline that bears absolutely no resemblance to guilt-producing procrastination or avoidance of whatever the next step might be. If they were able to live out the plan that they laid out for themselves, they would be exemplary citizens, conscientious prayer-ers, and ecologically beyond reproach. but they would never have any fun.”

RestSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Book:At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us
Create image

“The New Testament is not very helpful about family values. Jesus, unmarried at an age when most Jewish men were husbands and fathers, exhibits a cavalier attitude toward families as he gathers his followers around him. Think about the call of the disciples from their wives' point of view: Jesus meets Peter and Andrew, James and John, as they are tending their nets. he says, "Follow me," and immediately they abandon their livelihood without a second thought. They abandon their families as well: did they ever go home to tell their wives that they would not be there for dinner? Did they make any provision for their families? When, in my imagination, I translate this story into the present time, were I the wife of Peter, Andrew, James, or John, I would be furious. "You did what? What about the health plan? Your pension? College for the children? Are you planning on coming back sometime? How am I going to manage? Who will look after the children if I have to get a job?" ... Jesus might have been an effective healer, but he also certainly knew how to disrupt a household.”

FamilySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of LifeCallings
Book:At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us
Create image

“The secret, of course, lies in the Benedictine commitment to conversion. I cannot serve God and mammon, I cannot serve two masters, I cannot be both in the world and of it. I cannot have an authentic spiritual life without working at it. The spiritual life is not a matter of religious sleight of hand. It is not the doing of spiritual tricks that we are about. It is an attitude of mind we must develop. It is a way of walking lightly through things that threaten to bind us or bog us down - that is what a true spirituality implies. It is an asceticism without chains. The shock comes when we finally realize that spirituality itself can be a temptation. ... The Rule, in other words, teaches us to cling to nothing, to hold everything - even the best of holy things - with a relaxed grasp.”

SpiritualitySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“One of the Western world's most serious problems is the tension between the group and the individual. Our culture trains people in individualism and then condemns them to live forever in groups, large groups. The Rule of Benedict, however, trains people to live in community. The question is, Why? Isn't the eremitical life the life of complete perfection and total dedication to God? And the answer is, yes it is., for some people. But not for most, and then only after they have learned the virtues that come from life in community (RB 1). Most social beings, however are meant to find their sanctification by living under the authority of society. It is the community that forms community values and virtues in me. It is the community that provides the arena for mutual support. It is from the community that I get an example of life lived well. It is in the community that teaching becomes real. It is in the community that authority is meant to become a gift rather than an instrument of oppression. It is only in the community that I really learn to listen to the voice of God in one another and to see the face of God in the other as well as in my own. It is only in community that I can learn to wield patience as well as power. It is only in community that I can learn to obey the command to serve one another.”

SpiritualityCommunitySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“Uniqueness and independence are clearly not synonyms in the mind of Benedict of Nursia. Uniqueness and responsibility go hand in hand in Benedictine spirituality. By all means I should be who I am and have what I need, but you have a claim on those gifts. Those gifts were given to me so much for your sake as for my own. The community does not exist to make me possible. Together we exist to make the gospel possible.”

SpiritualityCommunitySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“God's Creation gives usa model for making and sharing homes with people, but the reality of God's Trinitarian life suggests that Christian hospitality goes farther than that. We are not meant simply to invite people into our homes, but also to invite them into our lives. Having guests and visitors, if we do it right, is not an imposition, because we are not meant to rearrange our lives for our guests - we are meant to invite our guests to enter into our lives as they are. It is this forging of relationships that transforms entertianment... into hospitality... As writer Karen Burton Mains puts it, "Visitors may be more than guests in our home. if they like, they may be friends.”

HospitalitySpiritual Disciplines
Book:Mudhouse Sabbath
Create image

“The best listeners I know pause over words. ‘That’s an interesting way of putting it,’ they muse, or they ask. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ The consciousness that every word is a choice, that each word has its own resonance, nuance, emotional coloring, and weight informs their sense of what is being communicated. This kind of listening comes close to what we engage in when we listen to music...A good listener loves words, respects them, pays attention to them, and recognizes vague approximations as a kind of falsehood.”

CommunityListeningConversationWordsSpiritual DisciplinesMarilyn Chandler Mcentyre
Book:Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies
Create image

“When we speak with others about our experience in Christ, it sharpens our attentiveness to the voice and will of the Father. Sharing our stories helps us clarify the intentions of our hearts toward the fulfillment of his divine will. A small circle of friends also reminds us of the presence, power and protection of the Holy Spirit. Confiding in one another instills a sense of hope for the future as children who are dearly loved by their Father.”

StorytellingSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionSpiritual Friendship
Book:Crafting a Rule of Life: An Invitation to the Well-Ordered Way
Create image

“The church itself is a spiritual director. It tries to connect your story with God's story. Just to be a true part of this community means you are being directed, you are being guided, you are being asked to make connection. The Bible is a spiritual director. People must read Scripture as a word for themselves personally, and ask where God speaks to them. Finally, individual Christians are also spiritual directors. A spiritual director is a Christian man or woman who practices the disciplines of the church and of the Bible and to whom you are willing to be accountable for your life in God.”

CommunitySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual Direction
Author:Henri Nouwen
Create image

“Generally, it is greed, fear and curiosity which make us live outwardly. A French scientist who worked in America, Alexis Carrel, said in a book called "Man the Unknown" that if you ask yourself where your personality ends you will see that the tongue of a greed person is projected like tentacles towards all the edibles of the world; the eyes of the curious person are like tentacles projected and attached to everything around; the ears of the eavesdropper become long and wide and go far far afield. If you could draw a picture of what you look like in those terms you would see that precious little is left of you inside, because everything is extroverted. So that the first thing one must do is to detach the tentacles and bring them in. You cannot go inwards if you are completely outward.”

PrayerSpiritual Disciplines
Book:Beginning to Pray
Create image

“You cannot, having never prayed before, start with eighteen hours of dialogue and prayer with God continuously like this while you do other things. But you can easily single out one or two moments and put all your energy into them. Simply turn your eyes Godwards, smile at Him and go into it. There are moments when you can tell God 'I simply must have a rest, I have not strength to be with You all the time', which is perfectly true. You are still not capable of bearing God's company all the time. Well, say so. God knows that perfectly well, whatever you do about it. Go apart, say for a moment 'I'll just have a rest. For a moment I accept to be less saintly'.”

PrayerRestSpiritual Disciplines
Book:Beginning to Pray
Create image

“The difference between hearing and listening is significant...Listening well means knowing when to interject questions, when to redirect the conversation, and, more importantly, in what terms to interpret the other's narrative. It means recognizing that the speaker is making purposeful choices, consciously or unconsciously, and considering what those purposes might be. It means accepting the tension between making judgments and withholding judgment as the other's story or line of reasoning unfolds. It means hearing and noting the omissions. And it means listening not only through the words spoken, but to them.”

CommunityListeningConversationSpiritual DisciplinesMarilyn Chandler Mcentyre
Book:Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies
Create image

“When pursued it becomes clear that this separation between one's self and the Church usually stems from deep unresolved pain or dissatisfaction rooted in early religious upbringing. Sometimes it arises from a contemporary image of the Church as authoritarian, chauvinistic, hypocritical, or unforgiving in nature. Though thirsting spiritually for a relationship, some find it too threatening or the prospects too unsatisfying to have to return to a painful image or experience associated with God and the religious realm. This group ay actually scorn the Church because it is not intellectually acceptable to live with a reality that can only be accepted on faith. "To believe in something non-verifiable,' they say, 'is to be weak in one's thinking.' A point comes on the spiritual journey, however, when a healing of one's early religious experience must occur in order for wholeness to be realized. This healing requires a transformation of the person and of the traditional religious images, symbols, and words. Such transformation allows for a new way to experience these traditions and, therefore, a whole new appreciation of spirituality, It's coming full circle to wholeness.”

ChurchHealingSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual Direction
Book:The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith
Create image

“As we mature in faith, our willingness is tested, expanded, and refined. We become more conscious of our limitations and turn to God. The necessity of God's grace becomes clearer as we become more attuned and accurate in our recognition of our dependence on God and less sure of anything that causes us to describe ourselves self-righteously. At times, when confronted by the less-than-ideal behavior of others, we may recognize that we are capable of similar actions and give thankds to God for helping us avoid unwelcome pitfalls. Scripture instructs us to be holy as God is holy, yet we increasingly realize the impossibility of holy behavior unless it is brought about by the Spirit's empowerment and our willing responsiveness and cooperation. Many people use spiritual direction as a window through which to notice and attend to their own expectations of willingness and willfulness.”

Holy SpiritSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual Direction
Book:Holy Invitations: Exploring Spiritual Direction
Create image

“Not everyone can have the same devotion. One exactly suits this person, another that. Different exercises, likewise, are suitable for different times, some for feast days and some again for weekdays. In time of temptation we need certain devotions. For days of rest and peace we need others. Some are suitable when we are sad, others when we are joyful in the Lord.”

Spiritual DisciplinesDevotionsSpiritual Exercises
Book:The Imitation of Christ
Create image

“A Spiritual Discipline is an intentionally directed action which places us in a position to receive from God the power to do what we cannot accomplish on our own.... The deep waters of God's life are already flowing. We simply learn the strokes that will enable us more and more to be at home in them.... The human body is our power-pack of mind-body-spirit -- we discipline it in order to practice cooperation with God. (Life with God, p. 135-137)”

ChristianMind Body SpiritSpiritual Disciplines
Author:Richard Foster
Create image

“God cares about our dietary choices. This should come as no surprise; you only have to read the first two chapters of Genesis to see God's concern for food. Humanity's first sin was disobedience manifested in a choice about eating. Adam and Eve were allowed to eat anything they wanted, except the one fruit they chose. And the New Testament makes clear that God cares about the most basic quotidian aspect of our lives. (Our God, after all, is the God who provides for the sparrows and numbers the hairs on our heads.) This God who is interested in how we speak, how we handle our money, how we carry our bodies - He is also interested in how we live with food.”

ChristianityHolinessDietSpiritual Disciplines
Book:Mudhouse Sabbath
Create image

“Christians and Jews hold in common one theological basis for hospitality: Creation. Creation is the ultimate expression of God's hospitality to His creatures. In the words of on rabbi, everything God created is a "manifestation of His kindness. [The] world is one big hospitality inn." As Church historian Amy Oden has put it, "God offers hospitality to all humanity... by establishing a home.. for all." To invite people into our homes is to respond with gratitude to the God who made a home for us. In the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, we find another resource for hospitality. The trinity shows God in relationships with Himself. our Three-in-one God has welcomed us into Himself and invited us to participate in divine life. And so the invitation that we as Christians extend to one another is not simply an invitation into our homes or to our tables; what we ask of other people it that hey enter into our lives.”

HospitalityTrinitySpiritual Disciplines
Book:Mudhouse Sabbath
Create image