“I am the true vine. Abide in me…bear fruit.” John 15:1-6
Think back over the last year. In what ways have you become more like Christ? Are you more, or less, patient with people? Do you more readily love your enemies? Do you offer more love to people in general? How is your joy? Are you at peace when the world around you doesn’t seem right? Do you seek unity with others more so than division? Have your “fits of anger” become less frequent?
This isn’t a completely arbitrary list of questions. As I read John 15, Paul’s call to walk in the Spirit in Galatians 5 came to mind. I try to slow down from time to time and take stock in who I used to be and who I am changing into. This last year has been a hard journey of letting go of the conversations in my head. With the help of a spiritual mentor, I realized that I have an incredible ability of writing the script for other people, having lengthy arguments with them, and setting them straight in the process. My spiritual mentor helped me see how I have a tendency to dehumanize others in this process, losing sight of their humanity, and allow joy and love to slip away from my life because I don’t allow people to grow.
This last year I struggled with allowing the worst version of people (as they present themselves on social media) to become the view of them in my mind. There were two people specifically from another time in my life who continually posted things that I simply saw as un-Christlike and damaging to Christian unity. I knew that responding to them would just further the problems often found in discourse on social media. So, I would hold court in my mind and destroy their arguments and destroy their humanity in the process. They never stood a chance in the court of opinion of my mind. When I recognized this in myself, with the help of someone who cares enough to call me to Christ’s likeness, I worked on developing some disciplines to reconnect with Christ to restore joy, peace, patience, and love in my heart for these people. That was an area of my life where I needed pruning so that I could bear fruit.
I share this in hopes to encourage you on your journey. We are all walking together towards becoming more and more like Christ. In order to enter that kind of transformation, we have to be connected to the source of transformation. You cannot transform yourself. You can only submit to the pruning it takes to cultivate transformation. Spiritual disciplines help create space in your life for submission to the one who prunes. When Jesus calls us to abide in him, he is saying that we should be so connected to him as the source of life that we can say with Paul, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Wherever your “I” is getting too big, think ego, it needs to be pruned back so that your source of life comes from the vine.
The journey of spiritual formation is one of relinquishment. Spiritual disciplines help us create space for the Spirit to enter and cut away the parts of ourselves that are keeping us from bearing fruit. These disciplines are not a way to earn salvation. We are connected to the vine by grace. We work at our disciplines to allow God to prune us in the ways that he sees fit. These disciplines are an act of submission rather than an act of trying to control our salvation.
In the words of Thomas Merton:
True Christianity is growth in the life of the Spirit, a deepening of the new life, a continuous rebirth, in which the exterior and superficial life of the ego-self is discarded like an old snake skin and the mysterious, invisible self of the Spirit becomes more present and more active. The true Christian rebirth is a renewed transformation, a “Passover” in which [a person] is progressively liberated from selfishness and not only grows in love but in some sense “becomes love.” The perfection of the new birth is reached where there is no more selfishness, there is only love. In the language of the mystics, there is no more ego-self, there is only Christ; self no longer acts, only the Spirit acts in pure love. The perfect illumination is, then, the illumination of Love shining by itself. To become completely transparent and allow Love to shine by itself is the maturity of the “New Man.”
What disciplines have you cultivated to help you grow to be more like Christ? If you need help establishing some disciplines in your life, I would love to help you come up with a plan. Email me at ryan@nodachurch.com. We also provide resources for spiritual formation on our website: here.
Richard Foster: “Celebration of Discipline”
Foster gives a great account for the need for disciplines and the provenance they have throughout church history. I’ve come back to this book multiple times to reconnect with different disciplines as needed in my life. He writes in a way that makes you want to try them out.
Adele Calhoun: “Spiritual Disciplines Handbook”
Calhoun’s book is a wonderful and easily accessible resource for a large variety of practices within the Christian tradition. She gives a brief introductions into each practice, a guide for how to practice them, and provides some structure for how to integrate these practices into your life individually or as a group.
Jackie Halstead: “Leaning Into God's Embrace”
I listened to an interview with Jackie Halstead a few months ago and bought her book as a result. She is from our branch of Christianity and her work helps connect us with our ancient past through the disciplines that shaped the early church. She provides a guide for how to use these practices in groups. I haven’t read this book yet but would love to read it with a few other people if anyone is interested.