DAY 3: Discovering Your Spiritual Rhythm

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

— Psalm 51:10

“Deep inside every man, there is a private sanctum where dwells the mysterious essence of his being.”

— AW Tozer

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Learning New Rhythms

Throughout your life there will be moments of great hope, tranquility, peace, deep emptiness, despair, and many other profound or mundane experiences. How we respond to each moment is driven by the makeup of our internal world. And it is our part to actively choose to shape that world.

Absent this spiritual formation of our inner life, the inane chatter that fills the mind and heart throughout our daily lives will choke out the potential for transformation. Understanding the role you take in forming your inner life is crucial for encountering the presence of God (and lingering with Him). The practices of the spiritual life are important because they hollow out the inner life of our thoughts, wants, attitudes, and opinions in order to make room for the Spirit of God.

“It is through purity of heart that the Kingdom of Heaven comes to us: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart’, says the Lord, ‘for they shall see God” (St. Matthew 5:8). From this we learn that we do not achieve perfection immediately upon renunciation of material things and withdrawal from the world, but only after we have attained to love for God and neighbor, which gives rise to purity of heart. We must, therefore, do all things for the sake of this love and disdain all pleasure and glory, gladly enduring fasts, vigils, and every other hardship, enthusiastically engaging in reading and psalmody… Fasts, vigils, the reading of Scripture, and renunciation of the entire world do not constitute perfection, as we have said, but are means for the attainment of perfection. When we have not achieved love for God and our neighbor, it is vain for us to take pride in fasting, vigils, non-acquisitiveness, and the reading of Scripture, since perfection does not reside in these, but is attained through them; for he who has achieved love is pure in heart and has God within him, and his mind is ever with God and contemplates His beauty,” ~ Abba Cassian

Discipline and routine are not the point, they are a means to an end. Acquiring love for God and love for neighbor is our end. They can open a path for us to flow towards maturity. Essential to the path of union with Christ is discovering a rhythm that welcomes silence and solitude. 

Blessings,

Joshua Hoffert

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REFLECTION QUESTIONS

Consider spending some time in silence, with your heart trained towards God.

• What areas of your life do you long for God to speak into?

• What areas of your life could you grow in love for yourself?

• What areas of your life could you grow in love for others?

DAY 2: Discovering Your Spiritual Rhythm

“For as the body is not supplied from its own nature with meat, drink, and clothing, so the soul cannot attain to everlasting life from its own nature, but from the Divine nature; from His Spirit, from His light...””

— Abba Macarius The Great

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Discovering The Rhythm of God

As you begin to discover a rhythm in your spiritual life, an inner space develops where God and man commune. This is the means through which we train our heart to turn to Him. One Desert Father, Abba Diadochos, explained these practices using the analogy of turning to the warmth of the sun:

“A person who is in the open air of winter, lacking any other help, awaits the rising of the sun so as to warm himself; and when the sun has dawned, he turns himself entirely towards it. But when the sun rises, only the front part of his body will be warmed, whereas his backside will be completely devoid of the sun’s warmth, since the sun has not yet reached the middle of the sky. Precisely the same thing happens to those who are at the beginning of their spiritual progress: Their hearts are sweetly warmed in part, by the warmth of the Holy Spirit, and thus their minds thereby begin to bear the fruits of spiritual thoughts; such being the case, however, considerable portions of their intellect remain with carnal thoughts, since all of these parts have not yet been illuminated with a profound mystical consciousness of holy Grace. Many people lack the ability to comprehend this precise circumstance, for which reason they have wrongly come to believe that it is possible for Grace and sin-that is, the Spirit of Truth, and the spirit of error-to be simultaneously concealed together in the minds of strugglers”.

Spiritual disciples help you to warm your backside, as it were (according to Abba Diadochos). They help to erect an inner expectation and hope that God will be with us. They are important for clearing the weeds of the inner life. As was said regarding one Desert Mother: “Just as, therefore, men prune unfruitful branches from trees with many branches, so also Amma Syncletica would remove the thorny outgrowths of her mind (inappropriate thoughts) with prayer and fasting.”

The goal is not to accomplish something by practicing a certain discipline. The goal is to carve out space within the inner life to find rest before the Father. Amma Macrina taught that man was “a little world in himself.” That little world can be filled with all the chaotic energy of anger, lust, offense, and betrayal. Those dis-integrating emotions tend to spiral us towards a carnality that cannibalizes itself. We then exist from one emotional moment to the next and the in-between spaces become a blur.

However, as with the men and women in scripture (Psalm 119:164, Joshua 1:8, Psalm 27:8), the daily rhythm of seeking the Father’s heart can carve out a place where His glorious, peaceful, illuminating light begins to make you truly human; the image He always intended for you.

Blessings,

Joshua Hoffert

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REFLECTION QUESTIONS

Leave me a comment below and tell me…

• What aspects of the spiritual life do you have questions about? Or, put another way, what questions do you have about spiritual disciplines in general?

• What kind of impact do you think adding a routine of spiritual exercise could have on your life?

DAY 1: Discovering Your Spiritual Rhythm

“A discipline is something that you do in your own power to enable you to do something that you cannot do by your direct effort.”

— Dallas Willard

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Discovering New Life Through Rhythm

We live our lives by an undercurrent, a rhythm that aids or detracts from our daily walk. Wake, eat, brush, drive, work, eat, sleep, repeat. We have been indoctrinated into a system of thought that drives all we think, act upon, say, or feel. What if you could break from that routine and find solace in the arms of your heavenly Father? What if you could routinely discover His embrace?

Implementing rhythms that help you discover the tenderness of God’s heart will take time, practice, trial and error. The Bible calls it daily seeking the Lord, and the Desert Fathers found these rhythms to be the fundamental elements to knowing God deep within the heart.

Take the discipline of solitude for instance. Practically speaking, the discipline of solitude is to set aside unencumbered times of alone-ness. In solitude, your only companion is yourself; no books, no music, no technology. Solitude helps to reveal to us the things we turn to for comfort and the external things we look to for security and identity. But the outworking of solitude is not to know those things, it is to find spiritual rest. By practicing solitude, you indirectly affect your capacity to find spiritual rest. Abba Isaiah the Solitary said the natural outworking of solitude (distance from men) will have a direct impact on how you treat others:

“He who wishes to find spiritual rest in his cell and not to be conquered by enmity toward anyone must completely distance himself from men in all things. Hence, he must abstain from condemning or justifying his fellow man, from praising or publicizing the virtues of his neighbor, from grieving him in any insignificant matter, or from paying attention to his failings. He should not allow any thought or suspicion of enmity to prick his heart; nor should he display his knowledge to one who is ignorant or impose his will on the imprudent.” 

The spiritual disciplines are things like fasting, silence, solitude, prayer, worship, and simplicity (and so many more!). They are the things that you can do that you have direct control over. And they then have indirect benefits in your spiritual life.

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Blessings,

Joshua Hoffert

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REFLECTION QUESTIONS

Leave me a comment below and tell me…

• Have you ever practiced solitude? Silence? Prayer? Worship?

• If so, how did it impact you?

• If not, what are you most curious about when it comes to spiritual disciplines?