Category: Resources & Reviews

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline by Richard Fos­ter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2019. The sched­ule is online.

I think two insights from this chap­ter are par­tic­u­lar­ly salient for today:

“Through­out Scrip­ture fast­ing refers to abstain­ing from food for spir­i­tu­al pur­pos­es. It stands in dis­tinc­tion to the hunger strike, the pur­pose of which is to gain polit­i­cal pow­er or attract atten­tion to a good cause. It is also dis­tinct from health diet­ing which stress­es absti­nence from food for phys­i­cal, not spir­i­tu­al, pur­pos­es.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 48

When­ev­er peo­ple tell me that they are fast­ing from social media I always feel puz­zled.

I like the con­cept, I just don’t like call­ing it fast­ing. Tak­ing a break from Insta­gram is just self-con­trol and does­n’t need a spe­cial label. Fast­ing is refrain­ing from some­thing that you need to sur­vive — it shows that God is more pre­cious to you than life. Cut­ting out Face­book does­n’t rise to that lev­el.

When we expand the word fast­ing to include any act of self-depri­va­tion, we prime our­selves to ignore actu­al fast­ing. “I don’t need to fast food. I fast social media.”

A lit­tle lat­er Fos­ter says

“Reg­u­lar or week­ly fast­ing has had such a pro­found effect in the lives of some that they have sought to find a Bib­li­cal com­mand for it, so that it may be urged upon all Chris­tians. The search is in vain. There sim­ply are no Bib­li­cal laws that com­mand reg­u­lar fast­ing. Our free­dom in the gospel, how­ev­er, does not mean license; it means oppor­tu­ni­ty. Since there are no laws to bind us, we are free to fast on any day.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 51

Read­ing these words again over 20 years after I first stum­bled upon them I real­ize how influ­en­tial they have been to me. If you skimmed over them while rac­ing through the chap­ter, I encour­age you to read over them again slow­ly. These words apply to far more than fast­ing.

Some additional thoughts:

The prac­ti­cal details in this chap­ter are sol­id gold. If you’ve nev­er fast­ed for at least three days, I encour­age you to fol­low Fos­ter’s advice on pages 56–60. Start with skip­ping two meals (a 24 hour fast), then after a few rep­e­ti­tions skip three meals (a 36 hour fast), and then once you feel ready plan to skip meals for three to sev­en days. Since the first three days are the hard­est, if you’re going to fast three days then you might as well do sev­er­al more unless you have a rea­son not to (pro­fes­sion­al oblig­a­tions, an ath­let­ic train­ing sched­ule, etc). After that, do what makes the most sense to you.

Also, don’t lie about your fast­ing. Young Chris­tians do this all the time because they believe that if any­one dis­cov­ers that they are fast­ing then it does­n’t count. That’s a mis­un­der­stand­ing. What Jesus for­bids is draw­ing atten­tion to your fast so that peo­ple admire you. Here are His words in the NIV:

“When you fast, do not look somber as the hyp­ocrites do, for they dis­fig­ure their faces to show oth­ers they are fast­ing. Tru­ly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvi­ous to oth­ers that you are fast­ing, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Matthew 6:16–18

The point is to not draw atten­tion to what you are doing, and the sim­ple truth is that exces­sive eva­sions actu­al­ly wind up draw­ing more atten­tion to your fast­ing than a straight­for­ward acknowl­edge­ment. So if some­one asks you point blank if you are fast­ing, just say, “Yes.” Or if one of your friends asks, “Do you need me to buy your lunch for you? I’m hap­py to spot you.” Then tell them, “Oh, that’s all right. I’m not eat­ing lunch today. Thanks.”

Final­ly, if you strug­gle with an eat­ing dis­or­der then you prob­a­bly should not fast until you achieve a healthy rela­tion­ship with food. As a gen­er­al rule, spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing your dys­func­tions leads to bad out­comes.

Next week we look at the dis­ci­pline of study!

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline by Richard Fos­ter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which is an email I send to the par­tic­i­pants). They are all tagged summer‐reading‐project‐2019. The sched­ule is online if you’d like to read along.

This week’s spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline is prayer. I found this chap­ter a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing because I’ve read Fos­ter’s book Prayer, and it’s the best book on prayer I’ve ever read. Most books on prayer make me feel guilty for not pray­ing enough, but his book encour­aged me so much that I kept putting it down to pray right away. This chap­ter was good, but it’s only the embry­on­ic form of Fos­ter’s best writ­ing on this sub­ject. If you like what he says here, order Prayer right now.

A few thoughts in response to this week’s read­ing:

1. First, you should also read this one-page C.S. Lewis essay “If God Is Sov­er­eign, Why Should We Pray?” It will answer ques­tions that I am con­fi­dent some of you have. You can also find this essay as chap­ter 11 of his book God In The Dock — the ver­sion I linked to is slight­ly abridged, so if you own God in the Dock I sug­gest you read it there.
2. Sec­ond, there are so many tid­bits of advice scat­tered through­out this chap­ter that I urge you to just focus on one at a time. Just as a sci­en­tist learns best when they adjust one vari­able at a time, we will gain the most if we incor­po­rate insights slow­ly.
3. Third, I think the sin­gle most impor­tant sen­tence in this chap­ter might be, “I deter­mined to learn to pray so that my expe­ri­ence con­formed to the words of Jesus rather than try to make his words con­form to my impov­er­ished expe­ri­ence” (page 37). If that is your men­tal­i­ty you will expe­ri­ence tremen­dous growth and see great things.
4. Fourth, some­thing he does­n’t empha­size as much as I would like is that a huge part of prayer is call­ing upon God’s nature (i.e, call­ing on the name of the Lord) and call­ing upon His promis­es. Our faith is root­ed in His faith­ful­ness, both His faith­ful­ness to His char­ac­ter and His faith­ful­ness to His com­mit­ments. A great way to do this is by pray­ing Scrip­ture. Andy Nasel­li has a sol­id arti­cle about this: 12 Rea­sons You Should Pray Scrip­ture.
5. Fifth and final­ly, I very much appre­ci­ate how he empha­sized pray­ing for your pas­tor (page 43). I tell you frankly and with­out shame that I cov­et your prayers. As Paul said in 1 Thess 5:25, “pray for us.” Don’t know how to pray for a pas­tor? Paul basi­cal­ly asked the church to pay for his pro­tec­tion and effec­tive­ness. Specif­i­cal­ly, he asked peo­ple to pray for open doors for his min­istry (Col 4:3), the abil­i­ty to preach clear­ly (Col 4:4), fear­less­ness in min­istry (Eph 6:19), Spir­it-led words as he preached (Eph 6:19), that the gospel would spread through his min­istry (2 Thess 3:1), for deliv­er­ance from those who wished him harm (2 Thess 3:2, Romans 15:31), favor for his min­istry (Romans 15:31), for deliv­er­ance from despair and chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances (2 Cor 1:9–11, Philip­pi­ans 1:19), for safe and suc­cess­ful min­istry trips (Romans 15:32), and for him to return safe­ly to a friend (Phile­mon 1:22). Pray just a few of those things for me and I’ll be grate­ful!

Next week’s chap­ter is on fast­ing and it’s super-prac­ti­cal. If I recall cor­rect­ly, it was the chap­ter on fast­ing that made the most sig­nif­i­cant impres­sion upon me when I first read this book back in col­lege. I hope it helps you as much as it did me!

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline by Richard Fos­ter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which is an email I send to the par­tic­i­pants). They are all tagged summer‐reading‐project‐2019. The sched­ule is online if you’d like to read along.

The first of the spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines we’re going to look at is med­i­ta­tion. Fos­ter help­ful­ly dis­tin­guish­es what he is talk­ing about from East­ern med­i­ta­tion: “East­ern med­i­ta­tion is an attempt to emp­ty the mind; Chris­t­ian med­i­ta­tion is an attempt to fill the mind. The two ideas are quite dif­fer­ent” (page 20).

In East­ern med­i­ta­tion (or mind­ful­ness as we tend to call it today) very often peo­ple seem to be try­ing to gain self-aware­ness — to dis­cov­er what they think and feel. In Chris­t­ian med­i­ta­tion, on the oth­er hand, we are try­ing to gain God-aware­ness — to dis­cov­er what He thinks and feels. As Fos­ter puts it, “Chris­t­ian med­i­ta­tion, very sim­ply, is the abil­i­ty to hear God’s voice and obey his word” (page 17).

Live Without Hurry

I sus­pect this chap­ter’s biggest chal­lenge for most Stan­ford stu­dents is the sug­ges­tion to live through­out the day in such a way that you are pre­pared for med­i­ta­tion:

If we are con­stant­ly being swept off our feet with fran­tic activ­i­ty, we will be unable to be atten­tive at the moment of inward silence. A mind that is harassed and frag­ment­ed by exter­nal affairs is hard­ly pre­pared for med­i­ta­tion. The church Fathers often spoke of Otium Sanc­tum: “holy leisure.” It refers to a sense of bal­ance in life, an abil­i­ty to be at peace through the activ­i­ties of the day, an abil­i­ty to rest and take time to enjoy beau­ty, an abil­i­ty to pace our­selves. With our ten­den­cy to define peo­ple in terms of what they pro­duce, we would do well to cul­ti­vate “holy leisure.” And if we expect to suc­ceed in the con­tem­pla­tive arts, we must pur­sue, “holy leisure” with a deter­mi­na­tion that is ruth­less to our date­books.

Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 27

I often think about a con­ver­sa­tion between John Ort­berg (the pas­tor of near­by Men­lo Church) and Dal­las Willard (men­tioned in Fos­ter’s book on page xxi). At the time, Ort­berg was work­ing at a very fast-paced megachurch in Chica­go, so he called Willard to ask what he need­ed to do to be spir­i­tu­al­ly healthy. Willard paused for a long time, and then said, “You must ruth­less­ly elim­i­nate hur­ry from your life.”

Ruth­less­ly. Elim­i­nate. Hur­ry.

In oth­er words, treat hur­ry as the ene­my of your soul. This is not a call to be unpro­duc­tive. It is a call to refuse to be dri­ven by arti­fi­cial urgency.

So my first chal­lenge to you is twofold:

1. Live with­out hur­ry this sum­mer. Be pro­duc­tive with­out allow­ing feel­ing fran­tic to take root in your soul.
2. Pre­pare to live with­out hur­ry in the fall. Prac­ti­cal­ly, this prob­a­bly means sign­ing up for one few­er class than you think you’re sup­posed to.

Meditate Upon Scripture

Fos­ter dis­cuss­es sev­er­al types of med­i­ta­tion, but empha­sizes med­i­ta­tion upon Scrip­ture as the foun­da­tion. I agree com­plete­ly. Make med­i­ta­tion upon Scrip­ture a main­stay in your life.

And so my sec­ond chal­lenge to you is three­fold:

1. Pick a sto­ry from the Bible and med­i­tate upon it one day this week. Try to envi­sion the sto­ry from the point of view of all the par­tic­i­pants (David, Goliath, Saul, the Israelite army, David’s broth­ers, etc). Imag­ine how dif­fer­ent tones of voice would affect your inter­pre­ta­tion of the sto­ry (try to think of sev­er­al ways the woman could have told Jesus, “Sir, I per­ceive you are a prophet” and say them aloud). Inhab­it the sto­ry.
2. Pick a com­mand­ment from the Bible and med­i­tate upon it one day this week. Be spe­cif­ic — don’t just think of a rule, actu­al­ly find a verse that gives the com­mand. Now run through the verse empha­siz­ing and then reflect­ing upon each word or phrase in turn. For exam­ple, Philip­pi­ans 4:8 — “Final­ly, broth­ers and sis­ters, what­ev­er is true, what­ev­er is noble, what­ev­er is right, what­ev­er is pure, what­ev­er is love­ly, what­ev­er is admirable—if any­thing is excel­lent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
   1. Start with the first key phrase — “WHATEVER IS TRUE… think about such things. Lord, why does truth mat­ter so much? And you say ‘what­ev­er is true.’ What­ev­er? Does that mean there is spir­i­tu­al bless­ing in 2+2=4? Help me under­stand.”
   2. And then move on to the next phrase. “WHATEVER IS NOBLE…. think about such things. God, what does it mean for some­thing to be noble? What’s a noble thing I can think about?” etc.
   3. Run through all eight types of things we are to fill our mind with.
   4. Even­tu­al­ly get to “THINK ABOUT SUCH THINGS. Lord — what fills my mind? Is it pos­i­tive and encour­ag­ing stuff like this? What’s a bet­ter way for me to think about _____? What is the true, noble, right, pure, love­ly, admirable, excel­lent or praise­wor­thy thing I can see in this sit­u­a­tion?”
3. Pick a promise from the Bible and med­i­tate upon it one day this week. Take time to dwell upon its impli­ca­tions. Exam­ple, Luke 6:38 says , “Give, and it will be giv­en to you. A good mea­sure, pressed down, shak­en togeth­er and run­ning over, will be poured into your lap. For with the mea­sure you use, it will be mea­sured to you.” Med­i­ta­tion upon this promise might look like this: begin by envi­sion­ing your­self receiv­ing a bag full of good things, tight­ly packed to the point of over­flow­ing. And then ask, “God, what would I have done dif­fer­ent­ly this week if I real­ly believed this promise?” And then, “How have I seen this in my life or the lives of those I know?” Keep reflect­ing on the promise and its impli­ca­tions.

That’s my chal­lenge — med­i­tate upon Scrip­ture this week in each of these ways. Pick your own sto­ry, com­mand, and promise. If you don’t know what to choose, just flip through the gospels until you find one of each. Grab­bing them from the gospels is a great way to “fix your eyes upon Jesus” as Heb 12:2 tells us to.

If you’re will­ing, email me back and let me know what pas­sages you intend to med­i­tate upon. And then after­wards let me know how it went!

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline by Richard Fos­ter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2019. The sched­ule is online.

Celebration of Discipline — Introduction and Chapter One

Remem­ber that we’re sav­ing the pref­ace and fore­word for lat­er. For now we’re just read­ing the intro­duc­tion and the first chap­ter.

Chapter One — The Spiritual Disciplines: Door To Liberation

“Super­fi­cial­i­ty is the curse of our age. The doc­trine of instant sat­is­fac­tion is a pri­ma­ry spir­i­tu­al prob­lem. The des­per­ate need today is not for a greater num­ber of intel­li­gent peo­ple, or gift­ed peo­ple, but for deep peo­ple.”

page 1

BOOM! What a start to a book. Fos­ter wrote those words over 40 years ago and the prob­lem has only inten­si­fied. Our soci­ety has col­lec­tive­ly become the thorny soil in Matthew 13:22 — the wor­ries of this world choke out the work of the Spir­it with­in us.

The solu­tion, Fos­ter says, is to cul­ti­vate a pat­tern of liv­ing that breeds depth. Things like prayer and fast­ing and con­fes­sion are like a firmware update for our souls.

The prob­lem is that we’re not sure how to do these things. This book is meant to be a how-to man­u­al to help us emu­late the dis­ci­plined lifestyles por­trayed in the Bible.

The dis­ci­plines Fos­ter empha­sizes are vital because with­out them we have only willpow­er to rely upon, and willpow­er does­n’t work as well as we hope.

Willpow­er will nev­er suc­ceed in deal­ing with the deeply ingrained habits of sin. Emmet Fox writes, “As soon as you resist men­tal­ly any unde­sir­able or unwant­ed cir­cum­stance, you there­by endow it with more power–power which it will use against you, and you will have deplet­ed your own resources to that exact same extent.”

page 5

With the dis­ci­plines we are train­ing, with­out them we are only try­ing. Train­ing trumps try­ing.

This gets close to the the­sis under­ly­ing the entire book — the for­ma­tion of habits like fast­ing and prayer bear fruit in a way that willpow­er does not. As Fos­ter observes:

“A farmer is help­less to grow grain; all he can do is pro­vide the right con­di­tions for the grow­ing of grain. He cul­ti­vates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then the nat­ur­al forces of the earth take over, and up comes the grain. This is the way it is with the Spir­i­tu­al Disciplines—they are a way of sow­ing to the Spir­it. The Dis­ci­plines are God’s way of get­ting us into the ground; they put us where he can work with­in us and trans­form us. By them­selves the Spir­i­tu­al Dis­ci­plines can do noth­ing; they can only get us to the place where some­thing can be done. They are God’s means of grace.”

page 7

Next week we begin get­ting prac­ti­cal as we study the dis­ci­pline of Chris­t­ian med­i­ta­tion. I hope you’re excit­ed!

UPDATE: I did­n’t include any excerpts from the intro­duc­tion but I high­ly rec­om­mend read­ing it and espe­cial­ly focus­ing on the key role laypeo­ple played in men­tor­ing this pas­tor. Assum­ing your call is to the mar­ket­place or acad­e­mia, make it your ambi­tion to grow into a Chris­t­ian layper­son mature enough to dis­ci­ple a pas­tor. How awe­some would that be?