The Utter Failure of the Spiritual Disciplines to Change You
Christ captivated my heart when I was 21 years old. For the next seven years, I pursued him with the only framework that many Christians know how to pursue him—i.e., the spiritual disciplines (or, in Wesleyan terms, the means of grace). If you aren’t familiar with these terms, you should be familiar with the idea, which is that your spiritual growth depends on you doing as much of the following kinds of activities as possible:
Prayer: Communicating with God through private devotions and communal worship.
Searching the Scriptures: Reading, studying, and/or meditating on God’s word. (Today, we might lump in all pursuit of knowledge via consumption of Christian media—i.e., books, podcasts, YouTube videos, blogs, etc.).
Being Active in Your Church: Attending the Sunday service, tithing, participating in the sacraments, volunteering your time, going to classes or Bible studies.
Fasting or Abstinence: Denying physical needs to focus on spiritual hunger and reliance on God.
Christ-Centered Relationships: Spiritual conversation and accountability with other believers in small groups.
Good Works: Tangible acts of service that express love for one’s neighbor.
They say:
If you’re stagnating in your spiritual life…
If you’re still struggling with the same sins…
If you’re not bearing the fruit you wish you were…
If you don’t feel as passionate about God as you once did or you know you should…
If you don’t feel God’s presence like you desire…
Then it must be because you’re not doing enough of these things. “You haven’t been doing your quiet times before work in the morning.” “You’ve been missing church too often and need to get back on track.” “If only you could figure out how to be motivated to get in the Bible more often.” “What you really need is a couple days of fasting to discipline yourself and reset your focus.”
I think most Christians have bought into this narrative because, like me for many years, it’s the only narrative they’ve ever heard. The spiritual life / relationship with God that you desire is on the other end of doing more. So all you need to do is figure out how to do more of the right things, eh?
Well isn’t that exactly the problem. How shall we get ourselves to do more of the right things? God knows, we’ve tried; or at least, we’ve tried to try. God knows, we want to; or at least, we want to want to. But the one thing we lack is the discipline to do the disciplines.
We’re told that if we do the disciplines, we’ll grow in love and self-control, but until we grow in love and self-control, we can’t get ourselves to do the disciplines. It’s like telling a small sapling that it can’t grow unless it first bears fruit. It’s a trap, to say the least.
But not only that; I will cut to the chase and tell you a secret. Even if you figure out how to do more—and some people do, especially the good religious type—it is never enough. The same way that more money promises happiness, so more disciplines promise the fruit of the Spirit. No matter how much you get, you always need just a little bit more.
I was one of these who did more of the spiritual stuff than just about anyone I knew. For seven years, this was my framework. I lived it, I studied it, I learned it, and I preached it. And it’s worth saying that it was a genuine pursuit, born out of love and a desire to know God and see his glory. But after many years of failure (and then, a renewed understanding of what the Bible has actually been telling us all along), I’ve concluded this:
More prayer, more Bible study, more works, more involvement in your church, and more accountable relationships do not hold the power that they promise.
These are all good things. They are all necessary, too.
But that power—the only power in all the cosmos that can conform you to the image of Christ—belongs to God, and it comes only in a package called grace.
I’ll spare you a lecture on grace for now. (Let’s just say, it’s more than forgiveness; it’s God’s active presence and power at work in your life to bring about his will.) But now that we’ve identified the name of what we’re after, we’re a step closer to understanding how to get it.
John Wesley called the spiritual disciplines the “means of grace,” which is another way of saying that we access the life-changing power of God through these kinds of spiritual activities.
It’s so close to the truth, it almost sounds blasphemous to say that it isn’t true!
But it isn’t!
I ask you a simple question: How does the Bible say that we access the grace of God?
Through [Christ] we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand . . . (Romans 5:2, my italics)
This is the verse that says it most clearly, in my opinion, but don’t we all know that the overarching message of the New Covenant is that we access the grace of God through faith?
So then, let’s re-analyze:
If you’re stagnating in your spiritual life…
If you’re still struggling with the same sins…
If you’re not bearing the fruit you wish you were…
If you don’t feel as passionate about God as you once did or you know you should…
If you don’t feel God’s presence like you desire…
Then it must be because you need more faith!
Now, that sounds a lot more like Scripture to me. The constant message is to trust God the Father, and trust his Son, Jesus Christ. All of salvation, from beginning to end, comes this way alone (see Romans 1:16-17).
How many times did Jesus rebuke his disciples for not praying enough? You could maybe argue once, in the Garden of Gethsemane. How many times did he rebuke them for not loving him enough? Never. How many times did he rebuke them for not having faith? A lot.
That is because trusting in God through Jesus Christ is The Way. It is the only true means of grace, that we might be transformed into his image.
The distinction may seem subtle, or perhaps even a little petty. But I’m telling you, it makes all the difference in the world. And here’s why.
If you think that the spiritual disciplines are how you access the life and the power of God, you’ll be stuck in system that was designed to trap you. Whether you’re doing them a lot or not doing them at all, you’ll never be doing them enough to attain what they promise. It’s like using a broken compass without knowing that it’s broken. You can spend your life going “North” and never get there.
However, if you understand that faith is how you access the life and power of God, your compass points to true North, and your efforts will take you in the right direction (as long as you understand that Christ himself is North, not your efforts.)
Look to Christ—the founder and perfecter of your faith (Hebrews 12:2)—right now. Keep looking to him. Talk to him. Listen to him. And believe what he tells you.
Welcome to prayer.
When you think that he speaks to you, ask him: “How do I know if this is your voice?”
Welcome to “searching the Scriptures” and “communing with the saints.”
I’m oversimplifying this a bit, but the point is that when you begin directing your efforts towards renewing your mind (see Romans 12:2) as opposed to just checking off the disciplines, practicing them become absolutely natural.
And let us recognize: The power is not in prayer; it’s in the prayer of faith. The power is not in reading Scripture; it’s in believing what you read. The power is not in gathering with the saints; it’s in the way your mind is renewed and your attention placed back on Christ when you gather. All the more reason to do these things because we know what we’re after.
When you come to God in prayer, at least part of the goal is to walk away from your time with him built up in your faith, trusting him with your day and your life, thinking the way he’s thinking, confident in your partnership with him, believing what he says to you, etc. If you do, then there’s a sense of, “I’ve done enough, and this has accomplished what it was supposed to,” as opposed to it never being enough. If you’re not walking away from your alone time with him this way, then one might say you haven’t learned to pray. But it would be more accurate to say that you haven’t learned to believe. And until you do, you could read a thousand books on how to pray, but the infant who believes will be further along on Day One than you.
(Let this not discourage you, but humble you. If you are humble—that is, happy to be a child—this should actually be very encouraging to you because it means that you need nothing more than the faith that God has given you to begin accessing his amazing grace right now. Be faithful with the little, and he will give you more. Faith is a muscle that grows when you exercise it.)
Same with reading your Bible. If you’re not putting it down with a clearer vision for your life, with a readiness to endure, with your loins girded up, with a greater focus on the King and his kingdom, then you’re missing the point. I hope this doesn’t come as a shock to you, but God doesn’t particularly care that you memorized a new verse or read the Bible in a year—as if those things, in and of themselves, are worth anything. Truly, the religious leaders of Jesus’s day knew the Scriptures better than anyone, and they were the farthest from God. What actually matters is that your reading causes you turn away from believing lies, to turn toward the Truth (who is the man, Jesus Christ), and to trust everything he says. That’s it.
This logic applies to every kind of spiritual discipline. Adopt the biblical framework for faith as the means to grace, and you’ll have a healthy and fruitful relationship with the spiritual disciplines (and more importantly, with God).
In all of this, I hope you can see that we should not be opposed to the spiritual disciplines. They’re utterly necessary, and yet, they are the wrong template—burdensome and powerless apart from faith.
Fix your eyes on Jesus. Devote yourself to the renewing of your mind by his Spirit within you. And you will be transformed.
I’ve written more on this topic in my book, No Longer I: The Life-Changing Power of Simply Believing the Truth. Here’s one of the main chapters if you’d like to do a deeper dive for free: https://newsletter.jacobhotchkiss.com/p/chapter-3
I am aware that this topic tends to create more questions than it answers, as do much of the things that I write about. On that note—now that I’m finished writing my soon-to-be-released Unless God Builds It—I’m gearing up to be more active on Substack and to start hosting either a bi-weekly or monthly community chat where subscribers can gather to work through these kinds of things together. More on that to come, but keep your eyes peeled.
Love you all, and I pray God blesses your life and your ministry as you put your faith in him.
In Christ,
Jake
Amen to that.