A farmer is helpless to grow grain, but he can provide the right conditions in which grain can grow. The disciplines are a way of sowing to the Spirit, and of creating the right conditions for spiritual growth and development.  When we follow Jesus we engage in the practices He engaged in, and through them the Spirit transforms our life to reflect His.

A Christ-centered approach to the rhythm of life will put us at odds with the relentless busy-ness of our culture. It will however give us the space to rest and to delight in God, and to experience a rest(oration) rooted in a confidence in Divine faithfulness and provision. The we can re-learn the art of working from rest, rather than seeking to rest from work.

Feasting and fasting are both forgotten disciplines in many parts of the Church. Mind you, so is fasting. But our relationship with food is part of our relationship with the Living God, and features in discipleship far more frequently than we might anticipate. This session explores the place of food in our spirituality and how it can be both a help and a hindrance in our pursuit of God.

Jesus regularly withdrew from the crowds, not as an end in itself, but as a means to draw near to His Father. As we follow His masterful living of life we too must learn to be still and to know that He is God (Ps.46:10). When we use external noise to drown out the internal noise, we lose the capacity to face ourselves in God’s presence… and to be faced by Him.

The spiritual power of money makes it difficult to think and feel clearly about its place in our lives. But we must learn to do so, for what we do with money is an extension of ourselves. Our spending patterns reveal who we are, and what we believe. But we are stewards, not possessors and so this too comes under the sway of Christ’s scepter.

How does Satan attack the life of the Church? And how does the Church defend herself? And how does the Church go on the offensive against so subtle and cunning an enemy? Is this a question that we should even be asking? And how can we navigate the strange and startling answers that are often given to questions like these?

We’ve seen repeatedly on DTP how central our relationship with this Book is. This session doesn’t revisit the questions of term 5 but explores different ways of engaging with the Bible to ensure that we are grasping both its breadth and depth, so that we are being increasingly shaped by the Spirit into the image of the Christ held forth to us through its pages.

Jesus’ command to the disciples in Gethsemane was to ‘watch and pray’ so that they would not fall into temptation. This session explores the discipline of watchfulness and how cultivating it can make us more alert to the approach of sin, the world and the devil. It reminds us that we are to be watchfulness not only over ourselves, but others too.

It is a well-worn observation that the only thing Jesus’ disciples asked Him to teach them was how to pray. Prayer is symptomatic of the presence of the Spirit. And yet it remains one of the most difficult and unfamiliar disciplines to many Christians. This session explores what, having been watchful, we should now pray for.

Failure to learn humility leads to complication and struggle in all the other disciplines. Focusing our attention on Christ, rather than ourselves allows us to simultaneously consider others more important than ourselves, and also to be less dependent on their estimation of us. That liberates us to pursue Christ with greater abandon.

Spiritual maturity takes time. There are failures and stumblings along the way. The path of discipleship is beset with frustration and we often find ourselves weary, discouraged, and even unwilling. How can we continue to make progress so that we do become mature? …and how can we help others to finish strong as well?

The Spirit’s work of renewal is toward restoring our humanity in terms of our relationship with God and our own nature and destiny. The mechanics of that growth into the likeness of Jesus is rooted in the practice of the spiritual disciplines. This is the interior, foundational work on which we build our public life of discipleship.