Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11116. Fasting and health are not competing concerns, whatever the intensity of some fasting teaching can suggest. Your body was made by God and belongs to Him, and caring for it wisely while fasting is not a lack of spiritual seriousness. It is simply taking seriously another thing Scripture plainly teaches: that the body…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11115. The length of fasting is nowhere fixed by Scripture as a single required duration, which frustrates believers looking for a straightforward rule but also frees the practice from becoming a legalistic box to tick. The Bible records fasts lasting anywhere from a single meal skipped in genuine distress to forty days of complete…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11114. Scripture describes several genuinely distinct types of fasting, and knowing the differences between them will help you approach the discipline with realistic expectations rather than simply assuming every fast recorded in the Bible looked and functioned the same way. I want to walk through the main categories Scripture actually records in some detail,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1056. memorising Scripture is one of the most quietly transformative habits available to any Christian, and I say that as someone who finds it genuinely hard work rather than a natural gift. It is not reserved for people with unusually sharp memories or spare time on their hands. It is a discipline, learnable at…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 11112. Biblical meditation is one of those phrases that makes some Christians nervous, because the word “meditation” calls to mind crossed legs, emptied minds and Eastern religion. Yet meditation is a thoroughly biblical idea, commanded and commended throughout Scripture, and it is something quite different from what the word usually suggests today. So I…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11113. lectio divina, Latin for divine reading, is an old monastic practice of slow, meditative Scripture reading that has found its way back into evangelical conversation in recent years, and the question raised is whether Christians should actually practise it. My answer is a careful yes, with real guardrails firmly in place, because the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11111. Christian journalling is the practice of writing down what God is teaching us, what we are praying, and how we are responding to His Word, and it raises a fair question. Is keeping a journal a genuinely biblical practice, or is it just a modern self-help habit dressed in Christian clothes? I want…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11110 The discipline of solitude is the deliberate practice of withdrawing from the company of others and the noise of daily life in order to be alone with God. It is one of the quieter spiritual habits, easily crowded out, yet it runs right through the life of Jesus and the saints of Scripture,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesThe discipline of silence is the deliberate practice of quieting both our surroundings and our own restless talking so that we can attend to God and to His Word without the constant noise that fills ordinary life. It is an old practice with deep roots in Scripture, and in a world of endless notifications it…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 11108 The spiritual disciplines are the ordinary, repeated practices through which believers place themselves in the way of God’s grace so that they may grow to know and love Him more. They are not a ladder we climb to earn God’s favour, and they are not religious performances that impress Him. They are the…