God's Love and the Spiritual Disciplines

We live in a culture that finds saying no to oneself repulsive. We desire our every want and need immediately satisfied and anybody who gets in the way better watch out! It's no wonder the area of spiritual disciplines are anything but popular among today's Christian in America. The truth is that God wants us to exercise spiritual discipline in our lives. He wants us to spend time reading the Bible, praying, fasting, meditating, and memorizing His word. Of course, doing these things require us to say no to other things we may desire more. But the good news is that a life that exercises spiritual disciplines produces totally different fruit than a life following our selfish desires. It allows us to find what we are really searching for - inner joy and peace in the context of an intimate, loving relationship with our Creator. Nothing in this world is more valuable than this! (Galatians 5:22-23)