Final Reflection

This post is dedicated to a reflection on the past year in my Spiritual Formation class.

As it turns out, Spiritual Formation became my favorite class here at Kuyper. It was one of the applicable and interesting class I have had to take. It was also the most convicting. It was a learning and living experience. We learned, and we learned how to practice. Those are things I value greatly in education. A tremendous part of this experience was the disciplines and writing about them on the blog.  At first I thought I would hate it. I thought it would take up too much of my time. I thought writing about the experience on the internet would be too personal. Overall, I just had a disinterested attitude about the whole thing. However, the true experience was far different than that.

1. Foster says spiritual disciplines are not designed to be ends in themselves, but are intended to facilitate a person's journey into greater freedom in living a Christ-like life. How did your practice of the disciplines this semester (either some in particular or all together) help you grow in your faith and obedience to God?

          My experiences of the disciplines this semester greatly impacted my spiritual life. I learned about different methods of meeting God, some of which I had never known about. I learned about disciplines I was curious about. I got to practice things that were outside of my comfort zone. And I learned about all the freedom that can be found in being spiritually connected to God. Some were more successful than others. The ones I enjoyed the most were simplicity, fasting, solitude, and meditation. Fasting and meditation in particular opened me up to listen to God. I did more scripture reading and listening during those two practices than I can remember ever doing. Both of those had a way of focusing me onto the One thing that matters in my life. I was really able to communicate with God through those practices, and developed a better understanding of Who He is. They also helped me realign my priorities and and give them to God. Solitude was a really good refocus. Since solitude is something I already do, I had to work to be stretched during this one. What I learned is that even though I need to take time of solitude, I never actually practiced solitude. I learned the difference through this experience. This will be a discipline I take forward in the future. But I am going to do it right. I know now that I need to rest in God's presence rather than just rest alone. And simplicity. I just love simplicity. Simplicity is the main way that I stay connected to God. I eliminate all of the hindrances in my life and free my heart of anxiety creating clutter. By doing this regularly, I get to put God at the center of my life. It was good to learn a little bit more about it. I think in that respect, it helped me realize that simplicity is a way to obey God.

2. What were some of the distractions or hindrances that kept you from practicing, or practicing to the fullest, the assigned disciplines of the semester? What does this show you about struggle? How do you plan to address this area of struggle?

         This question poses a little trouble for me. As I read back over my blogs, I could not find one specific theme of distractions. For the ones that I struggled with, I had very different reasons for each one. For study, I was not mentally or spiritually invested in the topic. I did not come to it with expectancy, so nothing happened. With confession, submission and prayer, I got so distracted with all of the burdens in my life that I could not do justice to practicing these disciplines. They became just another burned. In a lot of ways, this shows my true nature, and really the nature of a lot of people. With deadlines and demands breathing down our necks, it is hard not to feel like that is our true priority. I think a way that I can correct this thinking to be able to place God first again is to prioritize assignments and obligations after I give time to God. I can regularly practice the Sabbath to be able to have at least a day that I can dedicate only to God. It is a tricky thing to struggle with. I am sure it is something I will be wresting with my whole life. I am thankful for the opportunity to face it head on during this assignment.

3. Identify three disciplines you think mesh well together and explain how you see them interrelating. How would you plan to practice them together?

          The three that I see meshing well together are worship, prayer and meditation. The purpose of each of these has to do with being in the presence of the Father and experiencing true interaction with Him. It just seems to make sense to me that these three happen simultaneously. Because they do. If I decided to practice them together, I would do it on a Sunday. I would set aside my entire Sunday and treat it like the Sabbath. I would go to corporate worship in the morning, and then spend the rest of my day basking in God and they ways worship that morning transformed me. I would set aside specific time that day to go meditate. I would go to a quiet place (hopefully outdoors if conditions allow) and read scripture. I would then pray to God and meditate on what He had to say. It just makes sense to me that Sabbath worship should be a day full of interaction with God through prayer and meditation.

4. Identify one discipline you would urge a new believer to practice. How would you instruct them in this discipline? Why do you think this discipline is especially well suited to the formation of a new believer?

          The discipline that I would encourage a new believer to try is simplicity. Simplicity is that inward and outward lifestyle of reorienting loves into their rightful place. The most transforming part of my spiritual journey has been practicing simplicity. It is one of the disciplines that takes everything in your life and puts it into perspective  I think especially for a new believer, the call to transform can be overwhelming. But starting at simplicity is an easy one to take in baby steps. Don't get me wrong, the discipline of simplicity is definitely not an easy one. It might even be one of the hardest. But it is a good place to start. Once a new believer understands simplicity and begins to it's work in their lives, then all the other disciplines come easy. Once a new believer is on the track of transformation and is rightly ordering their lives, then prayer and meditation and fasting all come as an easy and necessary result. Simplicity is one of the most rewarding because of it's long term effects and inward transformation. It causes everything else to fall into place. I would instruct a new believer to start changing their mindset to always putting first the kingdom of God. In every decision from that point on, I would tell them to ask themselves how fits into their spiritual life. Put God at the center of every decision. And eventually take baby steps into bigger things. I would also advise that they read scripture. Scripture is the main tool to understanding God's role in every facet of our lives.

5. Spiritual disciplines fortify believers against some of the universal struggles and weaknesses all Christians have battled against. Identify and describe an area of weakness you observe in the Kuyper College population. What spiritual disciplines, if corporately practiced, would target this area of weakness?

           I would instruct Kuyper College to corporately practice submission. Submission is the laying down of our terrible burden to always need to be right. (Side note: I am going to try really hard not to get preachy on this one, but it might come across that way. For that I apologize.) Here at Kuyper, we are studying something very near and dear to our hearts. We are all unified with one purpose that we are just on fire for. We as a college are very, very passionate. However, because we are all equally on fire for the same thing, I think we run into a lot of tension. We all run into people who challenge the beliefs we are fire for with the beliefs that they are on fire for. And the fiery differences cause us to be defensive and send us right up against our need to be right. I would like to say that Kuyper is a gracious school where people honor one another's differences. But I just cannot say that is my experience. I have noticed students treat one another this way, but what is even more disturbing is when they treat professors that way. I hear so much disrespect towards professors and staff that is just unfair and unchristian. I think the way to teach students grace and respect is to practice submission corporately. If we were asked to lay down our need to be right and our pride, I wonder at how good our conversations would be. If we were asked to submit to authority and our peers, I wonder at our attitudes would change. I think it would be a great experience for this school to recognize this weakness and take action steps to fix it.

6. What advice would you give the next class of Spiritual Formation students who will be practicing these disciplines?

         The only thing I would tell them is to take it seriously. Put all of your effort into practicing these disciplines. It is not another lame assignment, this is your spiritual life on the line. Don't worry about a grade in this class, just do everything because you want to be closer to God. There are so many good learning experiences from this class. And it is a class we all have to take, so why not enjoy it? Seriously, this a good class that will be one of the most relevant that you ever take. So take it seriously.

Happy reading, and who hoo my semester is over!!

Blessings,

Alyssa

The Spiritual Discipline of Sumission

"What freedom corresponds to submission? It is the ability to lay down the terrible burden of always needing to get our own way."

                                                - Foster, 111

Submission, simply put, is the act of setting aside our need to control and allowing some other person, idea, or plan take over. Our entire culture is counter to the idea of submission. Exploitation of others and the pursuit of our good is pervasive in the idea of what it means to be successful. We do have a terrible burden of being told that we need to be the center of our worlds. Why is this a burden? Well, because when we are constantly focused on ourselves, we become unbearable to be around. We loose all of the ability to value other people and their lives. So they leave. It becomes a burden because when we focus on ourselves, we are left alone to face the world.

The discipline of submission while it targets this burden is also about a corresponding freedom. Submission allows us to freely love others unconditionally. It allows us to respect, consider, and show grace to those around us. It allows us to invite others into our community. This type of submission needs to be evident in our relationship to God, in our relationships with our families, in our relationships with our friends, and most definitely with strangers.

One of the hardest parts about submission is the inner attitude that it creates. To start submission, the easiest relationship to submit to is God. I mean obviously we can get on board with submitting to the guy Who laid down His Son in sacrifice for us. The next easiest is those we are closest to like family and significant others. We already know how much they love us, and how they have vowed to love us unconditionally. They aren't going to take advantage of our submission. We can submit to those loved ones. Then a little harder is our friends. We love our friends, and they love us, but they are not always the nicest to us. Its hard to submit to people who aren't very nice. The absolute hardest is strangers and enemies. We can't even fathom that. How in the world can we put ourselves in an inferior position to rude people we can't stand? That is where the inner attitude comes in. Once we start practicing submission in baby steps, we end up cultivating submission into our character. We begin to see Christ in others and in ourselves when we lay down our pride for the sake of others. Submission is one the best emulations of Christ and what He did for us. Just look at Philippians 2:5-11! Now is that a picture of submission, or what?

I was convicted through this discipline. I see so evidently that submission was a characteristic of Christ that I need to model. If you know me, you know that I am a control freak. I hate to be wrong, I hate to admit when others are right, I hate when plans change, I hate when people take advantage of me, and I hate being treated like dirt. All of this culminates into a very defensive and dominate personality. I need more submission in my life. So for my practice of discipline this week, I was very deliberate in my response to people. I was very critical of my interaction and my attitude throughout the day. When someone asked to borrow my car, I said yes. When people asked for help or to talk to me, I said yes. I was intentional about not complaining about my hard classes and frustrating professors. I did not participate in "one upping" others in conversation, and let them be right. I did a lot of random, different things every day to reach into submission.

 As a result, I think I am closer to having an attitude of submission. Obviously, this is something at which I can't ever "arrive," but I do think I learned a lot from practicing this discipline. I began to recognize my triggers and my gut reactions. I think I am on my way towards getting better at not reacting to those negatively. I think I am beginning to train myself to raise others above myself, and realizing the burden I was creating.  I really think I am becoming passionate about submission in my life. And actually, this is one of them that I would highly recommend others to try. Good luck :)

Happy reading!

Have a blessed day!

In Christ,

Alyssa