7. My spiritual activities include “practices” that bring joy to me as I connect with God.
(Before looking at the questions below, take a few minutes to think about this statement. Invite Jesus to speak to you about what He would like you to notice.)
In your journey with Jesus, what activities do you do that bring the greatest joy?
What activities in your “non-spiritual” life bring you the greatest joy and satisfaction?
When you think about your sacred activities that bring joy and your secular activities that bring joy, is the joy the same?
What would you say to the proposal that the deep joy we experience in either our secular or sacred activities is the presence of the Spirit in us sharing that joy?
Our spirituality includes the many activities that we engage in to help us connect with God. Although there are perhaps an infinite number of activities that we can use to connect with God, we can gather many of them into three groups that are defined by our motives for doing them. The first group can be called “spiritual practices”.
Spiritual practices are things we enjoy doing and that help us connect to God. The distinction is the word “enjoy.” We may not enjoy all of our spiritual activities. Some we do out of obligation, (we will call these “laws”) and some because we know that they are good for us (we will call these “disciplines”). Spiritual practices are activities we do that bring joy to us in our relationship with God.
The benefit of spiritual practices is that the joy we experience in the practice can make it easier to continue with the practice. For example, worshipping with music is something that many people find joyful and uplifting and have no difficulty motivating themselves to listen to or participate with. Communion is another example of a practice that many people enjoy, find meaningful, and appreciate because it helps them experience God. Many people find that observing or being active in nature is a way of connecting with God that brings joy and takes little motivation.
As we explore our unique spirituality, it can be helpful, to notice ways that connect us to God that require little or no effort. If most of our spiritual activities require discipline and effort and bring little immediate joy, we will find it hard to continue and our spirituality may become dry or stunted.
A healthy spirituality needs a balance of activities that bring joy (spiritual practices), and ones that require some self-motivation and discipline. Balance is important because a spirituality that only includes practices, things we enjoy, can have unhealthy consequences. One result of a spirituality that only engages in practices that we enjoy is that it becomes self-centered, self-serving, and lacking in maturity. Another danger with any spiritual practice is that we can become too attached to the practice and fail to experience the God who is the goal of the practice.
All spiritual activities are intended to connect us to God, to help us come to know and experience Him better, and to grow in our relationship with Him. When either the practice, or the feelings we get from the practice, becomes our focus, we are in danger of weakening our spirituality. Practices are an important part of our spirituality. They bring joy and lightness to our journey, but our goal should always be to use the practice to grow our relationship with God.