The Path to Spiritual Growth
Richard Foster
"To sink down into the light of Christ and become comfortable in that posture, to sing “He walks with me and He talks with me” and know it as a radiant reality, to discover God in all of the moments of our days and to be pleased rather than perturbed at the discovery – this is the stuff of prayer.”
This is the non-canonical book that has had the deepest claim on my walk with Jesus. Celebration of Discipline is a modern masterpiece. Foster unsheathes twelve disciplinary tools from Scripture, places them squarely in the reader’s hands, and, securing our gaze on Jesus, invites us to do the rest. As the book concerns disciplines to practice in our “path to spiritual growth”, this could have been a guilt-tripping and cold affair. With great relief, one quickly discovers instead that reading Celebration of Discipline feels like a kindly and wizened grandfather inviting you into your own home.
Were Foster only to draw attention to the devotional disciplinary tools from his “Inward Disciplines” section, his contribution to our spiritual lives would be extraordinary. But by further supplying what he calls “Outward Disciplines” and “Corporate Disciplines”, his ambition is breathtakingly comprehensive; he paints what the daily Christian life can, should, look like in the richest colour. Through application of meditation, prayer, fasting and study, the reader’s devotional time can explode into new depths of relationship. Through application of simplicity, solitude, submission and service, the reader is freed to cast off the self-centredness that hinders us in the race of Hebrews 12:1. Through application of confession, worship, guidance and celebration, the reader can look at her brothers and sisters with a reinvigorated desire to share her life.
Foster’s greatest triumph in this work is to accompany his presentation of the disciplined life as overwhelmingly attractive with some of the most grounded applications in the genre; he writes plainly, with often painful specificity. Quite simply, Celebration of Discipline will change your walk with Jesus for the better. It has been two years since I read it for the first time, and I still pray almost daily that the Lord will move me into deeper depths of relationship with him. This book is largely to thank.
9.5/10
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