Discipline in the Christian life is not a luxury. Without it we become confused, lose our way, compromise our principles, and discover that we are not the people we had intended to be.
No one is so sturdy in the faith that the temptation to surrender bit by bit does not erode conviction. Days go by and we discover that, instead of growing in grace in these days, we have wasted them.
These “means” to whose use we are tied… are a positive set of directions for the Christian life, often called the “means of grace”… These means of grace are not a method of deserving God’s grace, but a pattern by which we enable ourselves to be receptive to grace and remove the barriers that God permits us to erect as the price of our freedom.
These tools, or aids, are ways by which we open ourselves to God’s free grace. In using them, we shape our lives in order to become open to God’s presence. They give our Christian pilgrimage a definite shape, in an age in which there is a general sense of loss of direction and confusion about right and wrong, along with an accompanying sense of God’s absence.
This is an excerpt from a book Reformed Spirituality by Howard L. Rice. If you would like to buy this book please click here.