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TRAC President's Message (Mar 2010)
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THE PURPOSE OF SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE
It is only a matter of days before Good Friday and Easter are upon us again. During this season of Lent, the discipline of fasting is often encouraged. It is not coincidental that in our context, it comes soon after the festivities and feasting of the Lunar New Year.
Fasting, however, is not only abstinence from food. It is first of all a discipline, a word that has its roots in learning, or of being a student. In other words, the purpose of a spiritual discipline, as fasting, is for the purpose of learning and being. In order to be, one has to learn. Fasting is not an end in itself; it has a purpose. The reason one abstains (from anything) is so that one can become a person who is clearer about whom he or she is as a child of God. It was John Wesley who said that when one fasts, it is “unto God.” Our aim is that God may teach us, through the discipline, in order to shape us to be like Him.
There is a subtle, yet deceptive, side to the practise of spiritual disciplines. It can become all very self-centered. Health programmes do subscribe to fasting but it is all about “me” becoming fitter, healthier and better looking. One can practice the discipline of prayer, but only so that one can be effective at extracting from God what one needs, forgetting that prayer is essentially communion with Him. The discipline of Scripture can become a means to be knowledgeable about spiritual things that may in the end only puff one up.
The purpose of the spiritual disciplines is for us to become like God. It is like what Paul tells the Corinthians, “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 3:18, NKJV).
When we practice the spiritual discipline, we are looking at who we are in comparison to who He is, and realising that we have still some way to go, we let His Spirit work in us so that we can end up like Him (that is why Lent is followed up with Eastertide and Pentecost). God in Christ has already provided for us and has given birth to His life in us. So when Paul tells the Corinthians about being transformed into that image of Christ, he follows it up immediately by referring to the ministry that has been entrusted to us. As far as our spiritual “being” is concerned, we have already be re-made into the image of God in Christ. However, it is the outworking of that image, i.e. in what we do for others, that must fall in line to be like Him.
This is where we move from learning, and being, to doing.
May God keep teaching us how to be like Christ, and how to do ministry like Him.
Rev Dr Wee Boon Hup
TRAC President
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