Spiritual Growth and Discipline Practice Order Instructions: Complete the following parts for Spiritual Growth Plan 1. This assignment must total 1000–1250 words and must follow current Turabian formatting.
Part 1: Spiritual Discipline Practice
In Part 1 of this paper, you will create a growth plan for the coming 3 weeks. In this plan, you will describe how you will better incorporate 2 spiritual disciplines into your everyday life and routine. The first of the disciplines will be your choice, but it must be one of the disciplines found in Donald S. Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. For the second discipline, you will choose between scripture intake and prayer.
In this section, you must create a plan for integrating these disciplines into your life so that you can build spiritual discipline into a habitual practice in your life as you pursue godliness.
Part 2: Battling Temptations and Spiritual Growth and Discipline Practice
In Part 2 of your paper, you must create a plan to fight the temptations that are common in your life. In Module/Week 2, you wrote a spiritual assessment that outlined some of the common temptations in your life. In this section of the paper, you will address how you are going to combat these temptations. Some temptations are robust ones that regularly lead you astray and others are temptations that you successfully fight against daily. In either case, create a plan to continue this battle (or start this battle). In order to accomplish this task, you must first define your temptation (e.g., lust, covetousness, pride, anger, gluttony of food or drink, envy, laziness, gossip). Next, identify the common causes that lead you into temptation. Finally, create a battle strategy regarding how you are going to engage in the pursuit of holiness.
Part 3: Guarding Against Blind Spots for the Spiritual Growth and Discipline Practice
In the last part of your paper, address the concept of building fences in your life against temptation. Perhaps you do not struggle with something now, but how will you prevent yourself from falling into sin in the future? For an example of the types of fences, you want to build, see James McDonald’s Five Moral Fences. What fences are you going to build into your life to protect you from falling into future temptation?
Spiritual Growth and Discipline Practice Sample Answer
Spiritual discipline practice
Spiritual disciplines have been around for a millennium, but only a smaller number of Christians value and exercise them thoroughly. Nevertheless, it is essential for Christians to practice the spiritual disciplines daily in order to live a strong Christian divine life and spiritually mature. Furthermore, there is no other way a Christian can always live closer to God, prevail over the pressure of the World we live in, be receptive to the Holy Spirit and daily live the divine life that God needs every individual to live other than firmly following the spiritual disciplines.[1]
Spiritual disciplines being essential in my godliness pursuit I plan to incorporate two spiritual disciplines into my daily life. The spiritual disciplines that I desire to integrate include journaling and scripture intake. Moreover, I would create a plan that would facilitate incorporation of these disciplines into my life in order to build the spiritual disciplines into routine practice in my life as I pursue godliness.[2]
Journaling is one of the most valuable spiritual disciplines that a Christian can carry out. The discipline involves recording personal insights and reflections of what God is doing to you. This discipline of writing my personal meditations and reflections for preservation and consideration will assist in my endeavor of pursuing godliness as well as building my spirituality. My plan of incorporating journaling in my daily life includes keeping track of the blessings that God has granted to me over the years and currently. Moreover, I aim to write down five things that I am thankful for each day, which would assist in growing my attitude of gratitude. [3]
Conversely, scripture intake is essential in individual spiritual growth since without scripture reading it is hard for a Christian to develop an understanding of God and draw closer to Him. Therefore, in order to include the spiritual discipline as a routine practice in my life, I would spend a quiet moment each day unhurriedly reading, absorbing, and reflecting on the words of the scripture and letting the Holy Spirit communicate to me through my perception. Moreover, I would attend more Bible study sessions during the weekends to get an opportunity of discussing, sharing, and reflecting the scripture with other church members.[4]
Spiritual Growth and Discipline Practice and Battling temptations
Battling temptations is a crucial component of each Christian since they often face temptations on a daily basis. The temptations that I regularly face and strive to overcome include overuse of electronic and social media sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, television, and video games. The social media provides a cool medium to connect with new friends and people around us who we have not spoken to in several years. Conversely, watching television enable people to be aware of what is happening in other parts of the world. Connecting with friends through social media and watching television is a valuable thing, but the problem is because I spent a lot of time on them rather than applying the spiritual disciplines in my life. The common causes that lead me to the overuse of social media include the satisfaction that I get after connecting with friends and the need to be up to date on what is happening or trending in the social world. Nevertheless, I have identified some ways that would assist me to overcome these temptations. Since I have decided to utilize some evening hours applying the journaling and scripture intake spiritual disciplines, I will only connect with friends on social media and watch television after I have completed exercising my spiritual disciplines. Furthermore, I will try to limit the time I use on social media so that I can get time to apply other spiritual disciplines including a prayer that will facilitate my spiritual growth and my holiness pursuit.[5]
Spiritual Growth and Discipline Practice for Guarding against blind spots
Guarding against blind spots is an important component to Christians since through building the fences individuals are able to protect themselves from falling into future temptation. In my case, I plan to build a fence of being flexible and effortless on unleashing practices and inhibitions that have an influence on my spiritual life. The blind spot of stubborn resistance has had a significant influence on my divine life as well as my godliness pursuit. Furthermore, the blind spot was responsible for aggravating several things in my life and hurting those around me. Flexibility and easiness on unleashing practices and inhibitions would be the ideal fence of protecting me from falling into the same temptation in the future. The fence will help me to be open-minded and consider that I have a problem, which would be a noteworthy step towards guarding against future blind spots and temptations.[6]
On the other hand, in order to protect myself from temptations of not exercising my spiritual disciplines, I would create a proper fence of not going to sleep before I have completed the journaling and scripture intake disciplines. This moral fence will be vital in ensuring that I overcome any temptation of not exercising my spiritual disciplines.[7]
Spiritual Growth and Discipline Practice References
Soanes & Stevenson, “Spiritual Disciplines.” 2015, accessed 20 February 2017, http://www.christianspirituallife.org/documents/SpiritualDisciplines.pdf
Whitney, “Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life.” 2014, accessed 20 February 2017, http://www.wtsbooks.com/common/pdf_links/9781615216178.pdf
[1] Whitney, Spiritual disciplines, 9
[2] Ibid., 12
[3] Soanes & Stevenson, Spiritual Disciplines, 18
[4] Ibid., 3
[5] Ibid., 8
[6] Ibid., 11
[7] Whitney, op. cit., 17
