Think of it this way. You cannot make a seed grow. You cannot force fruit to ripen. But you can plant it in good soil. You can water it. You can make sure it has sunlight. You create the conditions, and then you trust the life that is already in the seed.
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That is what spiritual disciplines are. They are us saying to God: I am positioning myself to be formed by you. I am showing up. I am putting myself in the place where you work.
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DISCIPLINES ARE HOW WE POSITION OURSELVES TO BE FORMED
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Foster organizes the disciplines into three categories. Let me walk through them briefly — not as a to-do list, but as an invitation.
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The Inward Disciplines
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Meditation — sitting with Scripture not to extract information but to let it form you. Letting a passage slow you down, speak to you, take up residence in you.
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Prayer — not as a transaction but as a relationship. The practice of turning your attention toward God throughout the day, not just in designated moments.
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Fasting — choosing to go without something — food, noise, screens, comfort — in order to discover that God is enough. Fasting is the body participating in the soul’s declaration of dependence.
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Study — not just reading, but the slow, attentive engagement with Scripture that reshapes the way you see everything else.
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The Outward Disciplines
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Simplicity — releasing your grip on stuff and security so that your life makes room for what matters. Living with less so you can give more.
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Solitude — pulling away from noise and demand to be alone with God. This one is underrated and underutilized. We are never more formed than in the silence.
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Service — choosing the posture of a servant not because you have to but because you are becoming the kind of person who naturally moves toward others with their needs.
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The Corporate Disciplines
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Confession — not just private acknowledgment of sin, but the practice of bringing it into the light with another trusted person. James 5:16: confess your sins to one another that you may be healed.
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Worship — not as performance or obligation, but as the regular practice of reorienting yourself around what is actually true about God.
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Celebration — this one surprises people. Foster insists that joy is a discipline. Learning to celebrate what God has done, to mark his goodness, to let your heart be glad — that is formative work.
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DISCIPLINES ARE NOT LAW — THEY ARE HOW FREE PEOPLE CHOOSE TO BE FORMED
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Here is what I want you to hear: these are not chains. Foster’s whole argument is that the disciplined life is the free life. The undisciplined life — the life of pure impulse, pure reaction, no rhythm, no rootedness — that life is actually enslaved. To comfort. To distraction. To whatever feels good right now.
Small Group Questions
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When you hear the word “discipline,” what’s your first instinct — and where do you think that instinct comes from? How has your picture of discipline shaped how you think about God?
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Hebrews 12:11 says discipline “yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” — but only afterwards, and only for those who are trained by it. Can you think of a hard season in your life that, looking back, you can see was forming something in you?
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The sermon drew a distinction between discipline as abuse, discipline as God’s formation, and discipline as chosen rhythms. Which of these three do you find easiest to embrace? Which is hardest?
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Richard Foster says the spiritual disciplines are not about earning favor — they are about positioning yourself in the path of grace. Which of the disciplines (inward, outward, or corporate) feels most alive to you right now? Which feels most neglected?
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The sermon ended with the idea that formation and sacrifice are inseparable — that discipline forms us into people who can live sacrificially. What would it look like for your group to support one another in both? What’s one specific practice you want to take up before we reach Easter?