The eCrozier

One must train the habit of Faith. The first step is to recognize that your mood changes. The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers, religious reading, and church-going are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe.  – C. S. Lewis

When people speak of their faith in God, they often refer to such faith as a feeling. But faith, as we learn in the Bible and from the saints of the Church, is not a mere feeling. Faith involves our feelings, to be sure, but it’s much more. It’s a commitment to live a life under God’s gracious rule. Such faith needs intentionality if it’s to remain strong, vital, and at the center of our lives. That’s why we need a discipline for our faith.

I joined the Episcopal Church in my last semester at university. It was an end of a search and a beginning of a journey. I was already a Christian, but the Episcopal Church offered a way of worshipping God and following Jesus that I hadn’t previously had. My journey to the Church began my sophomore year when I spent a semester in a Guatemalan village. Each morning, I’d go to the Eucharist next door to the half-enclosed dormitory I shared with others. It was very simple with no music and no variety. I never missed a Eucharist even when I was very tired from my work the day before.

To people unaccustomed to the discipline of worship and prayer, this might seem boring. But to me, it was the bread of life. Yes, worship and prayer can be dry and uninspiring if there isn’t something deeper inside going on. Just as the sameness of marriage will cause it to die if love departs, so will any faith discipline. Anyone who returns day after day to the same spouse with no variety might appear to a promiscuous person as foolish and unfortunate. But if we ask that monogamous person, he or she will tell us that it is the disciplined routine that brings peace and freedom: breakfast, lunch, and supper; dawn, noonday, and dusk; work, rest, and play.

In order for prayer to become a daily exercise, we first have to find a regular time for it and then order it through a steady discipline. Variety is the last thing we need. Only then can we hear God and see what God is up to in the life of the world. This is basic to the Christian life because we must first hear and see clearly before we can act faithfully. The Church offers a wisdom that’s existed for two millennia. The Bible wasn’t written yesterday and we’re not the first people ever to read and seek direction from it.

What we do when we pray and read the Bible is to take part in the ongoing life of the Church. We’ll find our life becomes less individualistically oriented as we move into that life. I’ve discovered after years of disciplined prayer that far from being stifled by the routine, I’m freed to hear God. Daily prayer orders my life. It doesn’t stand apart from it. My discipline helps gather up my life and transform it. There was no way I’d have reached this conclusion theoretically or through logic. I had to do it for months before I came to understand this truth.

+Scott