Over the years, I have found long lists of disciplines (whether twelve or fifteen or twenty or more) to be more discouraging than helpful. What I needed was to press in through the particular practices and find the God-given principles at work. One way I’ve found to capture the matrix of God’s grace for the Christian life is threefold: (1) hear God’s voice (in his word), (2) have his ear (in prayer), and (3) belong to his body (in the fellowship of the church). 

Perhaps you’re not a big fan of the term “spiritual disciplines.” If so, I’m with you, and we’re in good company.

“Means of grace,” according to D. A. Carson, is “a lovely expression less susceptible to misinterpretation than spiritual disciplines,” (“Spiritual Disciplines,” in Themelios, 36, no. 3 [November 2011]). I find the term “means of grace” coheres more consistently with the theology of the Bible about such practices and helps to keep the key emphases in their proper places. “Spiritual disciplines” has become such a popular term in recent decades that it may do little good to give much effort to unseating it. However, we will do well, for ourselves and for others, to carefully think through what ongoing avenues of grace God offers to us, and how we build rhythms, or habits, for regular access to God’s appointed means.

His Voice, His Ear, His Body

In this article, we will consider how the spiritual disciplines — or better, means of grace — produce God-honoring joy. But first let’s summarize these means of grace.

Over the years, I have found long lists of disciplines (whether twelve or fifteen or twenty or more) to be more discouraging than helpful. What I needed was to press in through the particular practices and find the God-given principles at work. One way I’ve found to capture the matrix of God’s grace for the Christian life is threefold: (1) hear God’s voice (in his word), (2) have his ear (in prayer), and (3) belong to his body (in the fellowship of the church). All Scripturally-directed “spiritual disciplines” cluster to one or more of these three loci: word, prayer, and fellowship. Our various “habits of grace,” then, are the practices we develop (both individually and corporately) for daily and weekly access to God’s ongoing, soul-sustaining grace.

Joy in God Glorifies Him

The question before us is how do such habits — corporate worship, Bible meditation, private and collective prayer, among them — produce joy that honors God? There’s a massive assumption there, that shouldn’t go unexplained. Joy honors its object. When a husband delights in his wife, he honors her. Raw duty does not honor its object, whether God or country, so much as eagerness, delight, satisfaction, and joy.

Therefore, as John Piper has given his life to teaching and explaining, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

Our question as to how spiritual disciplines, or habits of grace, produce joy that honors God, is no mere curiosity. It is a serious and colossal question, relating to the great purpose of God in the universe (his glory) and the deep, undeniable longing of the human soul (to be happy). The call for us as Christians to glorify God in our lives (1 Corinthians 10:31) could be summed up in the words of Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord.” The reality of our joy in God, and the way in which our habits of grace feed that joy, is no insignificant query. Loads more, no doubt, remain to be said than we can in the remaining space, but let’s capture three ways, among others, that our habits of grace produce joy that honors God.

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