Americans are on a search for spiritual reality.

    Local bookstores are overstocked with books, magazines, tapes, and other materials relating to the varieties of spiritual exploration. These books promise to give one the secrets to inner peace, spiritual development, and relational success. But while the demand for spiritual food is an established fact, these materials will not satisfy the hunger.

    This past year, nearly every major magazine has featured an article on God, prayer, angels, the search for the sacred, New Age phenomena, what people want out of the church, and so on. Television talk show personality Oprah Winfrey recently featured a series "Does Prayer Work?" The search for spirituality has even made it to prime-time television. One show features two angels given assignments from God to either bring truth to someone's life or to show them they are on the wrong path.

In the midst of this search for spirituality, where is the Christian church and how is it doing?

    By and large the church has become conformed to the surrounding culture and no longer gives evidence in the life of its members to the teaching, lifestyle, ministry, and passion of Jesus. Christians are no exceptions to the general tendency to seek instant gratification for different needs, including spiritual ones. We have tended to seek shortcuts to spiritual growth and have been left with a veneer of superficial spirituality. Fortunately, more and more Christians, in recent years, seem to be dissatisfied with surface spirituality and are hungering for the depths of true Christian spirituality.

    We believe the deepest longing of the human heart can be met only through relationship with God -- conformity of our hearts and minds to the life and character of Jesus Christ. This journey into true spirituality requires the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

    We connect with the presence and power of the Spirit through disciplines of the Spirit. It is not our control and practice of the disciplines that makes a difference. Our yielding to the power and influence of the Holy Spirit through the practice of the disciplines gives him space to speak to us and guide us, to fill us and empower us, to turn us around and transform us. As we intentionally engage in the spiritual disciplines, we put ourselves in places and situation where the Holy Spirit can do his transforming work.

No one drifts casually into vital spirituality.

    We need to be yielding to the Spirit through the disciplines of solitude, surrender, and service to receive power from the Holy Spirit to do what we cannot do on our own: love our enemies, live without unnecessary worry, and give generously of our resources.

• The Disciplines of Solitude are silence, listening, guidance, prayer, intercession, study, and meditation.
• The Disciplines of Surrender are repentance, confession, yielding, fasting, and worship.
• The Disciplines of Service are fellowship, simplicity, service, and witness.

HEARTLIGHT(sm) Magazine is a ministry of loving Christians and the Westover Hills church of Christ.
Edited by Phil Ware and Paul Lee.
Excerpted and edited from Disciplines of the Holy Spirit by Dr. Siang-Yang & Dr. Douglas H. Gregg (Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), available at bookstores or by calling 1-800-727-3480.
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