Passive Disciplines

Passive Disciplines

God is actively involved in disciplining His people.

“For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” Deuteronomy 13:3

God knows that active disciplines alone will not be sufficient to lead us into the knowledge of God and the enjoyment of His promises. We are, after all, sinners, and are naturally disposed to turn away from the Lord. We take up the active spiritual disciplines with all the best intentions; nevertheless, we can expect that we shall stumble and fall and be neglectful of these good gifts, simply because, though redeemed, we are still sinners.

Thus the Lord Himself is actively involved in disciplining us to seek and know Him. We experience the Lord’s active discipline as passive spiritual disciplines. These come to us at God’s pleasure, according to our need. Passive spiritual disciplines are not necessarily pleasant; we would not sign up for these if we could avoid them (Heb. 12:3-11).

But God sends them to us—temptations, trials, deprivation, persecution, loss, and more—in order to strengthen our souls to fear and love Him more. At times these come to us because we have provoked this displeasure of the Lord by failing to obey Him. At other times it pleases Him to send them simply because He knows something about our souls that we do not.

Both active and passive spiritual disciplines are necessary if we are to grow in our vision of God and in gaining His promises.

For more insight to the nature of God’s Covenant, order a copy of T. M.’s book, I Will Be Your God, from our online store. Visit our website, www.ailbe.org, and sign up to receive our thrice-weekly devotional, Crosfigell, featuring writers from the period of the Celtic Revival and T. M.’s reflections on Scripture and the Celtic Christian tradition.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.