Will worship

I've been thinking alot about the term that Richard Foster uses in celebration of discipline to refer to the way we go about spiritual disciplines. Often we apply the 'exercise' principle to our spiritual lives and we 'will' ourselves to keep some sort of religious code.. when in fact, that only adds up to 'will worship'. We actually start to worship our own ability to be disciplined. It's a tricky thing to get right... rather than a new chore - it needs to be an abandoned surrender... a giving up of ourselves - and yet it still requires some application of ourselves, our will - but instead of it being our accomplishment - it actually is more of our sustaining... so, some of the principles of will work - we have to apply ourselves... but the attitude and the motivation is different. Foster offers some great ideas and solid exercises to help. I'd recommend them to you as we all seek to fight against self sufficiency and the tyranny of the urgent in our daily lives - often spiritual disciplines are easily replaced by business and productivity that leaves us drained and empty. I've decided to work on the basics of spiritual disciplines this year - to surrender to the rhythm of God's grace.