Disciplined Devotions

There are a great many things that divide us as christians. Perhaps I should say that we allow to divide us. There are doctrinal disagreements applenty, but one of the more stark and visible dividing lines is style of worship. Specificly when it comes to liturgical vs. non-liturgical churches. Being raised non-denomiantional, evangelical, charismatic myself, I found the very idea of liturgical worship totally foreign and strange. Having also visited the other side of the fence, I found that many in the liturgical church view non-liturgical worship the same way.

I do not intend to take on the question of liturgical vs. non-liturgical in this particular post, but something related to it. A smaller aspect of that topic you might say. For those who might not be fully aware of what liturgy is, it generally refers to a church service that is pre-scripted. The minister reads scriptures and prayers which are pre-scripted and the congregation says pre-scripted responses. There is a pre-scripted order of events that the service follows, etc etc.

I have been motivated lately to increase my otherwise sadly lacking personal devotions. To institute discipline in my devotional life. In my experience as a charismatic evangelical I have found that many of us struggle with discipline in every area of life, and especially in the area of personal devotions. I think that a good deal of this is because our mode of worship is prone to lacking structure and discipline. In fact in many charismatic circles, structure is practically a dirty word.

In my own family growing up 'liturgy' was synonymous with 'dead'. People who engaged in liturgical worship were generally viewed as nominal christians who almost certainly had no personal relationship with Jesus. Along with this the idea of anything in the service being pre-scripted was anathema. The general view of most from my background is that if something is pre-scripted it removes the freedom of the Holy Spirit to move and inspire, and it is 'dead'.

I have discovered, however, that using pre-scripted elements to a devotional time can be very beneficial. Here are a few reasons why...

First - If you look at virtually any institution, or expert that specializes in teaching discipline, or instilling discipline you will find one of the single most important aspects of learning discipline, is routine. Having a set, established routine in which you do the same things at the same time, over and over and over. I would go so far as to say that without routine it is virtually impossible to learn discipline.
If you've ever tried to start an exercise or weight lifting program you will know that one of the chief elements of success is planning out ahead of time exactly what exercises you will do, how long you will do them, how much weight you will lift, and keeping a schedule. If you look into it you will find this truth repeated over and over throughout life. It is a profound truth of creation that God has made the physical creation an allegory for spiritual reality.
We can not learn discipline without having structured routine. We can not constructively and rightly use freedom, without first having discipline.

Secondly - One of the most frustrating and difficult things about my personal devotions before experiencing Anglicanism was that I would decide to pray, sit down, pray for five minutes, and have nothing more to say. I would forget to pray for important things, I would struggle for words to express the things I wanted to pray for and so on. Including a few pre-scripted elements helps with these problems immensely. If you start out with one or two pre-scripted elements (usually a short opening prayer and then maybe a pre-selected passage of scripture) it helps to calm your mind, to help you put the world behind you, to get yourself thinking about the things of God, and the things you should be praying for.

Thirdly - Our quiet times and devotions are not just times of making requests and supplications, they should also be times of worship. Times when we bless God and minister to God. Using pre-scripted elements allows me to incorperate an element of beauty in the words I speak that would otherwise not be present. Much like singing songs... we sing pre-written songs because they are enjoyable and beautiful and moving. The same is true of pre-written prayers and pre-selected passages of scripture.

Fourth - Without guidlines and fences it is very easy for us to get off base. Either in saying wrong things maybe without realizing it, or even over time drifting on the tides of shifting doctrines. Including pre-scripted elements in our personal devotions (or in our church services) allows us to anchor ourselves to the orthodox christian faith. It gives us safe boundries within which we can roam freely. This is one reason I especially recomend including either the Apostles Creed, or the Nicean Creed in your daily devotions.

In closing, the fact that something is pre-written does not mean in the least that it must be impersonal. Have you never read a poem, or a sang a song that you invested your heart into? Those words became personal to you! Not because you made them up, but because you invested yourself in them. I don't advocate eliminating freeform, extemporaneous prayers from your devotions at all. What I advocate is mixing the best of both worlds. Find some prayers that you can open and close your devotions with, and maybe a scripture or two that is particularly meaningful to you and make them a routine part of your daily devotions. Use those things but also leave time for extemporaneous prayers as well! Its also not a bad idea to leave time for God to speak to you! ;)