Spiritual Disciplines

I recently read the book, The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard.  In it he talks about how we have walked away from the disciplines in the reaction against being justified by them.  "No, I will not do anything to prove that I am a Christian, Jesus alone proves that."  While it is t-r-u-e that Jesus Christ provides our only justification, that does not negate our literal following of him.
I am a runner who has run five marathons.  For each one I have spent hours in training my body to run for 26.2 miles.  For each marathon I was very prepared although not quite prepared enough.  If I were to have lined up at the starting line without any training at all, I would have looked good for abut a half mile, or about 1/50th of the marathon.  But after that it would have been hard for me to go on at all, even walking.  Who could I blame but myself for not training?  Maybe if someone had told me that I did not have to train.
The same can be said for spiritual training.  If I encounter a spiritual battle and have not trained and end up beaten, who am I to blame?  Do I say to God, "Why have you given me more than I can bear?"  "Why have you made me fall?"
Many athletes are cocky and say, "I earned my glory and my fame and my victory" forgetting who it is who gave them their crafted bodies.
In the same way if we win a spiritual battle and cry out, "I am such a disciplined spiritual warrior.  I earned the victory, we miss the whole of the point of the training."

Let us train in order to recognize more and more who it is who is the Victor, the Winner.

How do we train?  We will bring this up in future posts.