Disciplined

For many Jesus-followers, engagement with the spiritual disciplines can be tiring, frustrating, and difficult. Whether it is prayer, Bible reading, fasting, or something else, they find themselves drifting toward comfort and disengagement, eventually quitting the spiritual discipline altogether.

But what if your best days are found on the other side of your spiritual funk?

In this final message in the Disciplined series, Pastor Erin Bird teaches from James 1:2-4 about the power of perseverance, and how your greatest days and spiritual maturity will be found through the struggle of the disciplines.

No one accidentally wins an Olympic gold medal. It takes tremendous work and sacrifice to obtain something of such incredible worth.

Likewise, to grow to love like Jesus loved and live like Jesus lived often requires great sacrifice. In this seventh part of the Disciplined, Pastor Erin Bird teaches from two parables the Jesus told to show the power of sacrifice. If you want to have an amazing relationship with God, listen in for how you can grow spiritually through three different disciplines of sacrifice.

Money.

Yep, we’re going there. The topic of finances is quite the sticky topic to discuss in church. And yet, if you want to love like Jesus loved and live like Jesus lived, you have to wrestle with the topic.

In this sixth part of the Disciplined series, Jacob Tews helps Jesus-followers see the beauty of living generously, particularly when it comes to the area of finances. So listen in to be challenged and inspired to enter into the spiritual discipline of giving.

If you were to ask a random Christian to name some spiritual disciplines, “serving” would probably not be one of the first disciplines listed, if at all. And yet serving is an incredibly important discipline because it helps to change our selfish hearts.

So listen in to learn how the discipline of serving can help you grow spiritually, as well as learn who you are to serve.

Ever felt like prayer is boring? Or have you felt like you couldn’t pray because of sin in your life and/or past? Or maybe you’re simply afraid to pray because it has just been so long since you’ve tried to talk with God and you fear He might be a bit upset that you’ve been ignoring Him?

In this masterful sermon on the spiritual discipline of prayer, guest teacher Patrick Ray walks us through Romans 8, showing us why we shouldn’t let shame or fear or boredom keep us from this God-given gift called prayer. So if you want to grow in your conversations with God, listen in to this fourth part of the Disciplined series.

You may not realize it, but you are almost always worshipping. The question is: who or what are you worshipping?

In this third part of the Discipled series, we look at how easily we worship the things of this earth instead of the One who made the earth, and how to go about changing that. So listen in if you want to grow as a worshipper of God.

Relationships are hard. Hang out with someone long enough, and you will inevitably get hurt, whether through their words or actions. And when we get hurt, we often want to pull away from the relationship.

However, humans were created as relational creatures. So we want to be in relationship, and yet we get hurt by those relationships. So how do we live in this tension?

Listen in to learn how to allow the spiritual discipline of community help you grow to be more like Jesus.

For the summer of 2018, Riverwood Church is taking a look at the topic of spiritual disciplines. Over 9 weeks, the Riverwood family will look at nine different disciplines Jesus-followers can engage in.

However, there is a danger to this topic. In this opening message in the Disciplined series, Pastor Erin Bird helps us learn what the inherent danger is with spiritual disciplines, how to avoid this danger, and the reason Scriptural intake is a foundational discipline for those who want to grow spiritually and follow Jesus.