The Spiritual Discipline of Submission

Take a moment and image yourself being an African slave in the deep South. You labor under the hot sun all day and your master treats you like you are the scum of the earth. How do you feel? Would you be willing to be submissive or would you revolt? What does it mean to submit? What does it mean to submit to God, to be "Christ's slave"as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7? Let's look at the spiritual discipline of submission.

However, before talking about submission, let me take a moment to remind that every spiritual discipline has a corresponding freedom to which it is designed to direct us. Thus, it is important to understand that the freedom of the spiritual disciple of submission according to Foster is to "lay down the terrible burden of always needing to get our own way" (111). In other words putting aside your own desires and wants.

So what exactly is the discipline of submission? The spiritual discipline of submission is submitting our lives to Christ. Well, what does that mean? Submitting our lives to Christ means that we recognize our dependence and existence on God alone. Jesus model and calls us to live a cross life, that is, a life of voluntary submission and freely accepted servanthood. The freedom that comes from spiritual discipline of submission is the freedom to value other people through cultivating a spirit of grace, consideration, and respect. In other words, the discipline of submission allows us to love other unconditionally.

So for this week's practice of this discipline I chose to focus the attitude of my heart towards submission. The way I did that was through submitting to the words of Scripture. Every day I reread Isaiah 60: 1-7, which was the Scripture passage that Sunday's sermon was based on, and reflected on it and listening for what God was calling me to do.

Well I did not reread the passage every day liked I had planed instead I only reread it twice. Yet reading it and reflecting on it those two times, I notice that I was more aware of God throughout the day. I found myself praying continually and in all circumstances. I found that my heart was directed towards God and the needs of those around me. I found that by submitting to the words of Scripture, I could truly love those who were around me.

Living the cross life is daily. It requires submitting everything to God-all hope, fears, and yes even dreams. It requires that God leads and we follow and may include risk taking, something as small as being a more transparent Christian or as large as going to another country. The question is are you willing to submit daily your life to Christ?