What are you holding on to? The Spiritual Disciplines pathway is about letting go. From the outside looking in, the spiritual disciplines may look like pointless sacrifices, but they are really steps to bring God into sharper focus by putting aside those things that might distract us.

• Confession: Letting go of sin by voicing it to God or to another person, and being held accountable.
  
  
• Silence: Spending time before God without speaking. Some of your most profound experiences with God are when you stay quiet long enough for Him to talk to you.
  
  
• Journaling: Sacrificing your time to write it down. What would you write? A letter, a prayer, a thought, reflections on a Bible reading? Journaling is an easy way to focus your mind and heart on what you want to say to God, and it can provide a way to hear what He is saying to you.
  
  
• Prayer: For many of us, prayer is a discipline in keeping still, silent, and talking with God. Meaningful prayer often turns into a two-way conversation. The true discipline surrounding prayer is carving out the time and staying focused.
  
  
• Solitude: Being alone can be easy when you have something to do, but finding a quiet place to be alone and waiting for God is a very tough exercise.
  
  
• Fasting: By forgoing the pleasures of food, we take what can be a distraction and create an opportunity for prayer and reflection. Fasting does not necessarily mean eating nothing but can mean eating a single simple meal in the evening. This act of simplicity can allow us to take the longing for food and turn it to a reminder of our longing for God.
  
  
• Sacrifice: In Genesis, we see Cain and Abel offering their sacrifices to God. Abel gives some of his best to God. The spirit of sacrifice says that we should be willing to give something back to God with an open heart. Like exercising our physical muscles, exercising our sacrificial muscles makes us feel better and stronger.
  
  
• Simplicity: Our complicated and busy lives often are filled with noise and distractions. Many of us have living rooms and dens that look like the showrooms of Circuit City or Best Buy. When we warehouse things in our houses and our lives, we often squeeze out God. By striving for simplicity, we can open up spaces and times where we can meet God and become more aware of our life, not distracted from it.

We should not practice the spiritual disciplines to make us nicer, or thinner, or more religious or pious. Nor should we think that the practice of these spiritual disciplines paves our road to salvation. No, the spiritual disciplines are there to build us up in our salvation journey. They build us up by helping turn our physical needs into tangible tools for the realization of our spiritual growth.