What’s the purpose of praying, fasting, solitude, giving, and all manner of what we might call good Christian practices?
My friend, Mart Green, and I set out to write a book on these practices called Learning to Be Loved. On that journey, we realized that many Christians view these practices as things God expects of us. He commands us to pray, fast, and give, expecting us to hit the mark. Failing to do these things, then, feels like we are letting God down.
But there’s a story from Jesus’s life that proves this view to be exactly backwards.
Sabbath for Man. Not Man for Sabbath.
In Mark 2:23–28, Jesus and his disciples are gleaning grain from a local farm on the Sabbath, as the law allowed (Deuteronomy 23:25). But when the Pharisees saw him do this, they accused him of breaking this core practice of Sabbath keeping.
The Pharisees had added additional provisions and instructions around Sabbath law, to ensure the faithful observe it properly. They had great regard for the practice of Sabbath and went to admirably pious lengths to make sure they did nothing to break it.
For the Pharisees, the Sabbath was God’s standard and needed to be kept.
But Jesus turns their perception of this practice on its head when he tells them a truth we all need to hear.
Jesus says, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27, ESV).
Jesus is saying that the practice of the Sabbath is not a law to be kept simply for the sake of keeping it. The Sabbath is not a practice given to man to test whether they observe it properly in order to please God.
Jesus is saying the Sabbath is a gift for humans. The Sabbath means rest, play, peace, and trust. Taking a day to stop all our working and toiling heals us and leads us into deeper rest in God.
The Sabbath was given for our good. In keeping the Sabbath, we are given the opportunity to receive a gift that God has for us, not to give a gift to God.
God did not make humanity to keep the Sabbath. He made the Sabbath to keep humanity. God does not need you to observe the Sabbath to show him how good you are. You need to observe the Sabbath to see how good God is.
Prayer for Christians. Not Christians for Prayer.
Consider how this truth applies to other spiritual practices.
For years, I viewed prayer like the Pharisees viewed the Sabbath. A thriving “prayer life” was something God expected of me, which I constantly fell short of. The more I tried to meet these assumed expectations, the more guilty and ashamed I felt that I wasn’t doing enough.
Like the Pharisees, I tried to put all kinds of additional provisions and instructions around prayer to help me keep it. I decided that good Christians pray for at least a half hour every morning. And made it a law. I decided good prayers always had to have deep confessions of sins, heartfelt intercession for others, and rapturous awe and wonder at the glory of God. So I made that a law too.
I thought I was made for prayer, and tried to serve that purpose rigorously. But like the Pharisees, I was missing the point.
Prayer was made for me. Like Sabbath, prayer is a gift God is trying to give me. It’s a gift of communion with my Creator, help from the Almighty, friendship with the All-Loving, and counsel from the Great Counselor.
God did not need me to pray to show him how good I am. He needed me to pray to see how good he is.
Seeing the Disciplines as Gateways to Intimacy
Mart Green, who co-authored Learning to Be Loved with me, has documented dozens of spiritual practices like prayer that he calls “Gateways to Intimacy.” This phrase neatly captures the goal of Sabbath, prayer, and all manner of spiritual practices. The goal is intimacy with God. The gateways are the practices.
But as we’ve seen, these gateways are not there for us to walk through to get to God. We must not think that if we pray enough or keep the Sabbath well enough, the doors of intimacy will fling open and grant us an intimacy shut to those less obedient.
God is the one who walks through the gateways to intimacy (Revelation 3:20). When we pray, God walks in. When we rest on Sabbath, God meets us. And he gives us himself. He is the gift. Being with him, knowing him, and feeling treasured by him is what these gateways are meant to give us. In word, they are gateways to intimacy.
While the 20 gateways we cover in the book may be the most familiar, I’m convinced that every spiritual practice fits the pattern Jesus showed the Pharisees on that Sabbath long ago.
To see a spiritual discipline rightly, we must first and foremost see it as a gift given to us. Each discipline, be it giving, worship, or fasting, is a doorway through which God is trying to give us the gift of himself.
The Hardest Discipline? Learning to Be Loved.
But there is one more problem. Our skewed view of the disciplines is rooted in our skewed view of God’s love. We see spiritual practices as ways to get to God because we don’t believe God truly loves us without them.
The irony is that the very practices through which we are trying to earn God’s love, are the very practices through which we can learn God’s love. Each gateway, each practice, is a way for us to receive God’s love for us.
While basically every Christian I’ve ever met “believes” God loves them, many of us (myself included) struggle to actually feel and receive that love. It’s far easier to assent to the fact that God is love than to internalize the truth that the God of the universe deeply and personally cherishes you.
This is why God gave us the disciplines. He gave them for our good. You were not made to hit a prayer quota, fast for 40 days, and abstain from grabbing a snack on Saturdays. You were made to receive God’s love for you through communing with him in prayer, being satisfied in his provision, and resting in his sovereignty.
You were made to know the heights, depths, lengths, and breadths of God’s great love for you (Ephesians 3:18). I pray that you would receive the gift of the spiritual practices, and let God show you his love through these beautiful gateways to intimacy.
Are you feeling spiritually stuck? Release that frustration and discover a more natural way to relate to God in Learning to Be Loved: The Everyday Believer’s Guide to a Rich Relationship with God, a biblically grounded, transformative book about how our passionate and creative God offers us gateways — that are already in our lives — to draw us closer to him.
David Bowden is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Spoken Gospel, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people see Jesus in every part of the Bible. He is the author ofLearning to Be Loved,Rewire Your Heart, and When GodIsn’tThere.David lives in Oklahoma City with his wife Meagan, and their two boys.
