Coaches always tailor exercise regimens to each individual athlete. They take into account age, weaknesses, injuries and circumstances. The Holy Spirit inhabits you as your personal growth coach. This divine Coach is present to help you recognize spiritual exercises appropriate to your current stage and season. The Spirit helps you notice when longings shift and when endurance runs short. The Spirit of God coaches you into disciplines that uniquely suit your (1) spiritual season, (2) age and stage, and (3) life circumstances.

SPIRITUAL SEASONS

Like every other living thing, humans have seasons. Winter, summer, autumn and spring are real places on the spiritual journey. These seasons cycle through our lives bringing times of fruit-bearing, root-deepening, drought and deep waiting. No matter how old or young we are, seasons come and go and return to come and go again. Some disciplines can be more suited to one season than another. When choosing a spiritual discipline, pay attention to your spiritual season.

Spring

Spring is the season of new life, new beginnings, new growth. Enthusiasm for the things of God accompanies spiritual springtimes. Desire for more of God breaks forth in a beautiful way. Disciplines of worship and hearing God’s Word seem to come naturally in this season of love for God. Often the desire to share our lives with others takes root in the spring.

Summer

In summer seasons of abundance the capacity and desire to give overflows. Serving others, working for justice, volunteering and engaging in outreach all bring us life. During this season, the fruit of the Spirit of God seems tangible to us. We sense God’s love, joy and peace in deeply satisfying ways. In the summer season disciplines that share our lives with others and incarnate God’s love keep us partnering with the Holy Spirit for transformation.

Autumn

Autumn is the season of transition standing between the bounty of summer and the barrenness of winter. This season is a mixed bag of harvest and loss. Sometimes even as we reap the fruit of sharing our lives with others, we sense a weariness of soul and a desire to hibernate for a time. Praying the authentic realities of our lives at this moment can be an important part of noticing God’s desire to move us more deeply into relationship with him. Seasons remind us that we are not always in summer. It is natural to move into times of transition. It is natural to wait and wonder what is next.

Winter

Winter is the season when the well runs dry and we feel we are running on empty. Psalm 42 and Psalm 63 express this season and its dark longing.

O God, you are my God,

earnestly I seek you;

my soul thirst for you,

my body longs for you,

in a dry and weary land

where there is no water. (Psalm 63:1)

I moved from Boston to Chicago in deep winter. My soul followed suit. Leaving friends, neighbors, work, a son, a home and a life I loved took me directly into the wilderness. In the unfamiliar barrenness of a new place, I sensed Jesus calling me to sit and wait with him in the winter wilderness. I pictured myself with Jesus during his own wilderness temptation (Luke 4). I saw how he was tempted by the devil to do something to prove who he was. And I felt the same temptation rise in me. I wanted to do just about anything rather than wait and trust God’s timing. But Jesus made it clear that I was to do nothing to prove who I was. I was simply to keep company with him. I was to grieve my losses, cry my tears, face down my temptations to doubt God and wait with Jesus. In that long, cold Chicago winter I found that God had not forgotten me. He was trusting me with his silence in the wilderness of a new place and season.

Winter seasons often call us to relinquish our agendas and open new spaces in our lives for God to show up. These R and O spiritual practices offer us ways of becoming more authentic with God. These disciplines address wounds, sins and weaknesses that keep us from being completely open with God. They give us ways to wait in hope when hope seems gone. Effort alone can never change our winter to spring. But winter is not the last word or only season of the spiritual journey. The presence of God within us is loaded with thawing power. We need to offer up the dark places of our soul to God. Ask the Spirit of God who hovered over the darkest deep on creation morn to hover over our darkness: “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Genesis 1:2). From the beginning it has been God’s nature to bring light to darkness and order to the chaos within and without. Keep company with Jesus. Dry times can orient our souls in the direction of God’s patience. Winter seasons can yield rich growth that flowers in other seasons.

STAGES OF GROWTH

Besides seasons that cycle through the journey, the life of faith can be characterized by a series of stages that lead friends of Jesus progressively on toward spiritual maturity. The apostles made distinctions between beginners on the Christian journey and those who were farther along the road. In 1 Peter 2:2 the apostle Peter writes: “Now, like infants at the breast, drink deep of God’s pure kindness. Then you’ll grow up mature and whole in God” (The Message). The author of Hebrews writes: “By this time you ought to be teachers yourselves, yet here I find you need someone to sit down with you and go over the basics on God again, starting from square one—baby’s milk, when you should have been on solid food long ago. Milk is for beginners, inexperienced in God’s ways; solid food is for the mature, who have some practice in telling right from wrong” (Hebrews 5:12-14 The Message).

Stages of growth happen incrementally through the initiative of the Holy Spirit and our cooperation with him. Throughout the history of the church the journey of transformation has often been characterized by the following stages:

Awakening

Awakening is the stage in which we encounter God and ourselves. This stage can be gradual or radical, a moment of conversion or a long journey to trusting God. The awakening stage gives us the comfort of belonging to God.

Purgation

Purgation is the stage of growing awareness of sins, blindness and the life of the false self. In this stage, desire to bring behavior and attitudes into line with Christ’s behavior and attitudes calls forth confession. Patterns of willful disobedience, rationalization, denial, blame, addiction, compulsion and weakness are renounced. Disciples intentionally partner with the Holy Spirit in willing trust and obedience.

Illumination

Illumination is the stage where being in love with God gives rise to the desire to live totally in and for God’s glory. Prayer becomes a way of life. It is the lived and regular rhythm of attending to the presence of the Holy Spirit within. Illumination finds evidence of God in pain and sorrow as well as joy and peace. Social concern and contemplation both become ways of adoring God.

Union

Union is the stage characterized by receiving God’s gift of union and oneness. “Spiritual marriage,” “transforming union,” “ecstasy,” “the unitive way” and “contemplation” are all terms that attempt to capture the soul’s relationship to God in this stage. The union stage is a receptive, quiet place where God’s agenda, presence and will are embraced. And prayer is a way of entering into wordless communion with the divine. All need for human approval, reinforcement or success is lost in surrender to Christ and an abandonment to grace.

The language of these stages may be unfamiliar to many who have no trouble distinguishing between baby Christians, disciplined followers, responsible shepherds and seasoned saints. For a visual of the seasons and stages of spiritual growth, read through the chart on pages 288-89. The divisions integrate the cyclical seasons with the trajectory toward spiritual maturity of a seasoned saint. The seasons and stages found here roughly correspond to stages developed in The Critical Journey by Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich.

There is no ironclad rule about what disciplines work best and when. Still, every age and stage is characterized by something to know, be and do.

Every age can grow in knowing about the faith they confess. The gospel is a deep river of life, and the depths can’t be sounded. But you can dive more deeply into its depths and learn.

No matter how old or young you are, there are things you can learn to do as a disciple of Jesus. Apprenticing yourself to Jesus will lead you into offering your body to God in worship, obedience and love. It is something we do.

Doing comes out of being. And at any age we can grow into what it means to be personally related to Jesus in vital, life-altering ways.

A simple age breakdown might look like this:

To Know

• Children know the stories.
• Adolescents know the truths.
• Seasoned saints know God, themselves and what they don’t know.

To Do

• Children obey their parents (do what you are told).
• Adolescents internalize obedience (obey because you want to please God—character formation).
• For seasoned saints, love and obedience become one; they are able to give and let go.

To Be

• Children learn who they are through being loved.
• Adolescents explore who they are meant to be.
• Seasoned saints live out of being God’s beloved.

Spiritual disciplines weave their way throughout all of life. New Christians often profit from spiritual disciplines that provide information about God and the Christian faith. Disciplines like Bible study, small groups and conversational prayer invite them to make space in their lives to hear God’s word, share their stories and pray. When the new Christians are children, spiritual practices focus on their love of stories, music, celebration, teachability and the ease with which they learn and memorize. Bible stories readily shape their moral imagination. Music and celebration lead them into experiencing God in worship. Disciplines of relinquishment usually are not appropriate for young people because they have not yet discovered the self they have to give away.

It’s important to provide young people with disciplines that link self-discovery with discovery of God. Since they often take cues about who they are from others, it is important to link them with a community that authentically shares their journey together. Typically, adolescents don’t want to miss out on anything in life—and often their temptations revolve around a fear of missing out on something. Disciplines that lead them into experiences of presenting their bodies to God as their spiritual act of worship (Romans 12:1) are particularly appropriate.

As responsibilities for both older and younger generations bear down on disciples in midlife, practices that address the temptation to be materialistic, anxious and controlling promote growing authenticity, wholeness, healing and discernment. Disciplines like the examen, devotional reading and slowing intentionally open the heart to hearing a fresh word from God.

Spiritual practices like detachment, contemplation and unplugging address the busyness, compulsions and scatteredness of life.

Seasoned saints might find that disciplines like mentoring, discipling and intercession intentionally provide opportunities to share their lives and come close to God in prayer. Mature disciples leave a legacy and an example of what it is to keep company with Jesus. They also model well the disciplines of relinquishment. They practice detachment because they know it will prepare them for the end of life and the final letting go.

Remember that each letter of the acronym worship contains spiritual practices suitable for every age and stage of growth. Choosing disciplines from more than one grouping keeps us developing in wholeness and holiness. In some seasons of the journey we don’t look entirely balanced. We shouldn’t worry much about this. Instead, we trust that the spiritual disciplines we practice will root us in the soil of God’s love. In the Trinity’s good timing, we may well find ourselves attracted to disciplines that never appealed to us before.

SEASONS OF THE SOUL (A Diagnostic)

QUESTIONS

1. Do you identify with one of the key questions?
2. Are you in touch with your longings? Do any of the primary longings above ring true for you today?
3. Which temptations express where you are?
4. Are there any signs of being spiritually stuck in your journey?
5. Which stage reflects your heart at this moment in time?

A WORD ABOUT CIRCUMSTANCES

Besides ages, stages and seasons of growth affecting the spiritual marathon, life circumstances play their own part. Illness, job changes, moving, weddings, vacations, work, caring for children or elderly parents, divorce, accidents, deaths—these are just a few of the many life circumstances that affect our ability to meaningfully engage and practice spiritual disciplines. It is important to consider the limitations as well as the opportunities that life circumstances bring.

Spiritual disciplines must be adapted to fit the reality of the life we are living. A person with a houseful of noisy children may long for solitude! But the realities of such a life takes him or her more deeply into disciplines of incarnating God’s love for others. Disciplines he or she can share with the children—care of the earth, hospitality, walking prayer or service—can be especially meaningful at this time. We must attend to what’s on our plate and not put emotional energy into wishing for a solitude that will definitely come. If the longing for solitude persists, we should ask God how to find time each week when someone else is in charge of the homefront while we spend time alone with him. Maybe it’s just an hour alone in the bathtub.

As I encourage people in the practice of spiritual disciplines, I find it intriguing to see how people with different life circumstances respond. Circumstances matter when it comes to disciplines. The grandmother living alone doesn’t really warm to the discipline of solitude; she has all she needs. But the busy CEO finds solitude a breath of fresh air. A mother of young children finds breath prayer suits her busy day, while a doctor seeking discernment on a new responsibility embraces the examen. I have found that my disciplines shift when I am on vacation, sick or traveling for work and when I have guests that stay for extended lengths of time. The more I attend to what God wants of me in these circumstances, the clearer I am on the practices that suit the situation. Disciplines are fluid; they flow in and out of our circumstances.

Ages, stages, seasons and circumstances always affect our relationship with God. So we should expect the journey to take us into new ways of noticing and attending to the divine romance.