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from Robert Mulholland

     Let me clarify the nature of spiritual discipline, because here our cultural shaping distorts our understanding. We tend to think of spiritual disciplines as something that we are doing to transform ourselves, to make alive our "dead body." Look in Romans. It is only the One who raised Christ Jesus from the dead who can bring life out of deadness. We cannot do it. There is nothing that you or I can do to change the nature of our dead body. That is God's realm. What we can do is to offer to God the spiritual discipline that God stirs within us by God's Spirit.
     "fall off the wagon" and discover that the old dead body is just as alive as it ever was (if I may mix my metaphors). It is still there; it hasn't changed; all those weeks and months of disciplines haven't done a thing to transform that deadness into life in Christ's image. If anything, the deadness seems even stronger, because it has been fasting so long. So we go on a gorging binge. Whatever that brokenness is, we find ourselves indulging horribly in it. Then guilt and remorse begin to build up, and we get back "on the wagon," pick up the discipline, grab our bootstraps and try to pull ourselves back up. (Lord I am so guilty.)
     This is not a spiritual discipline. If you have had that roller coaster experience--trying to maintain the discipline, falling off, starting it again and falling off, starting again and falling off--it may be because you've not been offering God a genuine discipline. You may have been trying a do-it-yourself operation, a form of works righteousness.
     A genuine spiritual discipline is a discipline of loving obedience offered to God with no strings attached. We put no conditions on it. We put no time limits on it. We add no expectation of how we want God to change us through it. We simply offer the discipline to God, and keep on offering it for as long as God wants us to keep on.
     This is not easy! Genuine spiritual disciplines are hard work. So we need our brothers and sisters in Christ to support us, to hold us in their care, to bear the burden with us. I believe this is what James is talking about when he says, "Confess your sins to one another" (James 5:16). This is not some sort of spiritual exhibitionism. It is saying to a group of faithful, trusted sisters and brothers in Christ, "Here is the area of my deadness where the Spirit of God is calling me to faithful obedience, and I need your help. Hold me accountable for this discipline until the work God wants to do in me through it is done." This is also what Paul is saying when he exhorts us to "bear one another's persons, and thus fulfill the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2).
     The various Twelve Step programs that have proliferated in recent years have grasped the significance of this essential spiritual principle. Members of such groups always stand ready to go to a sister or brother who is weakening under the assault of the temptation to succumb to brokenness. They will stay with them, encourage them, support them and see them through until they win the victory consistently. This is a vital essential of holistic spirituality that the church has lost.
     In some of the more superficial disciplines we may be able to work it out--just us and the Lord. But let me tell you if you haven't discovered this already, when God begins to work with the deep down brokenness of your life, there is no way you can do it by yourself. No way!
     Why? Because when you start offering the spiritual discipline, you discover there is warfare inside you. That dead body of your being wants to continue to express itself in the old, destructive behaviors, and through the discipline you are doing the opposite; you have got a war going on. This is what Paul is talking about when he says, "The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh" (Galatians 5:17). He is not talking about Christians and non-Christians; he is talking about Christian experience. Paul is writing in the context of walking by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16), and he is saying that when you start walking by the Spirit a war breaks out in your life: the flesh will war against the Spirit, and the Spirit will war against the flesh.
     And that is exactly what happens. We start offering a discipline and the dead body of our being starts saying, "No! No! No! No! I want to behave in the old way!" And the Spirit is saying, "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Pursue this new behavior!"
     Here we begin to see something of the depths of our spiritual disciplines. Here is where we begin our dying to self, the taking up of our cross. I don't know about you, but I know that when that warfare gets strong I can become amazingly subtle; I can rationalize beautifully a million reasons it's perfectly okay to go back to the old behaviors, the old deadness. And it makes perfectly logical, rational sense. It can even seem pious, except that I know deep down in my heart that it isn't. This is why I need others to keep on saying, "Come on, Bob, quit kidding yourself, hang in there, push on, keep on offering the discipline."
     When we continue to offer the discipline, that discipline becomes a means of grace through which God works and moves to transform that dead portion of our body into life in the image of Christ. One morning you wake up and discover, often to your amazement, that the discipline is no longer a discipline; it is now the natural outflow of a being that has been raised to new life in Christ--that the Spirit of the One who raised Christ Jesus from the dead, the Spirit who also dwells in you, has made alive your dead body also. You did not do it. God did it. But God did it through the discipline you offered.
     I believe this is what Paul is talking about when he says, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for God is at work in you both to will and to work for God's good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12-13). You see, God has created us for a symbiotic relationship in our pilgrimage toward wholeness, and we have a responsibility in that relationship. But we must never deceive ourselves that our role alone is what brings about the transformation. Paul says we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling because it is in our nature to take credit for the results. It is in our nature to take over the project and to turn it into a self-help project, a do-it-yourself operation. This temptation to works righteousness lurks at the heart of all our genuine spiritual disciplines. Paul, being the Pharisees that he was, knew the danger of that route.
     And so those individualized spiritual disciplines to which the Spirit of God calls us in the midst of our deadness are our offerings of loving response and obedience through which God works by grace to transform our deadness into wholeness in the image of Christ. Our dead body is made alive through the Spirit who dwells within us.
     I hope you can see now something of the way in which these individual, private disciplines are supported, nurtured and encouraged by the classical disciplines of the body of Christ. Our prayer, our spiritual reading, our worship, our daily office, our study, our fasting, our retreats are the structures that keep us open to the work of the Spirit of God in our lives and support and encourage the difficult work of our individual spiritual disciplines. And through all these means God lovingly holds us in the process of being conformed to the image of Christ for others, moves us from brokenness into wholeness.

     This is a direct quote from M. Robert Mulholland Jr.'s Invitation to a Journey, one of the most impactful books I have read.
     In the paragraph above Mulholland mentions spiritual deadness. If you are not sure what is meant by this phrase watch this video clip and pay attention to the words that flash upon the screen as the speaker says something else