Sometimes, the best way to grow in your spiritual disciplines is to take an idea or two from those who have gone before. The early Church Fathers, the aesthetics, and others had a solid grasp on the spiritual disciplines that we seem to have lost in the struggle to survive our modern, busy, chaotic, day to day existence.

Fortunately, much of what our spiritual ancestors have written still survives. Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of time (or won’t take it) to wade through all of this material to glean some nuggets of value out of it all to help our daily lives.

But Ken Shigematsu did.

After a trip to Ireland, where he toured some ancient monasteries, he began to study the life and writings of St. Benedict, and the Benedictine order that he started, and has found practical application for those ancient practices in our hectic, twenty-first century lives.

Here is the video trailer that describes the concept of God In My Everything.

In God In My Everything, Shigematsu has built a spiritual trellis, just like the ones that flowers grow on in our yards, and uses it as an illustration of how it allows certain spiritual disciplines to grow in our lives.

Beginning with the concepts of sabbath, prayer, and sacred reading, he builds a rooted foundation that supports further growth upon our trellis. From there, he
I found God In My Everything to be both incredibly helpful and extremely challenging. It was helpful in teaching me to develop a rule and rhythm for my life that included God in each and every aspect of it. Much of this I already do in some fashion, but Shigematsu has helped me to be more intentional in my rule. But he has also challenged me to take my life to the next level in my relationship with God in every aspect of my life. There are areas of my life that I discovered to be areas where I haven’t focused as much on God as I should, because they seem to be doing ok as they are. My challenge is to examine each of these areas, and find ways to build them around God, instead of around me. Each chapter has a few pointed questions and a place to outline a rule of life in that area.adds relational aspects, restorative characteristics, and some actions surrounding the idea of reaching out to others. Each of these is described in detail, giving us the ability to build a spiritual rule in our life, much like the rule that Benedict developed for the monks that followed his teachings so long ago.

I found this to be such a helpful strategy for my personal life, that I think I’ll be developing a teaching series around it for our church in the near future, in order to help others place and keep God, in their everything.

My life has been changed and challenged. My guess is that yours will be as well. You need to get a copy of Ken Shigematsu’s God In My Everything and read it today.

What do you do to instill spiritual disciplines into your life? Do you have a rule of life, much like the old monastic orders? You can leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

I highly recommend that you read God In My Everything, by Ken Shigematsu. You can purchase it at Amazon.com in print or for Kindle.

Disclosure of Material Connection:
I received this book free from Cross Focused Media as part of their Cross Focused Reviews blogger review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. Also, some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links”. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.“