Let me be real with you... The most underrated spiritual discipline is the one I trip over daily: Prayer.
Most of us were discipled into what I’d call “content Christianity.” Listen to this sermon. Watch that YouTube theologian. Read this book. Read that other book. Install the Bible app, and do the plan, and maybe do the bonus plan.
None of this is bad.
Scripture is sacred. Wisdom is sacred. Learning matters.
But take it from me... you can fill your brain with a small seminary’s worth of information and still struggle to talk to God like a Person who is actually in the room.
I used to forget that He is closer than breath.
Then I started paying attention to the wind.
The way it touches your face unexpetedly. The way it moves the leaves even when you are too busy scrolling to notice.
God’s presence is a lot like that. Always happening. Always available. Always reaching toward you.
You can ignore the wind and keep about your business... or you can stop to experience the way it feels, the way it changes your direction, the way it connects you larger than yourself.
Prayer is stopping to experience God.
Which is why I know I desperately need to pray more.
The more I sit with people, the more I realize the content trap runs deeper than we admit. It’s not just that we consume too much. It’s that we’ve quietly redefined discipleship as consumption.
Honestly… you’ll never move forward in your faith until you realize this: discipleship is not content consumption.
It is not binge-watching sermons or hoarding books or mastering Hebrew verbs. It is not the endless parade of podcasts, journals, lectures, seminars, newsletters, conference livestreams, or two-minute reels of someone else’s spiritual high.
Discipleship is whole-life apprenticeship to Jesus.
The content is helpful, yes! It is the scaffolding. It holds shape while the real structure is being formed. But the content is not the house. It is not the point.
It is not the fire on the mountain.
Jesus looked the Pharisees dead in the eye and said, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me that you may have life.”
He was speaking to the card-carrying Bible nerds.
The spiritual experts. The theological elite.
They knew the most… and yet somehow knew Him least.
You might be reading this and feeling quietly disqualified. You don’t feel like you’re becoming like Jesus.
You’re not a rabbi. You’re not a teacher. Maybe you’ve never preached a sermon.
You work a boring job. You sit in traffic. You scroll your phone. You make your kid’s lunch.
You feel invisible. Small. Not holy. Not powerful.
And yet…
This is where He forms you.
Not on stages. Not in seminar rooms. But in the ordinary hush of a thousand Mondays, in unseen sacrifices, in whispered prayers in the dark.
You’re being formed.
Jesus is in it. All of it.
What does he want from you?
For you to open your eyes and see Him right in front of you.
Perhaps to learn what it means to not just consume content, but to actually learn His rhythm of contentment.
See the words of Paul.
Phillipians 4:10-14, as worded by Eugene Peterson (The Message.)
10-14 I’m glad in God, far happier than you would ever guess—happy that you’re again showing such strong concern for me. Not that you ever quit praying and thinking about me. You just had no chance to show it.
Actually, I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances.
I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty.
Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.
Something I need to hear often: the God you serve isn’t impressed by your perpetual exhaustion. He’s grieved… because He loves you.
He didn’t create you to run yourself into the ground.
He created you for communion.
With Him. With your family. With His people.
Thank the Lord that even when we are too tired to feel, the table of communion is always set.
Come, and partake this morning.
Jesus is waiting with a feast of His own presence.
Enough writing. Time to go pray.
-Aaron
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