Saddleback Church

Oswald Chambers, a Scotsman who converted to Christianity in his teens under the ministry of Charles Spurgeon, has been affecting Christians with his devotional words since My Utmost for His Highest was first published in 1935. This acknowledged classic contains 365 daily readings that take heady doctrine and make it practical, realistic, and intensely personal. With humor and humility, Chambers speaks plainly to the common man struggling with devotion to Christ in daily living. Worldly cares and self-serving desires begin to lose their appeal as Chambers aides the reader in transforming his mind by viewing life through the instruction of God's Word.

Richard Halverson, former chaplain of the United States Senate, attests to this: "No book except the Bible has influenced my walk with Christ at such deep maturing levels." This is Chambers's chief desire, directing the reader to "shut out every other consideration and keep yourself before God for this one thing only—My Utmost for His Highest...determined to be absolutely and entirely for him and for him alone."

Donald Miller's fresh and original voice may change the way Christians view the "status quo" faith and build a bridge to seekers who believe that organized religion doesn't meet their spiritual needs. "I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. . . . I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened." In Donald Miller's early years, he was vaguely familiar with a distant God. But when he came to know Jesus Christ, he pursued the Christian life with great zeal. Within a few years he had a successful ministry that ultimately left him feeling empty, burned out, and, once again, far away from God. In this intimate, soul-searching account, Miller describes his remarkable journey back to a culturally relevant, infinitely loving God.

In the twenty years since its publication, Celebration of Discipline has helped over a million seekers discover a richer spiritual life infused with joy, peace, and a deeper understanding of God. For this special twentieth anniversary edition, Richard J. Foster has added an introduction, in which he shares the story of how this beloved and enduring spiritual guidebook came to be.

Hailed by many as the best modern book on Christian spirituality, Celebration of Discipline explores the "classic disciplines," or central spiritual practices, of the Christian faith. Along the way, Foster shows that it is only by and through these practices that the true path to spiritual growth can be found. Dividing the disciplines into three movements of the Spirit, Foster shows how each of these areas contribute to a balanced spiritual life. The inward disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study, offer avenues of personal examination and change. The outward disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service, help prepare us to make the world a better place. The corporate disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration, bring us nearer to one another and to God.

Foster provides a wealth of examples demonstrating how these disciplines can become part of our daily activities—and how they can help us shed our superficial habits and "bring the abundance of God into our lives." He offers crucial new insights on simplicity, demonstrating how the biblical view of simplicity, properly understood and applied, brings joy and balance to our inward and outward lives and "sets us free to enjoy the provision of God as a gift that can be shared with others." The discussion of celebration, often the most neglected of the disciplines, shows its critical importance, for it stands at the heart of the way to Christ. Celebration of Discipline will help motivate Christians everywhere to embark on a journey of prayer and spiritual growth.