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By night I went out through the Valley Gate toward the Jackal Well and the Dung Gate, examining the walls of Jerusalem, which had been broken down, and its gates, which had been destroyed by fire. (Nehemiah 2:13)

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Sunday evening, our high school youth gathered for a (socially-distanced) campfire to worship and talk about Spiritual Disciplines\u2014on this particular night: the discipline of gratitude (click or tap here to learn more about this spiritual discipline!).

We started that Spiritual Discipline conversation by recognizing that the methods of being formed in the Christian faith that we\u2019ve long relied on, like Sunday worship, are not quite as reliable as they once were.\xa0 Some might even say they\u2019ve been broken down.

Just think of all the spiritual disciplines we practiced together in worship as a Christian community pre-COVID-19: Prayer, Scripture Reading, Giving, Confession, Gratitude, Song, Community/Fellowship, Silence, etc.\xa0 This weekly practice of all these disciplines in worship forms us in the Christian life and in Christian character over the years, it really does!\xa0 Worship is not only something we offer to God, it\u2019s also one of the means through which God forms Christ in us!\xa0

But now, this central practice of Sunday worship which once carried so much of the freight of our Christian discipleship has broken down.\xa0 Not completely of course.\xa0 We worship, we really do.\xa0 But it\u2019s also not quite what it was.\xa0 And while technology is a good stand in, some things (like the support, encouragement, and accountability of Christian community) simply cannot be digitally mediated forever.

As the practice of Sunday worship has weakened in our communal life therefore, and all these weekly reinforcements of the Spiritual Disciplines with it, so have our \u201cdefences\u201d against our \u201cold enemies\u201d that Pastor Michael mentioned yesterday: namely, the world, the flesh, and the devil.\xa0

The World: we get busy and distracted with all the other pressing demands of work, school, life in a pandemic, and the ever-urgent notifications on our devices and eventually we start to slide away from worship and Christian practice\u2014slowly.\xa0 Never all at once.\xa0 But, bit by bit, Sundays easily get filled with all the other things that have always been vying for our attention and adoration.\xa0

The Flesh: we sleep in on Sundays, don\u2019t feel like doing worship, or just plumb forget to engage in worship and the other Christian practices.\xa0 Discipleship is hard.\xa0 Lots of other things are easier.

The Devil: as C.S. Lewis reminds us in the Screwtape Letters, there are indeed forces at work in this world that give aid to the seemingly benign churn of our fleshly lives and our world\u2019s pressures, helping them to erode our Christian practice with the relentless force of waves that pound the shore.

Perhaps it\u2019s time to take a silent walk with God to go out and \u201cexamine the defences,\u201d as Nehemiah did.\xa0

Are the \u201cwalls\u201d of Christian habit and discipline broken down in your life?\xa0 Have the gates to your heart and mind that put a conscious check on what gets in and what comes out been burned up?\xa0

The restoration of our spiritual practices starts at just that same place that Nehemiah started his restoration of Jerusalem\u2019s defences.\xa0 First, we have to take honest stock of where we\u2019re at, what we\u2019ve lost, and what we\u2019re up against.\xa0

Take time to examine just those things in your life today.\xa0 What spiritual habits and practices have been lost or broken down in your life since the beginning of this pandemic?\xa0 Take stock, and bring it to God in prayer.

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