How to Build Spiritual Discipline Without Waiting for Motivation

You tried harder for a week. You got up early, read, prayed, felt good about it. Then a late night came, the feeling went, and by the next Monday you were back to wondering why other people seem to have something you lack.

They may not have more willpower than you. The research suggests they have set things up so that they need less of it. That is something you can build, and it has an order.

Discipline is not a feeling you wait for

Most of us treat discipline as a feeling. Some mornings we have it and some we do not, and on the mornings we do not, we wait. The waiting can last for months.

Motivation is real, and it is a poor thing to build on, because it comes and goes with sleep, stress and the weather. If the daily reading depends on it, the daily reading will come and go too. Our post on why spiritual discipline is so hard covers what goes wrong. This one is about what to build instead.

One note before we start. We are app builders, not pastors. This is the practical side of training. The grace that makes any of it worth doing is your church’s to teach, and none of what follows earns you anything with God.

What disciplined people actually do: less resisting, not more

Picture a disciplined person and you probably picture someone gritting their teeth. The research paints another picture.

In a paper titled “More than Resisting Temptation,” Brian Galla and Angela Duckworth report six studies with 2,274 participants in total. They found that people with better self-control used less effortful resisting in daily life, and that good habits helped explain why those people did better. One of the six followed 132 teenagers, average age about 17, who went on five-day meditation retreats. Self-control before the retreat predicted stronger meditation habits three months later.

Some honest limits. The people studied were students and teenagers, not churchgoers. And the studies show links between self-control, habits and outcomes. They do not prove that one causes the other.

Still, the picture is useful. The people we call disciplined are mostly not winning a fight every morning. They have arranged things so the fight rarely starts.

Daniel’s room and the lonely places: discipline as an arranged life

Scripture shows the same shape, long before anyone studied it.

When Daniel learned that prayer had been outlawed, “he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before” (Daniel 6:10, NIV). Look at the last five words. Daniel did not find courage and then invent a practice. He had a room and three set times already. On the hard day he did what he did every day.

Luke says of Jesus, “But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:16, NIV). Often, and withdrew. He changed where He was, again and again.

Paul uses the picture of an athlete: “Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training” (1 Corinthians 9:25, NIV). Training is planned ahead. Nobody trains by waiting to feel like it.

The build order: five steps, one at a time

Here is the order we suggest. Each step is done once, ahead of time. Each one removes something you would otherwise have to decide, or resist, every single morning.

Step 1: decide the one practice. One, not four. If you are not sure which, our guide to the spiritual disciplines lists them, and daily Scripture reading is a sound first one.

Step 3: fix the place and time. Writing for Crossway, Glenna Marshall gives the same advice: pick a place, pick a time, pick a plan, tell someone. With a plan, she writes, “you’ve taken all future decision-making out of the equation.” If you want this written down with the rest of your week, a rule of life is the old name for it.

Step 4: set the size. Small enough to do on a bad day. A year through the Protestant Bible is 1,986 words a day, about nine minutes. The sums are in how long it takes to read the Bible in a year.

Steps 2 and 5 get their own sections below, because they are the two people skip.

Change the situation before the temptation arrives

This is the step that does the most work.

In a review called “Situational Strategies for Self-Control,” Angela Duckworth, Tamar Gendler and James Gross argue that impulses tend to grow stronger over time. So the earlier you act, the easier it is. Choosing or changing your situation, before the pull begins, “may be especially effective.” Their examples include “the student who goes to the library without a cell phone.” This paper is a theory review, not a trial, so treat it as a well-argued idea and not a proven result.

For most of us the tempting thing is the phone, and it is in the room at the very moment we meant to read. Once it is in your hand, you are resisting. So settle it the night before:

• Charge the phone in another room, or across the room from your bed.
• Put a paper Bible, open, where the phone used to sit.
• If you read on your phone, open the reading first, before anything else can ask for you.

That is the one thing to move tonight.

What it feels like before it feels natural

It will feel flat for a while. That is normal, and it does not mean it is failing.

Marshall is plain about it: “expect it to feel difficult for a while.” Hebrews says, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11, NIV). That verse is about God’s fatherly discipline of His children, not about habits. We borrow only its honesty: training does not feel good at first.

We will not promise a number of days. How long a habit takes varies a great deal from person to person, and a missed day does not send you back to the start. Both findings are set out in how long it takes to build a habit.

There is one encouraging number. Lifeway Research surveyed 2,500 U.S. Protestant churchgoers in January 2019. About a third, 32%, said they read the Bible every day. Among those daily readers, 51% said they find themselves thinking about biblical truths during the day. Among people who read once a month or less, it was 9%. That is a link and not proof of cause. People who already think about Scripture may simply read more. But it fits what many readers describe: on a plain day, the reading comes back to you later.

So the one thing to do tomorrow is small. Sit in the place, at the time, and read the size you set. Do it whether or not it feels like anything.

When to bring in another person

Bring someone in early. In the build order it is step five, and it is worth doing in the first week.

Tell one person your place, your time and your plan. You are not asking them to check on you. You are letting someone know, so that it stops being a private project you can quietly drop. Marshall’s list ends the same way: tell someone.

The best person is usually someone from your own church who is reading too. If you are between churches, the church finder lists congregations by city. And bring in a pastor if what you are facing is more than a habit: a long dryness, doubt, or grief. A setup cannot carry those.

Frequently asked questions

How do I become more spiritually disciplined?

Build it in an order, ahead of time. Choose one practice, change the situation so the phone is out of reach of the place you read, fix a place and a time, set a small size such as about nine minutes, and tell one person. Each step is done once and removes a decision you would otherwise face every morning.

How do I stay disciplined when I do not feel motivated?

Stop relying on the feeling. Across six studies with 2,274 participants in total, Galla and Duckworth found that people with better self-control used less effortful resisting, and that good habits helped explain their better outcomes. Set the place, time and size in advance, then do the small thing on the plain days too.

Is spiritual discipline the same as willpower?

No. Willpower is resisting in the moment. Discipline, in both the research and in Scripture, looks more like an arranged life. Daniel prayed three times a day in his upstairs room, just as he had done before, and Jesus often withdrew to lonely places to pray. The arranging came first.

Which spiritual discipline should I build first?

One, not several. Daily Scripture reading is a sound first choice because the size is easy to set: about nine minutes a day reads the Protestant Bible in a year, at 220 words a minute. Your pastor or church may suggest a different starting point for you.

Is relying on habits and structure less sincere than wanting to?

Scripture does not treat it that way. Daniel kept set times and a set place, and Paul compares the Christian life to an athlete's strict training. Structure is how the wanting gets acted on when the feeling is low. It earns nothing with God; it simply puts you in the place to read and pray.