What Are Spiritual Disciplines?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | This week on the podcast we're joined by Dr. Don Whitney, the professor of Biblical
00:00:09.760 | Spirituality and associate dean of the School of Theology at the Southern
00:00:14.640 | Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. Don is well known for writing
00:00:19.920 | his classic book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, which was
00:00:23.600 | originally published in 1991 and then revised and expanded in 2014 to its
00:00:29.320 | present form. Don is also the author of a new book from Crossway and that
00:00:34.000 | book is titled Praying the Bible. We'll talk more about that book later on.
00:00:38.720 | Dr. Whitney, thank you for your time. It is a great privilege and honor to be on
00:00:42.280 | the podcast, Tony. Thank you for having me. Certainly. We're happy to have you
00:00:45.800 | here. 2016 is here and with a new year brings renewed interest in
00:00:51.400 | disciplines and particularly the spiritual disciplines. January 1st
00:00:56.720 | is a good date to sort of reset our spiritual practices. I want to ask you
00:01:01.120 | five of the most common questions that we get on spiritual disciplines and I
00:01:04.760 | know that these are questions that you've heard as well. And so we're going
00:01:08.120 | to start our time together broadly with this first question. In general, what are
00:01:14.040 | the spiritual disciplines? How do you define them? The spiritual
00:01:18.400 | disciplines are those practices found in Scripture that promote spiritual growth
00:01:23.200 | among believers in the gospel of Jesus Christ. They're habits of devotion, habits
00:01:28.520 | of experiential Christianity that have been practiced by God's people since
00:01:33.440 | biblical times. I describe them in several ways. Five or six things as a
00:01:39.120 | part of that description. First, the Bible prescribes both personal and
00:01:43.520 | interpersonal spiritual disciplines. There are those spiritual disciplines
00:01:48.400 | that we practice alone and those that we practice with other Christians. So for
00:01:54.240 | example, we're to pray alone, that's a personal spiritual discipline. We're also
00:01:58.160 | to pray with the church, that's an interpersonal or congregational
00:02:01.920 | spiritual discipline. We're to practice both because Jesus practiced both. We
00:02:06.760 | could give examples in Scripture from that. And because the Bible prescribes
00:02:10.600 | both of those for us. So we don't want to think of spirituality and the spiritual
00:02:15.200 | disciplines just as something we do by ourselves. We also are to engage others
00:02:19.760 | in the practice of the spiritual disciplines. A second characteristic of
00:02:24.480 | the spiritual disciplines is that they are activities, they are not attitudes.
00:02:29.680 | Disciplines are practices. Spiritual disciplines are things you do. They're
00:02:35.040 | not character qualities, they're not graces, they're not the fruit of the
00:02:39.000 | Spirit, they're things you do. So you read the Bible, that's something you do, that's
00:02:44.520 | a spiritual discipline. You meditate on Scripture, you pray fast, worship, serve,
00:02:49.440 | learn, and so forth. These are activities. Now the goal of practicing any given
00:02:55.200 | discipline, of course, is not about doing as much as it is about being. Being like
00:03:00.280 | Jesus, being with Jesus. But the biblical way to grow and being more like Jesus is
00:03:07.000 | through the rightly motivated doing of the biblical spiritual disciplines. The
00:03:13.500 | key verse in all this, 1st Timothy 4:7, which says, "Discipline yourself for the
00:03:18.600 | purpose of godliness." The goal is godliness, but the means to that, the
00:03:23.480 | biblical means, is to discipline yourself. By the power of the Holy Spirit, rightly
00:03:28.520 | motivated, we're to discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness. Well, those
00:03:32.480 | practical ways of doing that are things that you do. So strictly speaking, joy is
00:03:38.760 | not a spiritual discipline. That's the fruit or the result of discipline done
00:03:43.200 | rightly. So it is that distinction between doing and being, and the
00:03:47.520 | spiritual disciplines are about doing. You can do them as a Pharisee, you can do
00:03:51.160 | them wrongly motivated, but rightly motivated, they are things that we are to
00:03:55.980 | do in order to be like Jesus, to be with Jesus. A third descriptor of the
00:04:01.280 | spiritual disciplines is that we're talking about things that are biblical.
00:04:04.680 | Practice is taught or modeled in the Bible. The reason that's important is
00:04:09.160 | that otherwise we leave ourselves open to calling anything we want a spiritual
00:04:13.920 | discipline. So someone might say, "Well, you know, gardening is a spiritual
00:04:17.040 | discipline for me," or "Exercise is one of my spiritual disciplines," or any other
00:04:21.000 | really hobby or pleasurable habit they could call a spiritual discipline. But
00:04:25.480 | one of the problems with that is that could tempt someone to say, "Well, you know,
00:04:29.400 | maybe meditation on Scripture works for you, but gardening does just as much for
00:04:33.880 | my soul as the Bible does for yours." And another result of that is that
00:04:39.560 | virtually anything being a spiritual discipline is one problem. The other is
00:04:43.680 | that it leaves it to us to determine what will be best for our spiritual
00:04:49.480 | health and maturity, rather than accepting those things God has revealed
00:04:53.640 | in Scripture as the means of experiencing God and growing in Christ's
00:04:58.720 | likeness. A fourth characteristic of spiritual disciplines is that my
00:05:04.960 | position is that those found in Scripture are sufficient for knowing
00:05:09.040 | and experiencing God and for growing in Christ's likeness. I mean, we're told in
00:05:13.200 | that famous verse, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, that all Scripture is breathed out by
00:05:17.960 | God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in
00:05:21.800 | righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work,
00:05:27.240 | including the good work of pursuing the purpose of godliness, the good work of
00:05:32.440 | growing in Christ's likeness. The Scriptures are sufficient for that. So
00:05:36.760 | whatever else a person might claim regarding the spiritual benefits of some
00:05:42.520 | practice that's not in the Bible, something that maybe is promoted by some
00:05:47.580 | other spiritual cause or spiritual group or some spiritual leader, that if you'll
00:05:53.160 | do this or you'll do that, you will experience God, it'll be very meaningful.
00:05:57.680 | Well, regardless of whatever benefit someone may claim accrues to them from
00:06:02.720 | that practice, at the very least we can say it isn't necessary. If it were
00:06:06.440 | necessary for spiritual maturity and godliness and progress and holiness, it
00:06:10.560 | would have been found and promoted in the Scriptures. A fifth description of
00:06:14.840 | the spiritual disciplines is that they are derived from the gospel, not divorced
00:06:19.480 | from the gospel. Rightly practiced, the spiritual disciplines take us deeper
00:06:24.440 | into the glories of the gospel of Jesus Christ, not away from it, as though we've
00:06:29.640 | moved on to some advanced level of Christianity. So the gospel, well, that's
00:06:34.280 | the ABCs, now let's get into the really deep things of God, the spiritual
00:06:38.340 | disciplines. No, the spiritual disciplines are derived from the gospel, not
00:06:42.400 | divorced from it, and they take us only deeper into an understanding of the
00:06:46.080 | gospel. And the last characteristic of the spiritual disciplines is that they
00:06:50.280 | are means and not ends. The end, that is the purpose of practicing the
00:06:56.480 | disciplines, back to 1st Timothy 4:7, is godliness. Discipline yourself for the
00:07:00.480 | purpose of godliness. And so we're not godly just because we practice the
00:07:05.620 | spiritual disciplines. That was the great error of the Pharisees. They thought by
00:07:09.520 | doing these things, I am godly. No, they are means to godliness. Rightly
00:07:14.840 | motivated, they are the means to godliness. Amen. Thank you, Dr. Whitney. And those
00:07:20.320 | specific disciplines include Bible intake, and prayer, and musical worship,
00:07:25.880 | and evangelism, and serving, and stewardship, and fasting, silence and
00:07:31.040 | solitude, journaling, and learning. Those are the categories that you develop
00:07:36.360 | specifically in your book on the spiritual disciplines. Thank you,
00:07:39.800 | Dr. Whitney. And tomorrow I want to ask you about the difference between
00:07:43.600 | the personal disciplines and the congregational disciplines. I think we
00:07:48.800 | we tend to think of spiritual disciplines as personal and private
00:07:52.200 | things, but they're not, as you've explained. Not entirely. And we'll be back
00:07:57.200 | tomorrow with Dr. Don Whitney to talk about the differences between personal
00:08:00.940 | and congregational disciplines. I'm your host Tony Reinke, and I'll see you
00:08:05.320 | tomorrow on the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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