This week on the podcast we're joined by Dr. Don Whitney, the professor of Biblical Spirituality and associate dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. Don is well known for writing his classic book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, which was originally published in 1991 and then revised and expanded in 2014 to its present form.

Don is also the author of a new book from Crossway and that book is titled Praying the Bible. We'll talk more about that book later on. Dr. Whitney, thank you for your time. It is a great privilege and honor to be on the podcast, Tony. Thank you for having me.

Certainly. We're happy to have you here. 2016 is here and with a new year brings renewed interest in disciplines and particularly the spiritual disciplines. January 1st is a good date to sort of reset our spiritual practices. I want to ask you five of the most common questions that we get on spiritual disciplines and I know that these are questions that you've heard as well.

And so we're going to start our time together broadly with this first question. In general, what are the spiritual disciplines? How do you define them? The spiritual disciplines are those practices found in Scripture that promote spiritual growth among believers in the gospel of Jesus Christ. They're habits of devotion, habits of experiential Christianity that have been practiced by God's people since biblical times.

I describe them in several ways. Five or six things as a part of that description. First, the Bible prescribes both personal and interpersonal spiritual disciplines. There are those spiritual disciplines that we practice alone and those that we practice with other Christians. So for example, we're to pray alone, that's a personal spiritual discipline.

We're also to pray with the church, that's an interpersonal or congregational spiritual discipline. We're to practice both because Jesus practiced both. We could give examples in Scripture from that. And because the Bible prescribes both of those for us. So we don't want to think of spirituality and the spiritual disciplines just as something we do by ourselves.

We also are to engage others in the practice of the spiritual disciplines. A second characteristic of the spiritual disciplines is that they are activities, they are not attitudes. Disciplines are practices. Spiritual disciplines are things you do. They're not character qualities, they're not graces, they're not the fruit of the Spirit, they're things you do.

So you read the Bible, that's something you do, that's a spiritual discipline. You meditate on Scripture, you pray fast, worship, serve, learn, and so forth. These are activities. Now the goal of practicing any given discipline, of course, is not about doing as much as it is about being. Being like Jesus, being with Jesus.

But the biblical way to grow and being more like Jesus is through the rightly motivated doing of the biblical spiritual disciplines. The key verse in all this, 1st Timothy 4:7, which says, "Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness." The goal is godliness, but the means to that, the biblical means, is to discipline yourself.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, rightly motivated, we're to discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness. Well, those practical ways of doing that are things that you do. So strictly speaking, joy is not a spiritual discipline. That's the fruit or the result of discipline done rightly. So it is that distinction between doing and being, and the spiritual disciplines are about doing.

You can do them as a Pharisee, you can do them wrongly motivated, but rightly motivated, they are things that we are to do in order to be like Jesus, to be with Jesus. A third descriptor of the spiritual disciplines is that we're talking about things that are biblical. Practice is taught or modeled in the Bible.

The reason that's important is that otherwise we leave ourselves open to calling anything we want a spiritual discipline. So someone might say, "Well, you know, gardening is a spiritual discipline for me," or "Exercise is one of my spiritual disciplines," or any other really hobby or pleasurable habit they could call a spiritual discipline.

But one of the problems with that is that could tempt someone to say, "Well, you know, maybe meditation on Scripture works for you, but gardening does just as much for my soul as the Bible does for yours." And another result of that is that virtually anything being a spiritual discipline is one problem.

The other is that it leaves it to us to determine what will be best for our spiritual health and maturity, rather than accepting those things God has revealed in Scripture as the means of experiencing God and growing in Christ's likeness. A fourth characteristic of spiritual disciplines is that my position is that those found in Scripture are sufficient for knowing and experiencing God and for growing in Christ's likeness.

I mean, we're told in that famous verse, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, that all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work, including the good work of pursuing the purpose of godliness, the good work of growing in Christ's likeness.

The Scriptures are sufficient for that. So whatever else a person might claim regarding the spiritual benefits of some practice that's not in the Bible, something that maybe is promoted by some other spiritual cause or spiritual group or some spiritual leader, that if you'll do this or you'll do that, you will experience God, it'll be very meaningful.

Well, regardless of whatever benefit someone may claim accrues to them from that practice, at the very least we can say it isn't necessary. If it were necessary for spiritual maturity and godliness and progress and holiness, it would have been found and promoted in the Scriptures. A fifth description of the spiritual disciplines is that they are derived from the gospel, not divorced from the gospel.

Rightly practiced, the spiritual disciplines take us deeper into the glories of the gospel of Jesus Christ, not away from it, as though we've moved on to some advanced level of Christianity. So the gospel, well, that's the ABCs, now let's get into the really deep things of God, the spiritual disciplines.

No, the spiritual disciplines are derived from the gospel, not divorced from it, and they take us only deeper into an understanding of the gospel. And the last characteristic of the spiritual disciplines is that they are means and not ends. The end, that is the purpose of practicing the disciplines, back to 1st Timothy 4:7, is godliness.

Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. And so we're not godly just because we practice the spiritual disciplines. That was the great error of the Pharisees. They thought by doing these things, I am godly. No, they are means to godliness. Rightly motivated, they are the means to godliness. Amen.

Thank you, Dr. Whitney. And those specific disciplines include Bible intake, and prayer, and musical worship, and evangelism, and serving, and stewardship, and fasting, silence and solitude, journaling, and learning. Those are the categories that you develop specifically in your book on the spiritual disciplines. Thank you, Dr. Whitney. And tomorrow I want to ask you about the difference between the personal disciplines and the congregational disciplines.

I think we we tend to think of spiritual disciplines as personal and private things, but they're not, as you've explained. Not entirely. And we'll be back tomorrow with Dr. Don Whitney to talk about the differences between personal and congregational disciplines. I'm your host Tony Reinke, and I'll see you tomorrow on the Ask Pastor John podcast.