Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life

Donald S. Whitney

1 Timothy 4:7-8
7 
But stay away from worthless stories that are typical of old women. Rather, discipline
yourself for the purpose of godliness; 8 for bodily training is just slightly beneficial,
but godliness is beneficial for all things since it holds promise for the present life and also for
the life to come.

Discipline without direction is drudgery!!!

We all need discipline in our Spiritual life, and this book is giving some amazing advice about
how we can improve that and come close to God through the spiritual disciplines.

The Spiritual disciplines are those practices found in the Scripture that promote spiritual
growth among believers in the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are habits of devotion and experiential
Christianity that have been practices by people of God since biblical times.

BIBLE INTAKE

We can listen, read, study God’s word. The bible is the most important book that any
Christian should read daily. I personally think that we can’t live a godly life without knowing God’s
word. Another good practice is meditating at God’s word, reading without meditating and
memorizing is like eating without swallowing. Don’t rush when you read the Bible, meditate at the
words that you read, think how you can apply they to your life, the Bible is not a book that you are
reading once, is a book that you read daily, apply what you read, think about that, meditate, make a
plan for yourself about reading and questioning your life about what you read.

PRAYER

By praying you are talking with God, is the most important canal of communication between
us and Him. God expects us to pray, He is asking as to pray in the Bible (Matthew 6:5, 6:6, 6:7,6:9,
Luke 11:9,18,1), God doesn’t want our prayer to be a shopping list, he wants us to talk with Him in
our prayers. If you can’t pray, that’s not a problem, you can learn it, but you can’t do that without
practice. Reading about praying but not praying is not ideal, is good to read about it, but is better
when you apply what you read about it. Praying with others will help your prayer as well, but don’t
be afraid to pray, God is listening to you, and He is answering to our prayers in His way and on His
time.

WORSHIP

We need to worship God daily, worship Him once a week is not worship. The worship needs
to be your wish, done in spirit and truth, according with the truth of Scripture, not something that
you are force to do but people around you. The worship of God makes believers more godly because
people become like their focus.

EVANGELISM

Evangelism is teaching the gospel (the message from God that leads us to salvation) with the
aim (hope, desire, goal) to persuade (convince, convert). This doesn’t mean that we persuade with
manipulation or forcing people to come to God. Jesus was engaging, but he never entertained, there
is a huge difference, one that is lost on the modern church. We don’t need to entertain people to
present the message from God. – Evangelism book

Evangelism is a natural overflow of the Christian life; we can talk about God all the time and
everywhere.

SERVING

We can serve everywhere and, in every way, not necessary in front on the church, singing or
preaching. Every single small thing that we are doing in the name of God is serving. Every Christian is
expected to serve, as Jesus served to us, He was the bigger servant, THE SERVANT, He is our example
of how to serve others and how to serve God. When we serve, we need to be motivated by
obedience, gratitude, gladness, forgiveness, humility and love. We are gifted to serve, each one of us
with a different gift.

STEWARDSHIP

Utilising and managing all resources God provide for the glory of God and the betterment of
His creation. God’s stewards are MANAGERS not owners. Use your time for God benefit, use your
resources for God benefit, use yourself for God benefit.

FASTING

Jesus’ practice fasting, that is the highest model that we have about fasting. Christian fasting
is a believer’s voluntary abstinence from food for spiritual purposes. Fasting with thinking about
food or how to finish quicker is not a fasting for spiritual purposes. Fasting is expected and is to be
done for a purpose, pray while you fast, read your bible while you fast, use fasting to go close to
God, to ask for His guidance, to express repentance, to minister to the needs of others, to overcome
temptation, to love and worship God.

SILENCE AND SOLITUDE

The discipline of silence is the voluntary and temporary abstention from speaking so that
certain spiritual goals might be sought. Solitude is the spiritual discipline of voluntary and
temporarily withdrawing to privacy for spiritual purposes. Silence and solitude are usually found
together. We are going to be silent and solitude for different reason, we found in the Bible that Jesus
went up on the mountain by himself to pray and stay there alone (Matthew 14:23), we want to
follow his example, to minimize distraction in prayer, meditation, journaling, to express worship to
God, to express faith in Him, to be physically and Spiritually restored, to seek the will of God and also
to learn how to control our tongue, we can do all that by going away for few minutes, found a place
where we feel that we can do it.

JURNALING

I found myself a lot in this chapter because I’m a person who like writing her thoughts, God’s
word in the church, I’m waking up in the morning and I’m praying in writing, for me is the best way
of concentrating and assimilating. It’s might not work for everyone but is working for some of us.
Journaling is helping in self-understanding and evaluation, in meditation, in expressing Thoughts and
feelings to the Lord, remembering the Lord’s works, clarifying, and articulating insights, monitoring
goals and priorities, and also is helping to have a discipline, you can do it with the pen and paper or
on your phone or computer, doesn’t matter which way you are choosing the most important is to do
it.
 LEARNING

Learning characterizes the wise person; God is giving us few advice regarding learning in
Proverbs and not only there. Lamentably, many Christians do not associate learning with loving God.
We must be in a continue learning process regarding our spiritual life, learning is essential for
increasing godliness, learning needs to be a discipline, we need to discipline ourselves to learn, not
to learn thing accidentally, we can use different ways of learning: watching, listening, reading,
discussing with people on spiritual subjects, the most important is to find a way to learn.

PERSEVERENCE

We need to persevere faithful How we can do that? There are three matters referenced
briefly until now that are indispensable in helping us to persevere in the practice of the spiritual
disciplines: the role of the Holy Spirit, the role of fellowship, the role of struggle in Christian living.
We need to repeat, practice and do it again and again and again.