Lots of books are good, some books are great, and then there are a few books that effect your life on a daily basis. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, by Donald Whitney, falls into that last category for me. The book goes into detail on the spiritual disciplines in such a real way that it really challenges you to evaluate your own habits. The disciplines that he explained that were of most value to me in my spiritual walk were the disciplines of meditation, memorization, evangelism, fasting, solitude, and journaling.
When we think of the discipline of meditation we normally think of Hindus or Buddhists sitting in a weird indian style position with their eyes closed and humming along to a silent song. This is why most Christians don’t practice meditation, it sound too, well, weird. If you think about it though, we are called scripturally to practice it. Psalm 1 says of the blessed man “his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:2). We don’t have to sit in a special position or even hum to really meditate. Meditation “involves filling your mind with God and truth” (Whitney 47). Yet just thinking about it, or filling your mind with knowledge isn’t the only facet of meditation: “The outcome of meditation should be application” (Whitney 54). This is of course true with any activity. If you don’t use your knowledge to change something in your life, then your knowledge is useless. Meditation is essential for effective Bible reading as well. In fact, meditation is so important that Whitney goes so far as to say, “Read less (if necessary) in order to meditate more” (Whitney 55). The bottom line is that you must not just read the Bible, but meditate and apply what you learn from it throughout your day. I can tell you by recent experience that by doing this everyday you will far advance your chances in spiritual warfare.
Memorization is a thing that is admired but rarely practiced. For a long time I had thought the same way; it would be nice to memorize lots of scripture, but I just can’t do it. Whitney claims rightly that this is absurd, we memorize thousands of little things. We memorize song lyrics, social security numbers, phone numbers, addresses, food prices, and yet we can’t memorize the words of the living God? The real problem in memorization is discipline and action. These are essential. This discipline is also linked hand and hand with meditation. Whitney points out that a good place to start is passages that deal with a struggle you have in your life. That way, the verses that you memorize can be found useful in your life fairly easy. From there you can branch out to verses about God glory, beauty, mercy, etc. Because of my reading of this book I have now undertaken the task of memorizing one scripture verse a week. This week I successfully memorized Ephesians 4:29. It can be done, by discipline.
Evangelism is a spiritual discipline that I have struggled with for a long time. I’ll be honest, I love God with a passion, but I have never flat “evangelized” a person. I have never sat down and explained the gospel to a single person. I’ve spoken to a crowd about the gospel, and hopefully my life style has shown the gospel to nonbelievers, but I want to be able to evangelize in a one-to-one basis. Whitney has encouraged me in this assignment and I pray daily that I might have an opportunity to talk to someone about Christ.
Fasting is another of those disciplines, like meditation, that we shy away from for its “fanaticism”. Yet if we look at almost every Biblical hero (Jesus, Paul, Peter, Moses, Elijah to name a few) they fasted. Whitney explains the reasons for fasting and why it shouldn’t be the a thing we fear but something we embrace to deepen our spiritual walk. Please read the book to do it justice, but the main points that Whitney points out is that fasting can be done to strengthen prayer, to seek God’s guidance, to express grief, to seek deliverance or protection, to express repentance to God, to humble oneself before God, to express concern for the work of God, to minister to the needs of others, to overcome temptation and dedicate yourself to God, and to express love and worship to God. After reading the chapter I decided to have a fast sometime in the next few weeks for one of the reasons stated above.
Monks use to spend full months, years, or lives in silence. Although Whitney doesn’t call for this type of dedication (in fact he calls these extremes severely mislead, if not down right sinful), he does call for a time of silence in the life of a christian. Both short periods of time, maybe only a minute or ten, and longer periods, like a day, or sometimes a weekend retreat. This discipline is tightly tied to memorization, meditation, prayer, and Bible reading. In fact, one of the most profitable effects of silence is creating the best possible environment for those four disciplines. In response to this chapter in the book I make sure everyday that my daily time with God is in complete silence and I plan to take a day in the future to be alone with God in silence for an entire day.
One of the unexpected disciplines that I have adopted as a result of reading this book is journaling. In a sense, journaling is simply a written record of your other disciplines. The benefits of this are obvious; if you can organize all your thoughts into a single journal entry, your understanding will only deepen. Also, you can revisit the lessons you’ve learned in the future. A benefit Whitney pointed out that I didn’t realize was that you leave your wisdom for the next generation. So compelling was Whitney’s rationale for a journal that I have now undertook a daily journal of my own spiritual progress. I encourage you to read the book and do the same.
Reading this book has been a most profitable experience for me and I enthusiastically recommend the book to anyone. It will open your eyes to disciplines you didn’t realize you needed, restart your passion for disciplines you’ve been neglecting, and enhance the disciplines you do practice. This book has inspired me to memorize, meditate, be silent, and journal regularly, all things I did not do before reading. I want to thank Donald Whitney for this amazing book and once again encourage anyone who is reading this to read this book and undertake some new spiritual disciplines as I did. You will not regret it, I promise you that.
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