spiritual disciplines for the new year on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Heath Lambert and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of ACBC, where we seek to

provide biblical solutions to the problems that people face.

As we move towards the new year, many people are starting to think about making commitments and changes as they want to grow in the areas of discipline. One area of discipline that people

are concerned about is food. Another area of concern for many Christians is the one of the spiritual disciplines.

And to help us think this matter through, we've invited as our guest this week to be Dr. Don

Whitney. Dr. Whitney is the author of spiritual disciplines for the Christian life, the author of a brand

new book praying the Bible, and he is the professor of biblical

spirituality and the associate dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological

Seminary. Dr. Whitney, we're glad you're here with us, and I want to ask you if you would tell

us what are the spiritual disciplines. Well, first, let me say thank you. It's an honor to be on your

podcast. Second, the spiritual disciplines are those practices found in the Bible which promote

closeness to Christ and conformity to Christ, both an inward and outward conformity to Christ.

Those disciplines are both personal and interpersonal, those that we practice alone and those that we practice with others.

So, for example, we're to pray alone. That's a personal spiritual discipline. We're to pray with the church.

That's an interpersonal, corporate, congregational spiritual discipline. We're to get into the word individually. That's a personal spiritual discipline.

We're to hear the word read, taught, preached with the church. So those personal and interpersonal practices found in the

Bible which promote closeness to Christ in our experience and conformity to Christ in heart and

life. We're at a season in the year, leaving one year, entering another. We're at a season in the year, leaving one year, entering another, where a lot of Christians

are feeling pressure to want to grow in the spiritual disciplines.

Maybe they're looking back on the last year and they're seeing they didn't read the

Bible that much.

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