Welcome back to the Aspecial John podcast.

John Piper returns home tomorrow from a very busy holiday travel schedule.

He preached three times at the campus outreach, New Year's conference in Milwaukee, and then

turned around and preached at the Passion conference in Atlanta.

Busy times, but good times, and much grace.

And in the meantime, we've been served well by guest Dr. Don Whitney, who joins us one

last time.

Thank you, Don.

Don serves as Professor of Biblical Spirituality and Associate Dean of the School of Theology

at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.

He is known for his modern day classic book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life,

and he is also the author of the new book from Crossway titled, Preying the Bible.

And yesterday we talked about the two most important spiritual disciplines, which was so

helpful.

And today I want to ask you about the hardest spiritual discipline.

I know this is a question you get all the time.

So in your experience, what personal spiritual discipline is the most difficult to pull

off successfully?

My personal observation and conversations with many people over this subject is that the

most difficult discipline to practice consistently is fasting.

And fasting is one of those disciplines that everybody knows about.

You know, it's mentioned in the Bible actually more often than something as important as

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