Sessions Include:

1. Do You Thirst for God?
2. Are You Increasingly Governed by God’s Word?
3. Are You Becoming More Loving?
4. Are You More Sensitive to God’s Presence?
5. Do You Have a Growing Concern for Others
6. Do You Delight in the Bride of Christ?
7. Are Spiritual Disciplines Increasingly Important?
8. Do You Still Grieve Over Sin?
9. Are You Quicker to Forgive?
10. Do You Yearn for Heaven?

WE HAD A WOOD-BURNING STOVE installed at the Whitney house last year. I’ve written much of this book on a yellow pad with a fountain pen as I sat in my stoveside chair. When you use a woodstove, you learn what it means to build a fire.

First, I crumple several sheets of newspaper into “bouquets,” tightly wadded at the bottom (for slower burning) and flared at the top (for instant flame). On these, I layer a dozen or so strips of tinder. These are dry, thin pieces of wood anywhere from the size of a physician’s tongue depressor to that of a paint-stirring stick. After I’ve made sure that the damper is open and that the vent in front is set for maximum airflow, I strike a long, wooden match. Reaching into the stove, I touch several spots in rapid succession where the paper will light quickly. To increase the draft temporarily, I close the door within an inch of shutting it completely. The flames spread to the balled paper, which burns long enough to ignite the tinder. These pieces are burning well by the time the paper turns to ashes.

Now I’m wearing fireplace gloves and ready to lay on a few sticks of kindling, which are roughly the thickness of a hammer handle, though often a little longer. When several of these are flaming happily atop the small, pulsing coals of the tinder, the stove is ready for the first of the full-size hunks of wood that will warm me all evening. The first flash of match and paper is bright and impressive, but the reason I build the fire is to enjoy the sustained heat of burning logs and slow-glowing embers.

Perhaps you are like a Christian woman I know who sometimes wonders if she is still growing spiritually because the original, God-kindled blaze of eternal life, which once illuminated the darkness of her life so suddenly, seldom flames up as dramatically as when she was first converted. But what is true for the woodstove is true in this case for the Christian heart as well—just because the beginning of the combustion may briefly be more spectacular than at present doesn’t mean the fire isn’t growing. The initial burst of spiritual flame may be more dazzling, but heartfire’s greatest effectiveness occurs as it burns into consistency.

Nothing contributes to the growth of spiritual heat and light more than the persevering practice of the Christian spiritual disciplines. The disciplines are the bellows and the iron poker, tools in God’s hands He uses to stoke and blow on the eternal fire He has ignited in His people.

What Are the Spiritual Disciplines?

The Christian spiritual disciplines are the God-ordained means found in Scripture by which we bring ourselves before God, experience Him, and are changed into Christlikeness. The Lord is omnipresent, and we often encounter Him in unexpected places and surprising ways. Nevertheless, it has pleased Him to establish specific means—the biblical spiritual disciplines—whereby we may expect to encounter Him regularly and be transformed by Him. If the Lord might be compared to a pure, life-giving river, the spiritual disciplines would be those ways by which we come to the river and drink from, dive into, swim in, eat from, wash with, and irrigate with it.

Donald S. Whitney, Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health (NavPress; Tyndale House Publishers, 2021), vi–3.

Check out our Bible Study on Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health . A bible study on the book of Lamentations as well as some Psalms of Lament.

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