Donald Whitney

I'll just be honest, the Protestant, a lot of Protestant books today, there's one chapter on silence and solitude.

And many of us, if we read Richard Foster or Dallas Willard or, you know, Donald Whitney's book on spiritual disciplines, we just go over.

We're like, what does this ancient practice have anything to do with my present day life? And so, but I was desperate.

And I had time, it was COVID.

I particularly like Matthew Henry's description of family worship.

and it's taken up by dr whitney at the seminary where he's like there are three essential elements reading scripture with some explanation praying and singing and one of the cool parts is that actually the psalms can satisfy all three yes that, as we've discussed, you get all the major theological threads of Scripture in the Psalms, as well as shaping human experience.

It's a great book for reading in family worship, one of the 66 best books to read in family worship.

We talked earlier about the fact that because the Psalms are a prayer book and a praise book, they can teach us to pray.

Never give up in the desert.

You don't know how wide it is, and you may be almost across," Donald S. Whitney.

Let's get started with some espresso shots.

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And even prayer flows from that.

I think I don't remember if that's in the chapter in prayer or the chapter in the word, but I remember reading, praying the Bible with Donald Whitney years ago, and that just changed a lot of my Bible reading too, just understanding how hearing from God can and should inspire our prayers.

Because the praying part, when I was starting to develop my spiritual disciplines, my quiet times was a hard part for me.

I love reading.

Darren had the discipline of prayer.

If you can fill in both blanks for me, then I will give you a book here called Praying the Bible by Donald Whitney.

He's the guy that wrote a book on discipline, spiritual disciplines.

Here's a book specifically on the discipline of prayer.

Because ultimately, the audience of our worship is an audience of one, right? And so we are not there to just check something off the list.

You know, I think and in this book, I think in Donald Whitney's Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, he kind of hits on this is like, are you taking the time to prepare your heart for worship before you get there? And, you know, we get ready, we get our kids ready, and we fly out the door.

We're usually, you know, got some chocolate donuts in the car and screaming at everybody out the way to get there on time.

But the truth of the matter is, have we spent the morning or even the day before or whatever that looks like preparing to go in with a congregation of like-minded believers and worship a holy God? And I think that changes the way that we think of worship when we think of it that way.