Quotes from Donald S. Whitney

The reality of human behavior is that most people avoid those activities in which they perceive themselves to be failures.

Worship empowers serving; serving expresses worship. Godliness requires a disciplined balance between the two.

Orar la Biblia es tan simple como ir a través del pasaje línea por línea, hablando con Dios acerca de todo aquello que venga a tu mente mientras lees el texto. ¿Ves cuán fácil es todo esto? Todos pueden hacerlo.

Take every word as spoken to yourselves. When the word thunders against sin, think thus: "God means my sins;" when it presseth any duty, "God intends me in this." Many put off Scripture from themselves, as if it only concerned those who lived in the time when it was written; but if you intend to profit by the word, bring it home to yourselves: a medicine will do no good, unless it be applied.9

Si no entiendes el significado del versículo, ve al siguiente. Si el significado de ese versículo es muy claro, pero nada viene a tu mente para orar, pasa al siguiente. Solo habla con el Señor acerca de todo aquello que se te ocurre mientras lees la Palabra, sin prisa. Hazlo aun si —y esta parte del libro es, la más factible de ser mal interpretada— lo que viene a tu mente no tiene nada que ver con el texto.

So the Spiritual Disciplines are those personal and interpersonal activities given by God in the Bible as the sufficient means believers in Jesus Christ are to use in the Spirit-filled, gospel-driven pursuit of godliness, that is, closeness to Christ and conformity to Christ.

Podríamos llevar «todo en oración» delante de Dios. Podemos orar por todo. Cada persona, objeto, tema, circunstancia, temor, situación: todo en el universo es lo que podemos llevar delante de Dios. Por lo tanto, cada pensamiento que entra en tu mente mientras estás leyendo un pasaje de la Escritura —aun si tal pensamiento no tiene que ver con el texto que está delante de ti en ese momento— es algo que puedes llevar delante de Dios.

He has revealed Himself generally to us through creation, but more specifically through the Word.

To quote Charles Spurgeon, I trust there are none here present, who profess to be followers of Christ who do not also practice prayer in their families. We may have no positive commandment for it, but we believe that it is so much in accord with the genius and spirit of the gospel, and that it is so commended by the example of the saints, that the neglect thereof is a strange inconsistency.1

Since the object of our worship is the glorious and majestic God of heaven, when worship becomes empty, the problem lies somewhere with the subject (us), not the object (God).

You may be singing 'Holy, holy, holy,' but if you aren't thinking about God while singing it, you are not worshiping.

they are direct commands. This means too little time, too many responsibilities, too many kids, too much work, too little desire, too little experience, and so on are not excuses that exempt us from the expectation to pray.

I've seen Christians who are faithful to the church of God, who frequently demonstrate genuine enthusiasm for the things of God, and who are committed to the preaching of the Word of God, yet who trivialize their effectiveness for the kingdom of God through lack of discipline.

Tengo suficiente confianza en la Palabra y en el Espíritu de Dios como para creer que, si la gente ora de esa manera, en el largo plazo sus oraciones serán más bíblicas que si ellos solo crean sus propias oraciones.

Can we expect the flames of our worship of God to burn brightly in public on the Lord's Day when they barely flicker for Him in secret on other days?

Why do so many Christians neglect the study of God's Word? R. C. Sproul said it painfully well: "Here then, is the real problem of our negligence. We fail in our duty to study God's Word not so much because it is difficult to understand, not so much because it is dull and boring, but because it is work. Our problem is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion. Our problem is that we are lazy.

And in my own pastoral and personal Christian experience, I can say that I've never known a man or woman who came to spiritual maturity except through discipline. Godliness comes through discipline.

The reason we come away so cold from reading the word is because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.

Consistent, father-led family worship is one of the best, steadiest, and most easily measurable ways to bring up children in the Lord's "discipline and instruction.

If you will not worship God seven days a week," said A. W. Tozer, "you do not worship Him on one day a week.

I maintain that people—truly born-again, genuinely Christian people—often do not pray simply because they do not feel like it. And the reason they don't feel like praying is that when they do pray, they tend to say the same old things about the same old things.

So basically what you are doing is taking words that originated in the heart and mind of God and circulating them through your heart and mind back to God. By this means his words become the wings of your prayers.

What value is there to reading one, three, or more chapters of Scripture only to find that after you've finished, you can't recall a thing you've read? It's better to read a small amount of Scripture and meditate on it than to read an extensive section without meditation.

Martin Luther expressed God's expectation of prayer this way: "As it is the business of tailors to make clothes and of cobblers to mend shoes, so it is the business of Christians to pray."[2]