Jodie Niznik

Kay Daigle

Jodie Niznik and Kay Daigle discuss exploring spiritual practices beyond prayer and Bible study to help us walk with God. If you feel your spiritual life has become simply something to check off on a to-do list, exploring a spiritual practice that is new to you may be the key to revitalizing your soul. Jodie encourages us to try something new slowly, exploring spiritual practices one at a time.

You can also watch a video version of this episode.

Recommended resources

Jodie’s “So Much More” podcast

Jodie’s website

BOW Podcast episode with Jodie: Why Take a Personal Retreat?

Laura Murray’s Digital Silent Retreats

Jodie’s New Season Guided Retreat

Ruth Haley Barton’s book, Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest: From Sabbath to Sabbatical and Back Again

Additional resources suggested by Jodie

Timestamps:

00:32 Introduction

01:50 Defining spiritual practices

05:42 Silence and solitude

18:42 Sabbath

30:17 Fasting

35:34 Community

42:43 Final encouragement

43:43 Further resources

TranscriptKay >> Hi. I'm Kay Daigle of Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries. Welcome to our podcast and video. Our special guest today is Jodie Niznik. Welcome Jodie.

Jodie >> Thanks, Kay. So always good to be with you.

Kay >> And we always love it when you come on here. We've had some great conversations and I'll get into some of those at the end so that people know more about them. Today we're going to talk about spiritual disciplines. And Jodie, I need to tell you a little bit more about her before we get into our conversation. Jodie is an author, a Bible teacher.

She desires to help people make space for God in their lives. And she has a Scripture meditation podcast, which is fabulous, and it's called So Much More. And where can I get to that, Jodie?

Jodie >> Yeah, if you go to my website, which is jodieniznik.com, there are links there, but it's also on any podcast platform. So wherever you listen to podcasts, you can Google so much more scripture meditation and you'll find it.

Kay >> All right. Thanks for letting us know yeah. Well, as we start talking about spiritual disciplines, I just wanted to say from the from the get go that growing up in the church, all I knew was I was supposed to pray. I supposed to read my Bible, and I was supposed to give money. So I definitely came a long way.

And I'm sure that there are people out there that don't even know what spiritual disciplines are. So let's sort of start from the beginning. How would you define them? Just tell us about them.

Jodie >> Yeah, I love that you started with the basic spiritual disciplines that we know prayer, Bible study, giving to the church. Those are the practices that we know. But spiritual disciplines are actually much bigger and they all come from what we see Jesus doing. So Jesus, when he invited us to be followers, he said, “Come follow me.” That's what he said to the original disciples.

You all know that. And when we look at what he was actually inviting them to do, he was actually inviting them into a way of living. He was inviting them to do the things that he was doing so that they would become more like him. So spiritual practices are often called spiritual disciplines. Those two words are interchangeable. I like practices a little more than discipline because I think discipline, especially if we're breaking out of even kind of a legalistic background it feels a little harsher to us and not as invitational as a practice.

Practice has a little bit more freedom in the word for me, but a spiritual practice is something we see Jesus doing, but with the intention that we are being formed to be more like him.

Another thing I think is really important about spiritual practices is we're all being formed into something. We are all being formed intentionally and unintentionally, and some of the ways that we are unintentionally formed are the things that we do, the things that we read,