Living Christian Course Part 1
Lesson 1: Be Fuelled By Daily Devotions
Day 2
Do devotions everyday!
We just learned that to:
have a relationship with God
to be emotionally strong and healthy
to grow up in our faith
and to become successful in living
➔ calls for a consistent, disciplined devotional life, with plenty of dedicated time.
You need to do devotions everyday if you want to keep a strong faith!
Click here for a 5 minute video overview of the bible and devotions ➔
See how clearly Scripture speaks about this …
Deuteronomy 6:6-9 (NIV) These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the door-frames of your houses and on your gates. (see also Deut. 11:18-20)
Notice:
it says, “talk about them” - because they were memorizing, rather than reading. When would we engage in this discussion?
When you sit at home
When you walk along the road
When you lie down
When you get up
ALL THE TIME!
EVERYDAY!
The intake of God’s Word was to be a daily reality in their lives!
Joshua 1:8 (NIV) Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.
How much were they to meditate? Day and night! And the psalmist agreed
Psalm 1:2 (NIV) But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. (also Psalm 119:97).
Do we need daily food for our body? For sure! We need it for our spirit and soul too!
While physical fasting comes with benefits for our body, spiritual fasting DOES NOT bring benefits for our soul.
Fasting is the act of abstaining from certain things.
What happens when we don’t connect spiritually with God?
We’ll notice (or should I say, those around us will notice!) that if we fast spiritually, we will become irritable and cranky. And we’ll feel dull and empty. These are sure signs of not spending time with God!
We need a daily quiet time when we get quiet to hear from Jesus – His words to us are life for our soul and spirit! They’ll strengthen us for the day!
The more time we spend with God the better! If you only have 15 minutes, do devotions for 15 minutes, but God will speak more and your spiritual time will become more rich the longer you spend with an open heart!
We spend quite a bit of time eating physically; why wouldn’t we do that for our spiritual nourishment?
Now, if we’re starting at 15 minutes a day, a snack is better than nothing!
But soon it will be time to move it on to 30 minutes, and so on.
Some may reject this daily habit as “legalistic” or “too structured.” But what is legalism?
Legalism is when we rely on our laws or structure to be made right with God, to be saved.
However, we are not proposing that daily devotions save us! Instead, they help us intentionally develop into the kind of Christian that the Bible calls us to become.
Doing devotions is hearing from God by reading your bible and writing about it.
Think of establishing a good devotions routine like getting into a good exercise habit ➔ You’re not always going to want to, but you do it still because you know you need it and it’s good for you!
Then sometimes, when get all set for your exercise or devotions, even when you’re not feeling it, you start and then feel SO GOOD.
Devotions fill us up because devotions are us being connected to and spending time with God, our Heavenly Father!
The Devotions Checklist:
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The Bible is God’s word. He says it is living and His Holy Spirit work through it’s words to point out things to us. Learn more about the bible here. There are lots of translations, some easier to read than others. A great one we’d recommend starting out with is NLT (New Living Translation)
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By writing devotions it helps us actually process what we’re thinking. It also helps us remember what God is pointing out to us.
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God whispers through words we read and write, through our thoughts as we read his bible. If we’re going to be able to notice this, we need to be somewhere we can focus. Even Jesus pulled back to a quiet place to pray (Luke 5:16)
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If you just go through your day waiting for a time to open up for devotions, it rarely will. A devotion routine requires you to pick a time, protect that time, and make it a priority in your day otherwise it won’t happen. You have time. You always have at least 15 minutes in a day for this important step.
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Yep. Sometimes it feels strange to bring your modern struggles to God through reading a book that’s really old. But time and time again we have been amazed at how God can speak directly to our struggle through even old, old writings in the Old Testament. God’s word is living and we need to have an open heart when we do devotions that God will speak to us.
How to Journal Devotions
The S.O.A.P acronym
Use this super simple acronym to walk you through the steps of what to write. It might feel rigid or obvious but be careful not to too casually dismiss these steps. Each one of these letters is essential in us properly understanding and applying scripture.
You can do more than these steps, but you cannot do less.
S: Scripture - What verse from the bible stood out to you?
O: Observation - What does this verse actually say & mean?
A: Application (Apply & Act) - How does this apply to you AND what should you do about it?
P: Prayer - Ask God to help you act on this application.
Devotions Broken Into Steps
#1
Pray and ask God to help you understand what you are about to read from his Bible.
#2
Read a passage from the bible. Need a suggestion? Click here for resources ➔
#3
Underline in your bible a verse that stood out to you, even if you don’t know why yet.
#4
Write “S” in your journal and beside the “S” write the verse that stood out to you.
#5
Write “O” in your journal and beside it write what this verse is actually saying. Consider why the book of the verse was written, what was the author saying when they wrote this, who was the author speaking to.
#6
Write “A” in your journal and beside it write how all this applies to you today.
#7
Write, if you could act on your application, what would you specifically do about your application.
#8
Write “P” in your journal and beside write a prayer asking God to help you do that thing you just wrote about.
Think
◻︎ Write down something that stood out to you, from the reading you just completed.
◻︎ Write down: Why do we need devotions every day (time with Jesus)? Is this biblical? Why is hearing a sermon at church once a week not enough?
◻︎ Write down: Is having a daily devotional plan legalistic? Why or why not?
Do
◻︎ If you don’t already have a routine of daily devotions, write out a plan for doing so:
Set a regular time to have your devotions
Set the amount of time to have your devotions
Set the location for your devotions
◻︎ Take your Bible and turn to Romans 12:9-21. Practice using SOAP to journal devotions with this passage. Don’t rush it!
◻︎ Take a minute to pray to God asking him to help you do devotions everyday.
◻︎ Take a minute to pray asking what God wants to say to you about this.