A buddy of mine and I started doing daily devotions a couple of months ago. We have a pretty good system to hold each other accountable: if you fail to do your daily devotion, you buy the other guy dinner for that day. I believe we probably failed a total of 3 to 4 times in the past two and a half months or so. For myself, I believe that’s a pretty good devotion streak since I have never attempted anything like this as a Christian for 10 years.
There’s really only two things I try to get done first thing in the morning:
- Get in the Word (The Bible)
- Listen and speak in solitude (Prayer)
As a Christian, getting into the Word should be easy. The Bible is supposed to be our go-to documentation on life. It is divine Scripture passed to man from God. It is the living Word of God. It not only teaches lessons from the past, but I strongly believe its teachings have complete validity in the present and future. But as I mentioned above, I’ve considered myself a Christian for over 10 years and I haven’t really read the Bible. Sure, I’ll jump around between books and chapters to get some kind of insightful verse to shoehorn why things are happening to me now, but I haven’t been using the Scripture to aid what I’m really struggling with: prayer.
Up until a few months ago, I mostly treated prayer as a one way communication to God. Sure, I tried to listen… I really tried. I believed after a few years of being content on Christianity, I forgot what God’s voice sounded like. And now, I struggle to recognize His voice. That’s a problem. I chose to follow Jesus Christ, and now I fail to recognize Him. Has He abandoned me? Never! But I feel there are times it feels like I’ve given up on Him—my lack of devotion.
This is how my motivation for my daily devotions come from. I’m living in stagnation. I know there’s more to life than this. Instead of living daily through drudgery, it’s time to discover how I will remove this life of discontentment. And I will do it through these two things: absorbing the Word and prayer.