Do Your Devotions Feel Like Drudgery? Consider This. (Part 1)
My devotional life is a work in progress. It’s not what I want it to be. I’m easily and willfully distracted – slowing down to do devotions brings me face to face with worries and situations I’d much rather avoid. But, boy, do I need that time with God. I felt that need most acutely several years ago during a dark season of doubt. I was carried through by a devotional lectionary, featuring scripted prayers, that I could pray when I didn’t know what or how to pray. It wasn’t ideal (I much prefer free-form prayer), but it was a merciful aid to me. And God proved himself faithful as He led me out of that dark valley.
Even so, devotions can feel like a chore at times. Personally (given my extended academic studies), it can feel like another reading assignment. I have struggled to negotiate the two elements that traditionally form devotions: Scripture-reading and Prayer. Two basic questions typically present themselves:
“How much Scripture should I read in one sitting?”
“How long should I pray?”
It is very practical to ask these questions and I’m sure you have probably asked the same. We are a society of busy people and these are the sorts of questions busy people ask. Our busy-ness is problematic, we know this is true despite ourselves, and this cause us to consider whether we are asking the right questions. Rather than asking “how much” and “how long,” It seems better for us to ask:
“Why should I be reading Scripture?”
“Why should I be praying?”
These questions warrant an extensive response, but I will limit my considerations in this post to personal devotions and Scripture-reading.
Scripture is God’s special means of revealing Himself to humanity. It is the authoritative means by which we can know God, attended and aided by the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit and the tradition of the Church handed down through the ages. If we will know God, we must meet Him in Scripture.
This is critical for the devotional practice of prayer, because before we pray, we must know to whom we should pray, which will in turn shape how we pray. This foundational knowledge can begin to be received in our limited momentary reading of Scripture, but it finds fuller form as our study of Scripture aggregates over time, especially as it is aided by the ministry of the Church. As we enter any time of devotion, our goal is that we would have available a large reservoir of knowledge previously pooled by our ongoing study of Scripture, knowledge that goes beyond what our limited reading of the biblical text in any given moment would offer.
Throughout human history, the possibility of pooling the knowledge of Scripture has been immensely important. As Americans, we often take for granted the wide availability of the Bible and the ability to read. This is a privilege most people have not enjoyed. From the days of Jesus to the present (especially outside of the West), most people have lacked the ability to read and have not had first-hand access to the Scriptures. If their knowledge of God was closed off because of these realities, no devotional life, no proper prayer life could exist. Thankfully, God has given His human creatures ears and His Church teachers and preachers!
In our devotional practice, we don’t read Scripture for reading’s sake. It is no dead ritual to be performed, no box to be checked off, despite our tendency to treat it as such. In fact, as indicated above, it is possible to have times of devotion that do not include reading Scripture. What is impossible is to have a proper time of devotion uninformed by Scripture. If we devote ourselves to God, we must know who He is, what He has done, and what He is doing. The only way this can be known is by Scripture.
If you are not reading the Bible, despite having the ability and access to do so, then you are robbing yourself of a great privilege and stunting the growth of your faith. The same can be said if you are depriving yourself of the preaching of the Word and the opportunity to study it more deeply in the Church. God does not smile on us when we willfully impoverish ourselves. Growing in all of this undeniably requires broad and at times intensive effort, especially when a person first comes to faith. For this reason, I think it’s better if we have a broader vision of our devotional life. We can have times devoted to intensive biblical study (through reading, listening, discussing, etc.) and other times devoted to meditating on what we have learned, as we commune with God in prayer. It is not necessary to try to do everything all at once!
This pattern I’ve described follows God’s purpose in giving us Scripture. He has given Scripture to reveal Himself so that we might respond to Him. Beyond the initial response of faith, a critical component of this response is the practice of prayer. I’ll try to bring this all together as I consider why and how we pray in my next post.
Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001, 2007, 2011, 2016 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.