In Christian circles it is rarely
argued that doing devotions isn’t important.
But the fact of the matter is that many Christians
don’t do devotions.
I myself struggle with doing devotions for an
entirely different reason than most people – as a pastor I
study weekly for my sermon, as a professor I interact with
Bible students on an almost daily basis, and as a writer I
post articles for all of my websites.
So most would be willing to forgive me for not
reading a devotion every day.
The truth is that even I would benefit
from reading a devotion every day despite all of my other
time spent on “Bible stuff.”
While we agree that devotions are important to
Christians, we rarely focus on why it is important.
Allow me to list a few of the reasons; there are
likely many more.
A
daily devotion allows us to focus on
God each and every day.
It is easy to think that you get enough Bible on
Sunday morning and a mid-week Bible study.
These are both important times for Christians.
But let’s look at it another way.
You probably like to eat.
After a big feast on Thanksgiving you’ll probably eat
the following day, even if you were completely stuffed and
ate way too much.
Well, you can’t get too much of God.
Likewise, going a day without focusing on Him is like
going a day without food.
It’s not a good idea.
You’ll get hungry if you don’t eat.
If you don’t spend time with God you’ll grow
spiritually hungry.
Daily devotions give us what we need
for the day.
Sometimes something as simple as hearing a Bible verse on
the radio will lift our spirits and give us the
encouragement that we need for the day.
There is no guarantee that if you do your devotions
in the morning that you’ll read the exact verse that you
need for something that you’ll encounter that day, but if
you don’t do a devotion I can guarantee that you won’t read
something to help you with your day.
More often than not, reading a devotion will come
back to you at sometime during the day and it will help you
through a tough moment.
Or it might be used to help someone else through a
tough moment.
Doing a devotion is more than just
repetition. It’s
easy to see something and think “I’ve read this before.
Why should I read it again?”
But the Bible strikes us differently at different
times. You may
have read a passage before and thought nothing of it but the
next time you see it you are going through a difficulty and
the verse suddenly jumps out at you.
I’ve read portions of the gospels dozens of times but
I keep finding new things in them.
It’s very unlikely that you’ll read the same passage
a second time and learn nothing new from it.
Perhaps the best reason to do a daily
devotion is that you won’t learn it all in church.
Regardless whether your church preaches around themes
or books of the Bible, there are going to be portions that
you’ll never hear from the pulpit.
I’m currently preaching from Exodus and I figure that
it will take me a year to get through it.
Obviously not every book is as long as Exodus but I
probably couldn’t preach through the entire Bible in 20
years. And
that’s not counting the fact that just about every preacher
will naturally gravitate toward the gospels.
Could you imagine only looking at the gospels once in
20 years? If you
want to study some parts of the Bible, you’ll have to do it
on your own. To
do so you’ll have to do your own devotions.
