What Should Personal Devotions Look Like?
by David K. Bernard
Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript)
Kind: teaching

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--what-should-personal-devotions-look-like
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
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well let me give you some suggestions and guidelines first of all let's look at the components what should a healthy well-rounded uh spiritual life look like first of all I think we should commit to prayer um that the best plan is to have a daily time of prayer and it's helpful to have it at the same time and I I think it's more about relationship than than minutes or hours although to get quality time you sometimes have to spend quantity time so I think the best plan is to set a time every day where you pray whether it be 10 minutes 15 minutes an hour and it could vary and it may be that your daily schedule is not quite the same mine is different every week but if you try to set a time usually in the morning usually first thing that's probably best although for some at lunch or in the evening uh but you don't want to let things crowd out your day and you never get around to praying uh some prayer can be while you're driving you're commuting uh I don't think all of your time you have to have some intensely focused time but you can redeem the time so if you're commuting Like I Do by plane or train or driving or uh riding with someone that that could be at least part of your your prayer time uh and I think the idea more than an exact amount is building the relationship and having consistency and also let's be realistic so if you set this time I want to pray you know 700 a.m.

for 15 minutes 30 minutes whatever and let's say your day gets Blown Away by things outside of your control or let's SK say your schedule changes well if you can succeed five out of the seven days well that's a passing grade it's not perfect but don't beat yourself up or condemn yourself because what happens is people often do something unrealistic well I'm going to pray an hour a day and then they fall short and then they give up or I'm going to pray every day in the midst of the day they give up so I would say uh it's not a matter of condemnation it's not a matter of earning uh something from God you can't earn favors by so many hours of prayer or so many days of fasting it's about relationship it's about building a relationship so having a consistent relationship is most important if you fall short one day that's okay you you can do extra the next day for example but it's not illegalism but daily prayer and really the Bible says pray without ceasing so I've learned over the years that I'm in conversation with the Lord all the time it's not just a set time well here's my prayer time I'm going to talk to God uh and go through my checklist but it's interacting with God at different times of the day praying as a need arises or when something unusual happens just talking to the Lord about it asking what he thinks or you have a decision asking the Lord or taking a moment to pray somebody expresses a need saying well let's stop let's pray right now so prayer gets woven in your day Bible reading and studying should also be daily uh but sometimes again your schedule may be get messed up so sometimes I may read uh many chapters sometimes I read a whole book I like to do that because I get the whole context uh other times it might be just a verse or two uh so again the idea is not to beat yourself up not to have a rigid schedule my goal I like to read the Bible through every year so that means you need to average about three chapters a day that's in addition to to study so prayer Bible reading which I would include study meditation thinking about the Bible so sometimes reading one verse and thinking about it praying about it studying it might be more beneficial than just going through three or five chapters just to say you've done it third thing is fasting again it's not about earning favors with God it's not about legalism it's not about a rigid requirement but I think a good discipline which I've tried to do for most of my uh adult life and sometimes it's difficult because of my schedule but I like to fast one day a week I don't always do that because as I said sometimes my schedule is full of events if you have a lot of strenuous work it may be difficult to fast a lot but one easy way to do it is eat your evening meal eat supper and then fast to the next supper so that way you're getting 24 hours but you're not um you you still are you know have enough nutrition to to take care of what you need to take care of or another thing might be once a quarter to take two or three days uh to fast if there's a special need a special time in your life special consecration then you might have a special day or several days of fasting it's not so much again U you're not earning favors with God at all it's not so much a requirement in fact the Bible never the New Testament never specifically says you shall fast but Jesus gave guidelines assuming we would fast um another spiritual discipline is attending church Faithfully so obviously we need a local church we need a pastor we need to be faithful to the regular Services of our local church which typically would be Sunday plus a midweek Bible study or home friendship group or cell group so we should be faithful a regular in attendance and it's it's just a given we're going to go to church when it's time to go our family's going to go that's a spiritual discipline also tithes and offerings uh that should be a given that should be a commitment that that we make to support the kingdom of God and I would also add sharing our testimony it shouldn't be seen as optional again none of these things are legalistic requirements to earn salvation or earn favors with God or make ourselves holy it's about building relationship with God and from that relationship of course we have power with God we have power over evil and and U blessings of God but it flows from relationship not from some kind of mathematical formula or legalistic requirement but I would say as part of that our lifestyle should be sharing our testimony inviting people to church um you know meeting strangers or visitors or people that we regularly interact with and building relationships that would be conducive to um helping to lead them to the Lord that should be part of our spiritual disciplines as well I think if we have these basic elements in place we can have a healthy mature spiritual life sometimes God will call us to extraordinary consecration or effort or sometimes the pastor will feel led to call the church particularly in the beginning of the year perhaps um to call the church to some special times of prayer fasting consecration so as a group uh maybe we'll do it some things on an extraordinary basis a few times a year uh but so I think there's a value in corporate prayer and corporate worship coming to church early to pray should be a regular habit uh or maybe there are some designated times of corporate prayer that you're invited to join or the pastor ask you to participate in but there also should be some individual prayer and ultimately it's it's got to be a relationship between you and the Lord