DEVOTION GONE DULL



“I woke up and carried up my Bible and looked again as the words “Devotion” ran through my head. Devotion, Devotion, Devotion… okay. “Good morning Father, I thank you for today and I thank you because I can move my body and live. Thank You Father, in Jesus name.” I opened the Bible to anywhere my hands could take me. And I saw one common one the youth pastor used to say, Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD; plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a hope and an expected end”. Then I thanked God for the revealing of His Word and I said the Lord’s prayer, then the Grace. Afterward I carried my phone and went to check the messages there.”

Is your devotion always like this every morning? Let’s gist.
What exactly is devotion? Devotion is a code name for the time we spend with God. Yes, God surrounds us, yes He is all around us, but that doesn’t mean we spend time with Him. It is the time when we get to truly know God, when we get to strip all of the hearsay about Him and know who He is, the time to understand Him, the time to let Him reveal Himself to us.

Devotion is an important part of us growing spiritually. It helps us spend time in the secret place. We may be doing devotion and not growing in the secret place. We may also not do it consistently. We may not even do it at all. Why?
Why is it that sometimes our devotion is not always sweet? Or why is it rather boring at times? Why do we even avoid devotion? I will show you some common reasons why:

We rush our devotion. Yes, we have to get through the day, go about our daily business and we can’t be late to class or school. So we just mumble a few words, read a verse and get going.

We are distracted. Sometimes when we do our devotion, we’re thinking of school work, side hustle or that boy/girl that we like that messaged us over the night, or our mind is unsettled.

We are frustrated. Yes, this happens to us teenagers at times. Some of us have been forced to do devotion since when we were younger. Some of us are just doing devotion to “fulfil all righteousness” as a church worker.

We haven’t done devotion in a while. Yes, when we stop doing our devotion consistently, our passion or hunger for devotion becomes replaced by passion for other things, which causes the hunger we once had to talk to God to drop.

Other things have taken God’s place in our lives. It is not uncommon for us to not enjoy devotion when other things begin to take the place of God in our lives. These things drive out the enjoyment we have at the secret place.

Guilt. When it comes to some decisions in our lives and we consult the opinion of God and we don’t still take His choices, guilt sets in. So we avoid God by not doing devotion, thinking He wants to punish us for our mistake.

These are a collection of the most common reasons, some which go deeper than I’ve simplified. But for every problem, there’s always a way out. So what are the things that can be done to improve our devotion?

▪ Spread out your devotion: Yes, it is called morning devotion by most people, but the mornings are not the only time to speak with God. We can speak with God anytime of the day. So if we are rushing in the morning and we have free time doing the day, we can finish our devotion then. This reminds us of the presence of God in and around us and helps us build desire for the next devotion.

▪ Have a special place: It may be your bed. It may be the study. It may be the kitchen. It may also be the toilet. Having a special place for your devotion builds a place where you can’t be distracted, a place where you will always look forward to meet with Abba.

▪ Have a particular time: Having a particular time does the same thing as having a particular place – It builds up momentum and desire for us to meet with Abba. It helps us look forward to meeting with Him at that time and we are sure He always honours us by meeting us then.

▪ Have a notebook: Well, God’s going to speak to us, isn’t He? And He would want to tell us important things about our lives, won’t He? The devil is equally waiting to come and let those words slip away from us. So we carry a devoted notebook for devotion, where we write out all the things God reveals to us, and we go over all we’ve written and all He’s said in the place of devotion during the day. This is key to meditating on the Word.

▪ Speak to God during the day: So you’ve done your devotion in the morning. But for you to meditate, you also need to keep in touch with God during the day. You may do this by letting him influence your decisions during the day, or by praying during the day. It helps in keeping us aware of His presence. This helps us so that we hear God’s voice better. It also helps us build excitement for the next devotion because we will want more time with Him, not the nuggets of time we get to speak to Him during the day. We get to value the nuggets of time we get, but more importantly, we value the time we devote to Him.

▪ Keep our distractions away: The time of devotion is not when we are to look at messages on our phone, or be bothered about how untidy our rooms are. So we do things which lower our level of distractions, such as tidying up our rooms before bedtime or switching on our phones after devotion, or clearing our mind off FOMO(Fear Of Missing Out).
Have an open heart to God.

I hope with these few tips that you are able to get your devotion back in tip-top shape.
 Shalom!

Written by: The Childish Expert

#christianliving
#devotions
#easter

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