Developing a Devotional life

Hebrews 4:12 – “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart”.

Does anyone remember why the Bible is like a sword from last week? (take answers)

· It’s because the Bible cuts right to the heart of a person to show us what is wrong in our lives.

· It also teaches us how God wants us to live our lives to glorify Him.

Earlier tonight we talked about prayer. We learned that prayer is an extremely important part of our relationship with the Lord. We also learned that studying the Bible and praying should be part of our daily lives as Christians.

Right now, I’m going to talk to you about having a devotional time.

A devotional or Quiet time:

· It’s Time that you spend every day in prayer and studying your Bible.

· It’s the time in your day that you set aside daily for God by studying His word and talking to Him. When you spend time quietly before the Lord you’re able to hear what He wants you to learn from His Word.

Teaching-

2 Timothy 2:15 NASB95

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.

NLT

Work hard so you can present yourself to God and receive his approval. Be a good worker, one who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly explains the word of truth

Phil 1:20

For I know that as you pray for me and the Spirit of Jesus Christ helps me, this will lead to my deliverance.

Paul’s Life for Christ

20 For I fully expect and hope that I will never be ashamed, but that I will continue to be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past. And I trust that my life will bring honor to Christ, whether I live or die. 21 For to me, living means living for Christ, and dying is even better.

Transition: In order to have a successful quiet time, it needs to be a

· priority in your life, you need to

· prepare and

· plan for your quiet time ahead of time

Setting time aside daily can be really difficult because there will always be distractions in your life that will keep you from wanting to have quiet time.

Whenever you sit down to study, your friend will call you or brother will want to play with you or your favorite show will come on TV, but you have a make spending time with God a priority. Making something a priority in your life means that you put that thing first and put everything else aside.

To prepare for something means to get ready. The best way to get ready for your quiet time is to Set an alarm to remind you when it’s time for your quiet time each day.

· Choose a time in your day that will be easy for you to take time out so you can be successful.

· You should also place your Bible, a notebook and your pencil in the same place so it is easy for you to find. After you finish your devotional time each day, you should open your Bible to the next day’s verse.

· Lastly you should plan out your quiet time. You should start your quiet time with prayer. When you pray ask God to help you learn about Him. Then you should read through some verses and take notes in a notebook.

· Write down things you’ve learned or verses that you want to remember.

· You can highlight verses in your Bible that especially stand out to you to remember later.

· You can also write down how your thoughts or actions will be changed as a result of what you’ve read.

· At the end of your devotional time, pray and ask God to help you apply what you’ve learned.

Prioritizing,

Preparing and

Planning for your devotional time will make it much easier to have a quiet time.

When you start a quiet time, you can

· choose to use a devotional book that helps you study various parts of scripture and will usually give you a short commentary about the verse or passage that you’ve read. You could also

· pick a book to read through in the Bible and read a chapter each day. You can also use concordances to help do a word or topic study.

· As you study God’s word and take notes, you’ll learn how to pull out points from Scripture and apply them to your life.

There are a few things you should do as your reading the Bible. (On the screen)

1. Look at the Context: remember! Every verse is part of a chapter, part of a book and part of the whole bible. To understand the context of a verse, you must read verses above and below to get the full meaning of the verse.

2. What does it Say? Who-what-when-where-why-how? Asking these questions will help you understand exactly what the passage is about.

3. What Does it Mean? Study the words & Phrases: use the Concordance, cross reference with other verses, other translations. Read what scholars have written: read commentaries to see what pastors and other bible scholars have written.

4. How Does it Apply? Applying what you’ve read to your daily lives is the most important part of your daily devotions. You should take time each day to write down in your notebooks the answers to the following questions based on the scripture you’ve read. -

ASK YOURSELVES

· What did I learn? what did I learn from the passage I just read?

· Where do I fall short? how do the choices I make match up with what I’ve learned?

· What will I do about it? What changes will I make in my life based on what I learned? Who can I share with what I learned in my reading?

· How can I make what I learned part of my daily life? - How can I use this lesson every day in my life?

WRAP UP [3 MINUTES]

Having a daily devotional time is absolutely the most important part of growing as a Christian. If you don’t spend time studying God’s word or talking to Him there is no way you can know God’s plan for your life.

Studying God’s word is the best way to get to know God. I want to encourage all of you to set aside time each day this week to spend time studying the Bible and in prayer.

We’re going to break up in our groups now to talk more about studying God’s word during our daily devotional time. Closing Prayer

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