I have a complicated relationship with daily devotions. I am annoyed that, despite years of walking with the Lord Jesus, my daily quiet times with him are still sporadic and inconsistent. The first half of the year is spurred by intentions to set good daily spiritual habits: finally getting through the Bible in a year, committing to weekly prayer for missionaries, memorising Scripture… When I fall off the band wagon, I feel angry at myself and guilty before God. In a fit of self-justification, I then ask if God even prescribes daily devotions anyway. Daily devotions or reading plans, as I imagine them, aren’t explicitly mentioned in the Bible.
And yet, daily devotions have appeared as a consistent discipline (in some shape or form) within Christian tradition throughout the ages. How did a practice that promised so much daily peace, purpose and joy become a source of guilt to me and many Christians I know? Perhaps the problem is not with the discipline itself, but our view of it.
Daily Devotions Divorced from Daily Life
Daily devotions feel so unachievable because we implement them without acknowledging the realities of modern-day busyness. In our minds, quality time with God means curated time with him. My mental image of a ‘successful’ devotion features the latest commentary from some renowned Bible teacher, a scenic view, a couple of hours to myself, and a quiet mental state.
Sadly, I can count only a small number of times circumstances have aligned to enable me to achieve this level of ‘success’ in the past year. So, all other days where we can only feed ourselves little bits of audio Bible on our commute or short prayers before bub wakes up, feel like a failure. This in turn creates a negative spiral where we become increasingly reluctant to meet with God. What ought to be a daily, delightful privilege of communing with God devolves into a twenty-minute checkbox that is more a burden than a joy, a requirement rather than a refreshment.
I wish we could all afford hours of Bible reading per day. I lament how demanding jobs, difficult needs, and our own impeded attention span take us away from uninterrupted time with God. The Bible also warns us of the danger in valuing meeting needs—even pressing ones—over hearing from the Lord (Lk 10:38–42). I admire those who aspire to, and follow through with, setting aside large chunks of time to daily devotion—it really is a good thing, one which more of us should cultivate.
For those of us who struggle, what can we do? How do we foster quality time with God when it seems like all we have is a few precious minutes each day?
Daily Devotions Are for Our Good
Fundamentally, daily devotions comprise of reading God’s word to us, meditating on the truths found therein, and speaking to him in response. It is a privilege first, a duty second. Only when we realise this will we truly delight in and desire them.
Do we believe that God offers us all we need through his word? That by his Spirit, he is performing surgery on our once-dead hearts, giving new life? That the Bible is a sword that cuts through our pretentions and deceptions, that it knows us better than we know ourselves (Heb 4:12)? The Bible speaks of itself as precious (Ps 19:10) and nourishing (1 Pet 2:2). It offers us profound wisdom (Ps 19:7). It helps us to distinguish evil from good (Heb 5:14), equips us for every good work (2 Tim 3:16–17), causes us to persevere when worldly advice entices us (1 Jn 2:14), and comforts us when we come up against conflict with friends and family (Matt 12:46–50).
Continuous Devotion
It is liberating to realise that we do not need to confine our conversations with God to a twenty-minute block we have set aside for him. God is everywhere. He rules the world and everything is being sustained by him (Col 1:17).
I get flustered very easily. The first time I realised I could respond to sudden and invasive thoughts by praying was freeing. It resulted in many more heartfelt prayers peppered throughout the day. This seems like basic Christian living, but despite my years of being a Christian, I have somehow concocted the strange notion that I can only pray when I’m kneeling and have my eyes closed.
The privilege of the Christian life is that we can cast our anxieties to God at any time, and at every point (1 Pet 5:7). The corollary of this is that we owe God much, much more than parts of our day—even the best parts of it. God never stops watching over us, and nothing we think, say, and do are out of his purview. How then, can we imagine we can box ‘time with God’ into a quarter of an hour per day?
Yes, we should set time aside to do daily devotions. But let’s not forget that Christian living is more than that. It is continuous devotion, where devotion is an attitude, rather than a task. It is more accurate to say we are ‘being’, rather than ‘doing’, devotionals. This means daily devotions include precious set-aside times, but also all the minutes and hours that make up our lives.
Being Daily Devotionals
If we believe the spiritual discipline of daily devotion is for our good and is not necessarily time-bound, we will see so many opportunities to worship God. Our devotion can be both private and corporate, both spontaneous and prescribed. I have prepared some examples I and others have found helpful, that are also achievable:
- listening to the Bible for ten or fifteen minutes a day, which equates to a couple of chapters.
- Committing to saying a short prayer whenever you are waiting—for the bus, a coffee, a date, or the start of an event.
- Reading good Christian books, whether by yourself or with others.
- Praying with your family before bed.
- Lengthening meal ‘graces’ beyond a template (‘thanks God for the food’) to include a prayer for the world.
Most of those sit outside a standard daily devotion as I imagine it. They do not replace a set-aside time, but they do keep us connected to God, and thus should not be seen as inferior to time carved out with him. They help us remember that God is close to us (Ps 145:18), that he is intimately aware of and involved in our lives (Ps 139:1–2, 4). He is the giver of all the things we enjoy in this world (Jam 1:17), and the redeemer of every misfortune we encounter (Rom 8:28).
We need more daily devotion, not less. We need a bigger view of what daily devotion means. Christians don’t do devotionals, we are devotionals.
