The Christian's Devotional Life
In preparing this article, I went online and found one writer who came up with twenty- eight different ways to have devotions. After skimming them, I found that after fifty-eight years being a Christian myself, I had used many of them. It is good from time to time to change your Bible reading habit. Variety can be the spice of a saint’s devotional life. Don’t allow this blessed time to become ritualistic. It is too precious to become hum-drum.
Here is a brief list of some suggested ways you might choose to read your Bible: read straight through; read from both Testaments; divide your Bible up and read three to five different sections a day; listen to the Bible read through by Alexander Scourby; or read along as he is reading it (using any of the above methods); there are a score of ways to read and enjoy your Bible. Find some different ones you’re comfortable with and dig in.
The important thing is being in the Word. But you do not have to gather your daily Manna the same way year by year. Generally, it is good to go through the Bible once a year, keeping in mind it is not how many times you go through the Bible but how many times it has gone through you! One great old-time saint did not have a particular amount of pages or chapters he read daily; he read, said he, “till me heart burns within me.”
I have found my spiritual life is directly in line with my devotional life. The former comes no higher than the latter. Therefore, it behooves each of us to be devoted to our devotions. As I have mentioned in previous articles, I want my life to be saturated with the Bible, soaked in the Holy Scriptures, if you please. O, how love I to “wallow in the Word!” I long and thirst to have an encyclopedic knowledge of His blessed Book.
In the flyleaf of D.L. Moody’s Bible is written, “This Book will keep me from sin; or sin will keep me from this Book.”