Hacking Your Devotion Time

“Satan prowls about seeking whom he may destroy.”

You’re not going to find that one on an inspirational calendar, but we need to keep it front of mind because it’s part of the reason that spiritual growth never happens by accident. Spiritual growth takes thoughtful, scheduled effort; but before we unpack that, we need a really important definition: What is spiritual growth? First, being a Christian is not about being saved, going to heaven, or avoiding hell. It is not even about being good, or being on God’s side. It is about finding something so beautiful that you can’t live without it. Spiritual growth is about stepping closer and closer to that beauty. That idea has launched a thousand revivals; it also shows how your spiritual growth can be stopped in its tracks. 

The problem is that our brains have a special wrinkle devoted to confusing beauty with success. We begin to equate consistency with doing the practices that are supposed to lead to spiritual growth (the Reformers called these the means of grace) with growth itself. This confusion is a lot of fun because we enjoy chalking up wins by simply showing up.

So the real question is how do I read my Bible so that my heart is transformed by the truth of the gospel and how do I pray in order to connect with God about the things he cares about?

I don’t play tennis, but I’ve been told that if your grip is too tight your game becomes mechanical. You’ve got to loosen up and get your heart in the game to have fun! But if your grip is too loose then you’ll never have any power or accuracy. You need to get your head back in the game if you want to hit the mark. So the question is, how do we adjust our spiritual grip so that we can move toward beauty rather than “success”? I have three suggestions:

1. Remember what we are chasing. With a little prompting, most of us can remember a time when the gospel felt especially real. It might be a particular time in church or maybe the day you became a Christian. At that moment there was nothing more valuable in the  world than being closer and closer to Jesus. I sometimes think of the vitality of my faith during college as an example. Remembering that valuation, “the pearl of great price”  is one way to aim our devotional time at our real target of stepping closer and closer to Jesus. 

2. Remember that he is with you. Brother Laurence was a 17th century French Catholic monk who spent most of his time washing dishes. He finally became famous for his deep devotion and his secret was to consistently remind himself that God was present with him at that moment. Every moment is holy because every moment is with him.

3. Remember to adjust your grip. To mix metaphors, if you lift heavy weights every day you will get big, and then you’ll stop. If you lift light weights every day you’ll get lean, and then you’ll stop. Healthy growth takes a little of both and that happens best in one month increments. I go through seasons (usually about six months) where I’ll spend more time reading or more time praying or more time in worship, etc. The key is to spend consistent time doing something that puts my heart in hopeful submission to Jesus.

“Satan prowls about seeking whom he may destroy,” and one of his favorite ways to do that is to slowly make us bored with the beauty of the gospel. So to quote 38 Special, when it comes to tennis, lifting weights and our devotions, “Hold on loosely, and don’t let go.”