Please enjoy this excerpt from Manage Your Mission – Living wisely and abundantly for today and eternity.  This book will help craft your life mission, establish its priorities, and succeed in each area: Faith – Family – Fitness – Field – Friends – Fun – Finances. 

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There are many ways to grow spiritually, and I would never want to limit anyone in the way they approach devotions.  The main thing is to get into good habits.  Don’t set overly ambitious goals and quit when you don’t achieve them.  Be kind to yourself if you miss sometimes.  But have a plan, and work to execute it.  Change it over time as necessary.

Here’s my current model. 

1. Read a page from The Valley of Vision, a book of Puritan prayers.  These guys were intense and motivating. Yet, contrary to their stereotypes, these writers were remarkably humble. 
2. Go through my PrayerMate app for various prayer topics and requests (see the Prayer section for more)
3. Read the Bible plus commentary notes.  I love the chronological Bible reading plan or a plan that rotates daily between genres: The Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), history, Psalms, Proverbs, gospels, letters, etc.  This method gets me through the Bible every 1.5 – 2 years.  When I finish, I start again the next day.  Or sometimes, I take a break from that and pick one book to read over and over for a month or so, to truly internalize it. 
4. Work through some memory verses on the Bible Memory app.  Some days I do more than others.  If I have downtime during the day, I’ll also review verses. 

You don’t have to memorize verses, but I find it to be a blessing.  The Bible Memory app has been beneficial for that.  The online version is free, and the app is inexpensive.  You pick the verses you want, and then you can practice typing over them, filling in every other word, or typing them from memory.  You can just type the first letter of the words to save time. 

The key is wiring the content and meaning of the passages inside you.  If you remember the book of the Bible from where you got the passage, that’s helpful, and chapters and verses are a bonus.  But as you may know, the chapter and verse numbers weren’t in the originals.  The New Testament quotes the Old Testament many times but does not even note the quoted book.  Hebrews 2:6 even says, “It has been testified somewhere, ‘What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him?’”  The verse quoted Psalm 8 but just noted that it was “testified somewhere.” 

It is a blessing to learn more and more verses and passages.  Just start small and select a few verses.  You’ll pick up momentum and confidence and be surprised how often God gives you opportunities to use the verses you’ve memorized, either reminding yourself of them or sharing his truth with others.  I’m not a natural at memorizing.  Remembering passages takes a lot of repetition, but I eventually get there.  And as I cycle back through verses I’ve learned, I try to meditate on what they mean in context.  I have to fight the tendency to do rote memorization. 

Aside from memorizing critical theological truths, you can also use the app to remember handy lists, such as the names of the twelve tribes of Israel (Exodus 1:2-4), the names of the twelve apostles (Matthew 10:2–4), the books of the Bible (you can edit a verse to add the list), the names of the seven “ites” living in the Promised Land (Canaanites, Hittites, etc. —Joshua 3:10), the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1–19) and others.  Sometimes memorizing one verse can remind you of an entire passage. 

I also listen to various podcasts when driving, riding the exercise bike, or relaxing in the evening.  I rotate between Stand to Reason, Truth For Life (Alistair Begg), Christ Covenant Church (Kevin DeYoung), Knight & Rose, Unashamed, and others I mix in.  It is a great way to learn.  I can listen at 1.5x or even double the normal speed for most podcasts, which saves time.

Again, remember that you can listen to the audio Bible (download it at Bible.is for free) or podcasts while commuting.  When I used to have a commute, that was a great way to get in lots of Bible listening.  I pick up different things when listening versus reading, so both are good. 

So, do what works for you, but do something.  Remember, if you aren’t reading the Bible and praying regularly, it is because you’ve decided not to.

Copyright 2022

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible