Devotion Times that Count; Part 1

What does it mean to be a Christian? One of the most subtly misguided notions is that a Christian is someone committed to reading the bible, praying, going to church, and maintaining a high moral conduct. If you want an encapsulation of that, you can most easily point to the devotional time. That is the time when a person is reading the bible, praying, thinking about how he is going to maintain his moral conduct, which he will be talking about at church.

Which means that the devotional time gets a lot of airtime in Christian circles. If a person wants to take fellowship with another Christian just a bit deeper, one of the easiest things to talk about is the person’s devotional time. Is he reading his Bible? What is he reading? What is he learning? Is there a substantial prayer time? Why or why not?

Knowing the potential for these questions about one's devotion times can be a real motivator to be in the Word and in prayer. And that is not bad. But false gospels are always lurking within and without. The propensity towards a work-based hope is the default for fallen people, even fallen people who have been redeemed. Which means our devotional times can quickly turn into obligations on a to-do list. Take out the garbage: Check. Get milk and bread from the store: Check. Read the Bible and pray: Check.

But is that what a Christian is? Certainly not. Not any more than sitting down to a dinner table with someone makes that person your spouse. Do spouses sit down at dinner tables? Of course. Do Christians read their bibles and pray? Of course. But your presence at a dinner table doesn’t make you a spouse any more than reading the Bible makes you a Christian. Those are actions that correspond to marriage and new birth, but are not the essence of marriage and new birth.

So what is a Christian? One simple description of a Christian is someone united to Christ in real relationship. I realize there are a host of other crucial biblical distinctions that can be made and should be made. But I want the simple essence for this blog. Forever, we are in Christ. This is the most basic way we can speak of being a Christian. This also informs how we ought to think about our devotional times. Everything is for growing in this relationship with Christ.

Just to back this up a little more, consider the following verses.

• 2 Corinthians 11:2–3 For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. 3 But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

In this passage, Paul summed up his reader’s spiritual reality as being betrothed to Christ and the simplicity of devotion was to be understood in that light.

• Matthew 12:49 And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, “Behold My mother and My brothers!

When Jesus spoke of his disciples, he spoke of them in terms of the most intimate of familial relationships, even being as a mother.

• Psalm 27:8 (NASB95) — 8 When You said, “Seek My face,” my heart said to You, “Your face, O LORD, I shall seek.”

The “face” of God is a regular theme in the Bible and in the book of Psalms especially. It is an idiom that speaks of God’s favor and blessing that flows from Him to another person with whom he is in a real relationship. There is nothing more basic to a relationship than face-to-face interaction.

All of this brings me to one more passage rich with insight regarding goals for a devotional time that is striving for relationship growth.

Check out Paul’s prayer found in Ephesians 3:14-21. While discipline and endurance are needful features at times, they must not be the drivers for devotional times. Discipline and endurance are what you need because you are sinner in a fallen world, both of which pull you away from Christ. But there has to be a larger reality drawing you to Christ. That reality is the unrelenting work of the Spirit. Paul prays for the Spirit to strengthen your inner man. That is key for devotional times. You need your inner man stirred and strengthened. The Holy Spirit does this; He does it because of the riches of grace and glory, and accordingly Paul prays confidently for it.

But what is the goal of a strengthened inner man? It is that Christ would dwell in you. That is to say that Christ is perfectly at home in you. There is only one way Christ will be at home in you. He is at home when He is seen and delighted in as the sovereign Lord. Anything less than that is going to make for a problem. Imagine if the president came to your house and you told him to not sit on the couch because you were sick of having to rearrange the pillows. That is what you might say to your kids. If you say that to the president, it means you see him having no more dignity than kids who have to be trained. This does not accord with the dignity of the office. Christ is truly dwelling in us when we are humbly submitting to him in every way, and joyfully doing so because He is glorious in power and wisdom and compassion. This is what our devotion time are to be for. Having Christ dwell in our lives means bringing everything to him as the gracious sovereign Lord he is and seeking his grace to bring all things into conformity with his Lordship. Christ loves to transform us and the Spirit will strengthen us for that process.

What Paul prays for next is what should happen when we are grounded in the love Christ has for us. From that grounded and secure place of knowing our unity with Christ and his real presence in our lives, it is then an upward climb on the infinite mountain of his love. We are to be learning all the different ways that his love can be known, and there are countless ways. This is what it is to be in a relationship with God. We get to explore today and forever the glories of his holy person, and how his love is driving all manner of designs in our lives. Doing this is how we are filled to all the fullness of God.

This is the goal of your devotion times. Fight against routine and fight for relationship. Fight against obligation and fight for obsession. Fight against have-to, and fight for get-to. This is the goal of reading your bible and praying and being with God’s people. Christians are in a real relationship with Christ, and that relationship a genuine two-way relationship. We should be reading in the Scripture about who God is, what he does for us and promises to us, as we watch how he unfolds that in our lives. In response, we are pouring our adoration as well as our neediness before an all-sufficient Father. This is the two-way relationship. This is Christ dwelling in us. This is being grounded in love. This is soaring higher and going deeper and spreading wider in his great love. Don’t be content with your devotion times until you are experiencing this kind of relationship to one degree or another. Will it happen every day? No. Our sin creates obstacles to this, and at times God will pull back our sense of his presence for wise and fatherly purposes. But keep the goal always in view. Why? Because God has this goal and he calls you into it as well.