Your Devotional Life
As you begin setting the pace of your Christian life it is vital to be daily reading and meditating on God's Word along with spending precious time talking to God.
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
and his ears are open to their prayer...
- 1 Peter 3:12a
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
- Psalm 119:105
Let my prayer be counted as incense before you,
and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!
- Psalm 141:2
Let's Pray and Read
At this part of setting the pace on the pathway of your Christian walk you will meet weekly or bi-weekly. This is to be decided by both individuals.
The Goal
The primary goal at this point in the pathway is to grow in your devotional life. The desire is to come out of this point of the pathway with a stronger prayer life and Bible study life. As a discipler one is in the position to help use the resources to train their disciplee in having a strong and growing devotional life with the Lord. The goal is to be able at the end of this part of the pathway to take the training wheels off where the disciplee is not dependent on the discipler.
The Resources
The resources provided by the pastoral staff for this part of the pathway are Face to Face by Kenneth Boa and a provided scripture reading plan.
Using Face to Face by Kenneth Boa
Face to Face by Kenneth Boa contains 3 months worth of prayers from scripture. Formulating our prayer life directly from the Bible will greatly strengthen our prayer life.
The process for going through this book is not to study out every passage from each day. The plan should be to each time you meet is settle on one or two of the passages and talk briefly about what the passage is saying then practice taking the text and applying it personally. One tip for doing this is to write out what you want to pray according to the text. The final step here would then be to each take time to pray the same text or a different text based on how many passages you look at.
Here is an example from Psalm 100:1-2:
Biblical Text - 1Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! 2Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into His presence with singing!
Example Prayer - “Lord, I pray that I would unashamedly proclaim joy and cry out in praise to you in my daily life. Help me to regularly obey your desire for me to lift up joyful worship to you. May I not only be joyful with my praise and worship to you but that my joy would flow into serving you with gladness regardless of the service you desire. May I always live before you with joy and gladness ever wanting to sing knowing that I am in your presence daily as I am in Christ and the Holy Spirit has indwelt me. No place I go, you are not there. Lord, help me to rejoice and be glad in you showing it through my words and actions.”
The process for going through this book is not to study out every passage from each day. The plan should be to each time you meet is settle on one or two of the passages and talk briefly about what the passage is saying then practice taking the text and applying it personally. One tip for doing this is to write out what you want to pray according to the text. The final step here would then be to each take time to pray the same text or a different text based on how many passages you look at.
Here is an example from Psalm 100:1-2:
Biblical Text - 1Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! 2Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into His presence with singing!
Example Prayer - “Lord, I pray that I would unashamedly proclaim joy and cry out in praise to you in my daily life. Help me to regularly obey your desire for me to lift up joyful worship to you. May I not only be joyful with my praise and worship to you but that my joy would flow into serving you with gladness regardless of the service you desire. May I always live before you with joy and gladness ever wanting to sing knowing that I am in your presence daily as I am in Christ and the Holy Spirit has indwelt me. No place I go, you are not there. Lord, help me to rejoice and be glad in you showing it through my words and actions.”
Using the Scripture Reading Plan
Bible reading is so vital. The plan is to build and grow in one's Bible reading along with one's prayer life. As you get together each time you both can share one or two principles you learned and are seeking to apply in your daily life. Once you are finished with this walk through Face to Face as explained. Below there is a link to a 365 through the Bible reading plan. It starts on January. However, you can alter it to where the January 1st reading is actually the reading you start with and then go from there for 365 days. The other idea is to use the reading of the day you start and continue on from that point.
Click here for reading plan
Click here for reading plan