Do you struggle with your daily devotional time?

For anyone outside of the Church community who’s not fluent in “Christianese,” the word devotion has a pretty simple meaning: dedication, consecration, and love. But to Christians, the word has mysteriously been translated to mean that special time you put aside each day to read your Bible and pray. And sadly, the two definitions don’t always mesh.

Growing up in a Bible-reading, church-attending family, I learned the latter definition of devotion early on. Every morning before school, my dad would faithfully gather his reluctant kids in the living room, where we’d take turns reading that day’s passage in a daily Bible. The New Testament portions weren’t bad, but I mostly remember the Old Testament passages. I can still feel that 7:00 a.m. grogginess as I read aloud about how Seth begat Enos, and Enos begat Cainan, and Cainan begat Mahalaleel, and Mahalaleel begat… well, you catch my drift. (You can imagine the giggle fest between my siblings as we each tried to pronounce old school names like Mahalaleel.) [Read more...]