Looking to make your personal devotions a bit more exciting, real, regular, personal, or life-changing? Here are a few tips to help you try doing your personal devotions in a new way.
- Keep track of your faithfulness on a calendar.
- Read scripture out loud.
- Write out key verses in your own words.
- Memorize verses, passages, or entire chapters.
- Use a good study Bible and use its features to go deeper.
- Use a daily journal and write down thoughts, prayers, questions, and observations.
- Use cross-references given in your Bible.
- Read or sing a hymn.
- Find one key verse in each session. Ask God why that verse stood out, and what He wants you to do with that verse.
- Make notes (in your Bible or on a notepad).
- Mark / color code / underline / highlight key verses in your Bible.
- Use a Bible commentary to go deeper.
- Read, reread, reread, reread, reread…you get the idea.
- Do a study of a particular Bible character.
- Follow a schedule to read through the entire Bible (i.e. in 1 year or 2 years).
- Use an exhaustive concordance to trace key words or topics through the Bible.
- Take a short book and study it in depth (i.e. James, Philippians, Jonah, Ruth).
- Pray the Scriptures – that is, take a couple of verses and pray them to God.
- Use a computer Bible program.
- Remind yourself that you have a piece of God’s mind in your hands.
- Choose a place and time that you can usually count on having day.
- Make your special spot comfortable and emotionally warm.
- Read a passage in your usual translation, and then in a different translation.
- Talk to / write to / e-mail / chat online with other JIM Clubbers and see what they have discovered through their personal devotion times.
- Choose a prayer partner. Talk to him frequently and make sure that you’re both keeping up with your devotions.
- If you don’t understand what a word means, look it up in a dictionary.
- Make a list of ways that you will stay strong and regular in personal devotions.
- Don’t just pray for yourself – pray for family members, friends, enemies, teachers, school acquaintances, the unsaved, other JIM Clubbers, and leaders.
- Listen to a Christian song and find the message in it.
- Make a list of people to encourage or forgive. Speak to them soon.
- Download Adventures in Bible Study or Studies in John.
- Make a list of “tips” not on this list.