The Lord wants us to interact with Him through His Word. John 15 paints the picture of God as a vine and His people as individual branches. He is the literal source of all life but He is also the source of daily life in our hearts. This does not happen automatically for every believer. Jesus said that you have to abide in the vine and let His word abide in you.
In John 5, Jesus told the religious leaders of His day that they did not know God. They knew the scriptures but did not know the God of the scriptures. We can have a study life without a prayer life. Or we can turn the Word into prayer dialogue and let Him awaken the scriptures to our hearts. He will touch us with His life each day as we meditate on His Word. He truly is the vine and we must connect with Him and receive impartation each day. Many of us feel tired during the day because we have not received spiritual life on the inside during the day. Many times the tired feeling in my body, mind or emotions goes away the second I connect to God in prayer over the Word of God. I feel His presence and it revitalizes me in every way. I receive real life in my body, my mind and my emotions when I feel the Lord’s presence in meditation. We must fight our schedules everyday to make time to receive from the Lord.
10 Ways to Make Your 15minute Devotionals turn into 2 Hour Devotionals
- Pick a passage of scripture to meditate on. Schedule your times for every day of the week. Schedule at least 30minutes so that your heart can calm down. Give yourself time to wait upon the Lord.
- Journal thoughts, questions, prayers from the verses. Pray those same things to the Lord in simple phrases.
- Ask those questions. Ask for living understanding of what the passage declares. Commit to doing what the passage says. Declare it back to God if it describes something about His heart. Speak slowly and quietly. Prayer is best done by repeating phrases to the Lord. The language of prayer is short phrases said over and over again in communing prayer.
- Keep journaling new thoughts and pray those back to God.
- Your mind will be very distracted if you do not actually write things down and speak prayers out loud. Using your faculties helps your mind engage and stay focused.
- Ponder phrases and journal about them.
- Pray in the Spirit and Sing in the Spirit while mixing in phrases from your journal.
- Ask Him to fill you with those truths in a real way. Wait for His presence. Stick with the prayers when you feel His presence. His presence is imparting real spiritual life to your heart.
- Praying positions – Pace in your room, sit down and rock back and forth a little bit. Movement can help your body focus more. Rocking back and forth even a little helps your mind focus on one thing.
- Stay on one passage of scripture for days or weeks at a time. You will find your heart connecting to that passage quicker and quicker every day. Even months later your heart will connect at a deep level when you read it.
-Jeff