Welcome to this Come to Jesus Daily devotional. For the near future, we put our Luke series on pause as we have some stand-alone summer devotionals. I hope you find them helpful.
‘Aaron must burn fragrant incense on the altar every morning when he tends the lamps. He must burn incense again when he lights the lamps at twilight so that incense will burn regularly before the Lord for the generations to come.’ (Exodus 30:7-8)
Lesson: Worship is to be scheduled so as to become constant because what we regularly do will become a part of our lifestyle.
Sometimes it is argued that love cannot be planned. However, love is the result of the time we spend with someone in deepening our relationship. Without planning, friendships, love between parents and children, love in a marriage, love in a church… will fail to develop and may fail altogether. This is also true of our worship life; our love and appreciation of God, and our assurance of His love toward us, is built on the planned time that we spend with Him.
Our reading today teaches us to plan time to ‘tend the lamps’ and restock the incense - illustrations of worship. Aaron was to do this twice a day.
The hero of faith, Daniel, continued to pray even when ordered to stop on threat to his life. However, have you noticed the formulated aspect to His praying:
‘Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened towards Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.’ (Daniel 6:10)
Do you see that Daniel had a prayer-plan? He prayed three times a day. Do you see that his heroic faith was birthed out of an empowering prayer and worship routine?
Response
Worship is to be scheduled so as to become constant because what we regularly do will become a part of our lifestyle.
It’s good to have a plan for the important aspects of our lives. In regard to your worship and prayers: When, where and what do you do? I encourage you to write this down somewhere so as to clarify your plan to yourself. I also encourage you to review your plan each week so as to keep yourself accountable and to update it.
‘Much praying is not done because we do not plan to pray. We do not drift into spiritual life; we do not drift into disciplined prayer. We will not grow in prayer unless we plan to pray. That means we must self-consciously set aside time to do nothing but pray.’ (D. A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation, Baker, 1992)
COMMUNITY GROUP NOTES AND STUDY
Until September I'll not be producing a group study. However, if you meet with your group why not simply use one of the devotionals as a basis for your discussion together?
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