Use this devo as you are able, in whole or in part. Don’t feel compelled to read it all. Simply read and meditate upon whatever catches your attention. The goal is enjoying time with God through His Word and in prayer. Questions about the devotional elements?
Call to Prayer
“Your name, LORD, endures forever, your renown, LORD, through all generations.” (Ps. 135:13)
Prayer of Confession
God of grace, thank you for the wisdom and grace of the law—not as a way for me to prove my holiness but for the way it makes me eagerly look to Jesus and his salvation. Let your law teach me to live a flourishing human life, no longer driven by the crack of the law’s whip but moved to obedience by the love of Jesus who saved me. Amen. (Prayer based on the Heidelberg Catechism, Question 115)
*Prayer borrowed from Philip Reinders’ Seeking God’s Face: Praying with the Bible through the Year
Reading Plan
This reading plan will help you to develop the habit of being in God’s Word each morning and evening. Come to this time with expectation. Expect God to reveal himself to you. Expect that he delights in you being there, even when you’ve wandered away. Growing a spiritual habit is a slow, patient process. So be kind to yourself as you grow!
Readings are hyperlinked. Simply hover over the passage or click Morning/Evening Reading (email version).
Morning Readings:
Pray Psalm 120 | Read Matthew 24
- Praying the Psalms: Read slowly. Take note of words and phrases. Bring them before the Lord in prayer and personalize the passage as you pray.
- NT Context: Matthew provides the comprehensive context by which we see all God’s creation and salvation completed in Jesus, and all the parts of our lives—work, family, friends, memories, dreams—also completed in Jesus. Lacking such a context, we are in danger of seeing Jesus as a mere diversion from the concerns announced in the newspapers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Meditate on the passage, noting a few words or a phrase that stood out. Take them to God in prayer.
Evening Readings:
Pray Psalm 121 | Read 2 Samuel 16
- OT Context: “Four lives dominate the two-volume narrative, First and Second Samuel: Hannah, Samuel, Saul, and David. Chronologically, the stories are clustered around the year 1000 b.c., the millennial midpoint between the call of Abraham, the father of Israel, nearly a thousand years earlier (about 1800 b.c.) and the birth of Jesus, the Christ, a thousand years later.” Reflect on the passage. Who was the original audience, and what was their situation? How is that relevant to you today?
Sermon Devo
This summer we are exploring what it means to keep “in step” with the Spirit. Each week we will consider a specific fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5) by looking at other stories and themes throughout Scripture that express this fruit.
Read:Galatians 5:22-23
The old Scottish pastor, James Philip, writes:
Self-control. This grace is designed to deal with the pressures from within, the fifth column seeking to nullify the effects of all our striving for God. It means ‘getting the mastery inside oneself.’
Sin has disrupted the unity and harmony of body, soul and spirit in the image of God in which we were created, bringing about a state of ‘civil war’ within, in which the lower orders have mutinied and usurped authority over the higher, with the physical dominating the emotional, the emotional the mental, and all three dominating the spiritual.
The Spirit comes, in the gospel, to restore order, to subdue the usurping parts and put them in their proper place. This grace of ‘self-control’ comes last in the list, because it is the crown of the Spirit’s work in a renewed heart. The disorder wrought by sin in men’s lives does not disappear in a day, and not without tears and a cross can control be regained.
Evening Prayer of Examen
- Where did you move with or feel close to Jesus today?
- Where did you resist or feel far from Jesus today?
- Where is Jesus leading you tomorrow? Ask for joy as you follow him.
Benediction
“Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.” (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17)
