How to start a daily Bible Study

This series of  posts was originally published on David’s blog.

Part One: Setting a Time

As our GPS daily Bible study program launches this week, I am going to be sharing a series of posts  focused on how to implement and use the GPS guide. For some, this may be a brand new discipline, and I am hoping these thoughts will help you get started.

First, I want to say up front that I recognize that everyone is busy! I do not meet very many people who are just looking for stuff to do in order to pass the time. With that thought in mind, we have designed GPS to provide a “bite-size” piece of Bible reading and reflection. We are committed to providing a resource that is manageable for anyone and everyone to use in their life.

That being said, even with the simple format of the GPS guide, it does require a certain amount of time. I would say for most, you can work through each day’s reading and reflection questions in 15-30 minutes depending on how much time you want to spend reflecting on the questions.

So, the first step is finding that time!

What I want to encourage you to think about doing first as you seek to implement the GPS guide into your daily practices is to try to find a time that works best for you, and try to stick with that time everyday. When we place a new discipline within a pattern for our daily life, I think it greatly increases the chances that we will continue to invest in that discipline.

For some, that might mean that the first thirty minutes of the day are dedicated to GPS. For others, you might take the first few minutes when you sit down at your desk at the office to read through the GPS guide. It might be during your lunch break, during a mid-afternoon stretch, or just before you go to bed. It does not matter when you do your daily devotion time. What matters is that you find a time that works for you and try to stick with it.

Don’t be too legalistic about it. If you start out in the morning, but after 7-10 days that does not look like it’s going to work for you, try a different time. Many people carry the expectation that their daily devotion time must happen first thing in the morning, and while that works well for me, it may not work for everyone’s schedule. Find a time that works for you.

Once you’ve found a time that works for you, you are ready to think about finding the right “space.” I’ll be sharing more about finding “sacred space” tomorrow.

Part Two : Establising “Sacred Space”

Yesterday, I started this series of posts to share some ideas on how to implement and use the GPS study guide that our church launched this past weekend. If you are not familiar with GPS, you can find more information here.

In that first post, I talked about the importance of establishing a set time each day to spend time in study and reflection. I truly believe having a specific time, regardless of when it falls during your day, will help keep you committed to this important practice.

Today, I want to write about establishing “sacred space,” where you might go during that time each day.

My wife is a third grade teacher, and one of the things she does prior to every school years is spending some time setting up her room for her kids. What I discovered that first year in helping her was that there is a certain science involved in how you “set up” an elementary age classroom. Everything was placed in the room in such a way that would create a great learning environment for the kids that would help them to focus on their work and limit any distractions from that key task.

In short, when setting up a classroom for 3rd graders, environment matters.

I think the same thing is true when we think about our daily devotion time.

For instance, I’m writing this post early Wednesday morning from my house where I usually have my daily devotion time. I’m sitting at a small bistro table we have set up in the corner of our living room. I have my headphones on with some soft music playing in the background. I have my morning coffee sitting beside me, the lights are dim, and it’s still dark outside. In short, there is nothing to distract me from my primary goal of focusing on God.

In talking with our Senior Pastor Mike on Monday, he shared with me that his “sacred space” is his front porch when the weather cooperates. Other times, it’s his chair in the living room. I remember several years ago hearing a pastor talk about the “prayer closet” he had constructed for himself in his garage. With five kids at home, the garage was the only place where he could find some quiet in order to focus, and so he had built himself a small room in the garage where he could go.

There are thousands of different ways in which to create sacred space. The key is to find one that fits you. With just a few small adjustments [it does not have to involve a construction project] I think you will find it easier for you to focus and listen to what God might be saying to your heart during your devotional time.

I want to encourage you to think about how you might create, “sacred space.”

Some of you may already be doing this, and I would love to hear about what you are doing. If you would like, please leave me a comment below. Your space may be a source of inspiration for someone else checking out this post. You may also email me if you would like.

Tomorrow, I’ll be talking about the importance of “reflection” in our daily time with God.

Part Three : Spend time in Reflection

This week I’ve been writing a series of posts with some ideas on how to implement and use the GPS daily Bible reading guide. So far, I’ve written about the need to find a specific time each day to spend in daily devotion as well as the idea of establishing a “sacred space” for you to focus. Today, I want to talk about one of the most critical elements of this process we might think of as “reflection.”

The pace of our modern lives does not lend itself to spending a great deal of our time in reflection. Consequently, for many of us, it has become a foreign idea. In the context of daily Bible study, we might think of reflection in two different ways.

First, reflection is simply engaging in serious thought and consideration. It implies that we are giving an ample amount of time as well as the appropriate amount of “brain space” to thinking about what we have read and what God might be saying to us as we engage the Bible. Establishing “sacred space” is a key element of this in that serious thought also implies the elimination of other distractions. In this way, we might think of reading and studying the Bible as focusing on a beautiful piece of art or the experience of soaking up the image of a beautiful mountain sunrise. It’s about taking time to appreciate the full picture.

We might  also think about reflection in another way. None of us have ever seen our own faces, and yet we all have some sense of what we look like because we have seen a reflection of ourselves. In the same way that we might look into a mirror to understand what we look like so we also look into the Bible to see who we are in light of the word from God that we find there. In other words, reading the Bible is about growing in the knowledge of God, but it also about growing in our understanding of ourselves. We are meant to find ourselves in the story, and allow that story to speak truth into our lives.

Let me give you an example of what that looks like.

When I first became serious about studying the Bible my freshman year of High School, my youth pastor gave me a really easy to remember process for engaging in reflection. The process he outlined for me was centered around three simple questions.

• What does this text say about God?
• What does this text say about us?
• What does this text say about the relationship between God and us?

He even gave us an acronym to remember these three questions: GUR. [God, Us, Relationship] This process of reflection still guides me today, and I share it with the hopes that it might be a benefit to others as well.

Tomorrow, I will share the last post of this series in which I will be talking about the benefiting of creating an “archive” of our walk with God.

Part Four : Archiving your walk with God

This is the last in a series of posts with ideas on how to implement the GPS Bible reading guide. So far, I’ve written about the need to find a specific time each day to spend in daily devotion, the importance of establishing a “sacred space” for you to focus, andspending time reflecting over the scripture that you have read. Today I want to talk about creating an “archive” of our devotional life.

About four years ago, the fruit that I was experiencing in my life as a result of my daily disciplines increased dramatically. Key to that change for me was that I started journaling. In fact, I started carrying a small black journal with me almost everywhere I went. I now have a stack of about 10 of these black journals in my office which represent the ups and downs of the last four years of my life.

I had never been serious about keeping a journal prior to this, and I frankly did not understand how it could be of benefit. Today, I would describe the benefit in this way.

We often assume that the benefit of our daily devotion time is that we will get a chance to hear from God every day and receive direction from God for that day. Now, that does certainly happen. This time for me usually happens in the mornings, and the days when I have a dedicated time with God, my day goes smoother.

But there is something much larger going on here than investing in that particular day.

To engage in a daily time with God is to invest in every day for the rest of your life. In other words, the fruit that we receive from this discipline is often “slow developing” but at the same time, “long lasting.” Understanding how God is speaking into our lives and directing us by God’s grace over the course of time is just as important as receiving something for that particular day.

Journaling facilitates this more subtle process, and I truly believe that staying committed to this daily discipline is fueled by the fruit that grows slow. If you miss this fruit because you are not paying attention to it’s growth, I think that increases the chances that this new discipline will fade.

Buy a journal.
Share your thoughts.
Archive where God is leading you in your life.