Consistent Word & Prayer Life

3. April 2008 by Bernice Davis.

I have been receiving a lot of emails lately about how does one develop a consistent word and prayer life and how does one begin to transform the mind. I thought I would break my study today on the book of Matthew and attempt to answer this. The emails talk about the struggle that one has with being inconsistent.

I think it would be fair to say that we have all experienced inconsistency in our prayer and word life at one time or another and at various seasons in our life. Some of us may even find ourselves in that season of inconsistency now. Discipline doesn’t happen over night, it is developed.

I struggled for years on developing a consistent word and prayer life. One of my first problems was when I started studying the word; I set my goals too high and would always get discouraged and stop. When I first started reading the bible, I use to fall asleep all the time. Sometimes, I would even say I’m going to spend 30 minutes reading the word and 30 minutes in prayer daily and found my self because of schedules, excuses, etc, not meeting my goals, and then I would get in this cycle of starting and stopping because I just could not consistently keep a one hour prayer and word time.

Let me tell you what I did to overcome this problem in my life. I decided to reach for smaller goals. Each day, I began something as small as 5 minutes of prayer and 5 minutes of reading the bible which was something that I could easily keep. After I started getting consistent because that was such an easy goal to keep, the 5 minutes grew to 10 then to 20 then to 30 until sometimes now, I find it difficult to put the bible down and I love my prayer time now. In the beginning it was a chore, but now it has become a love. My relationship with God has grown and I really love now being in God’s presence through prayer. I look forward to it rather than seeing it as a chore.

So, as you see in the beginning, I did it simply because it is the right thing to do and sometimes I felt burdened by the ritual but knew it was necessary to develop a strong relationship with God. Now reading the word and prayer has become a joy, my source of strength and renewal.

Another method I used was memorization of scripture. I found a scripture everyday, and I memorized it. I would go to work and write my scripture for the day on a sticky pad and would put it on my computer monitor so that it would be in my face all day and by the end of the day, I had memorized it. That was also another way that I begin seeing my mind renewed and transformed. My thinking began changing, my faith began growing, I felt more and more empowered with each scripture that I committed to memory.

The bible teaches that transformation of the mind can only come from the word of God, there is no other way. So all I’m saying is start off with little steps and they will grow into larger steps and God will honor our faithfulness. Even if we don’t understand everything that we read, the comprehension will come. I used to pick up the bible everyday and quietly whisper to God “to please read this with me.” It was my way of asking him to help me understand what I was reading and to get the correct meaning from the text.

Get you a good study bible that has easy reading. Remember, God will honor your faithfulness and will send you help. You may not like the way that I did it but find what works for you. All I’m asking you to do is consider sitting and planning a study life that will work for you and something that you can faithfully keep. So our memory verse for today is Joshua 1:8 “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate on it day and night, and thou shall observe to do all that is written within, and then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and thou shalt have good success.” (KJV)

Make it a great day and don’t forget to pray and read God’s word daily.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »