4 Dangers of Depending on Devotionals
The most worrying trend I’ve noticed as I have ministered among believing women is how many even long-time Christian women have difficulty with studying the Word of God in a direct way for themselves. And sadly there is a definite correlation between our lack of biblical depth, breadth and fidelity and our inability to respond in faith to our problems, challenges and our culture.
I get that the Bible is intimidating. Believe me! It’s why I wrote my 5 day free email course, DWELL, to address this very thing. It’s why I designed the Dwell Journal and the “Wandel Joernaal”, to help us push through our intimidation, overwhelm and reluctance around the direct study of God’s word. I know first-hand that devotionals are so much easier to understand, with the content often crafted to answer one specific need or question. And especially newer devotionals feel so much more relevant to us, chiefly because they often make us, the reader, the main character in every single story.
The Bible is no lazy man’s book! Much of it’s treasure, like the valuable minerals stored in the bowels of the earth, only yield up themselves to the diligent seeker.
Arthur W Pink
Here are 4 dangers we are consistently exposed to when we don’t learn to read the Bible for ourselves:
Disconnections & Distance:
Biblestudy is not primarily a pursuit of head knowledge, although, as I always say, you can’t trust someone you don’t know. It is primarily a pursuit of God himself. God’s word is his primary revelation about himself. It’s where he speaks to us most directly this side of heaven. Our time in God’s word should grow not just our understanding but also our intimacy.
Think about it this way:
There is a marked difference between the intimate relationship between a husband and wife who spend time together doing both meaningful and mundane things and a teenage romance where the communication consists of text messages and memes.
The first and most important danger of our dependence on devotionals is the effect it has on our personal relationship with God. When we think that we should get a specific message out of every interaction with God it robs the relationship of its joy and it becomes unnatural – because it becomes all about feelings and experiences. If marriages were dependent on feelings and experiences they would not last very long.
Our reliance on devotionals has created in us a strange expectation when it comes to “quiet time”. Instead of simply enjoying time with God, we constantly assess if it’s “doing something” for us. Instead of seeing it as intimacy and relationship building, we measure it for its “impact” and “self-help”. But when we ditch devotionals and come to the word with the understanding that we are growing closer to God through it, we allow ourselves to be free to enjoy our relationship with God as the gift of grace that it is. That is so much better than the devotional-driven mindset that causes us to be constantly morbidly introspective about the relationship and whether it makes us “feel good” or what it “does for us”. What if we chose devotion to God over devotionals? Devotion reflected in a dedication to spending time with Him regardless of how “personally relevant” or “exciting” that felt.
Deception:
When bitesized theology is all we have, it only takes someone who dresses in a relatable way and speaks in a confident way to convince and sway us. But if you know your Bible, you will not by swayed by tone and trend, but by truth. If you want to know how to test a teacher, know your Bible. Knowing God’s word for yourself is your best safeguard against false teaching. The blame for the growth of movements such as the New Apostolic Reformation (Bill Johnson and Bethel), the popularity of emergent (Rob Bell) and affirming (Jen Hatmaker) teachers, can be squarely blamed on our lack of Biblical literacy. Even though these teachers and their content present to us a version of Jesus almost unrecognisable from his portrayal in the gospels, we remain unable to apply the scriptural proof test to what they say and write because we simply do not know the Bible well enough!
Here’s something crazy. AW Tozer, in his book THE CRUCIFIED LIFE, spoke about applying a Scriptural Proof Test to “phrases and mottos that on the surface look great but are not rooted in Scripture or that mostly bolster one’s self-image,”. Nearly 60 years after his death, as we see more and more “self-help spirituality” in devotionals and “Christian” books marketed to women, you have to wonder, would any of them pass the Scriptural Proof Test?
If you are using human teachers as the sole means of understanding God’s word, by what will you judge the teachers?
John Piper
Dehydration:
Relying on second-hand revelation as the filter through which we get to know the heart and character of God is like relying on predigested food to sustain us in this marathon that is life. Pre-digested truth will not ultimately feed the truest and deepest longings of our souls and they won’t be enough when the trials come. God’s desire is for us to abide in his word, to actually live there, not to always only rent space from other people who live there.
But so many of us are unknowingly malnourished. And after a while, if we keep skipping meals, a page-a-day devotional here, an inspirational Instagram post there, we eventually do not feel hungry anymore. And it’s when the storms of life come upon us, as they inevitably will, that we realise that second-hand revelation is not enough to sustain us. We should see time in God’s word as a waterpoint, a feeding station for the race we are all called to run. It’s the waypoint we need to persevere because it is where we grow in our (first hand, experiential) knowledge of and confidence in God. That is why David can say Psalm 119 v 11: because I have treasured your word in my heart I can do your will.
Our ability to keep running our race is directly linked to our ability to keep returning to God’s word for sustenance.
Diluted Witness:
The number one accusation made about Christianity is an accusation made against Christians. Against us. That we are hypocrites. And we are. It’s the human condition. Even the people who call us hypocrites are hypocrites. But our inability to apply our faith to how we interact with our neighbours (or the guy next to you in traffic), pay our bills (or don’t pay them), exercise integrity in our business dealings and compassion in our context and, in general, the lack of the fruit of the spirit in our lives, can all be chalked up to us having very little by way of an authentic daily walk with God and a clear picture of what we really need to be obedient to.
This has been my experience. When I have spent time in God’s word and in prayer: It is like putting on a pair of glasses at the start of the day that influence how you see the rest of your day. It changes your expectations, your outlook, and your thinking, and therefore influences your actions, reactions and feelings. When our eyes are opened in that way, we see God operating in our lives more clearly, and we become first-hand witnesses. And our witness becomes authentic, fresh and relevant because it’s not the well-fitting story written by someone else at the start of every devotional chapter but your lived experience of walking with God. What if we tried that every day? Maybe then they will say about us what was said about Peter and John in Acts 4, that we are ordinary people made extraordinary just because we have “been with Jesus” (V13).