Tag: Discipline

You Need God Today

Christian, if you are not reading God’s Word each day in order to commune with God, then you are not living the Christian life from day to day.

This is not a call to religious box-checking.

Reading the Bible every day does not earn favor with God. The issue is much more fundamental than that.

The Christian life is a life lived in fellowship with God.

Jesus told His disciples:

“Abide in me, and I in you.” – John 15.4

And just a few verses later:

“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you…” – John 15.7

Christianity is not merely believing the right things about God and then going about our lives. We have been brought into a relationship with Him. We are called to walk with Him, depend upon Him, listen to Him, trust Him, and increasingly have our lives shaped by Him.

That means Bible reading is about much more than information. You can read three chapters every morning, study difficult passages, know a great deal about the Bible, and still fail to come to the Scriptures to commune with God.

Yes, God has given us His Word. But the goal isn’t simply to get God’s Word into your schedule.

The goal is to get God’s Word into you.

To hear what God has said. To have your thinking corrected, your desires exposed, your fears confronted, and your priorities reordered. To be reminded again of what is true about God, about yourself, about this world, and about the life He has called you to live.

That is why yesterday isn’t enough.

Yesterday you needed God’s truth. Today you need it again. Yesterday your mind needed to be renewed. Today it does too. Yesterday you needed your heart redirected away from yourself and toward God. You will need that again today.

You cannot live today’s Christian life on yesterday’s communion with God.

This is not about guilt. It is about need.

The God who created you has spoken. The God who saved you has made Himself known. And He has graciously given you His Word so that you might know Him, believe Him, obey Him, delight in Him, and walk with Him.

So, Christian, open your Bible today.

Not merely because Christians are supposed to read their Bibles. Not so you can check another box. Not so you can feel better about yourself.

Open it because you need God today.

Don’t Miss a Day

My phone really doesn’t want me to miss a day.

Apps congratulate us for opening them several days in a row. Games reward us for coming back tomorrow. Fitness and weight-management apps keep track of our consecutive days. Miss one, and the counter may start over.

They’re called streaks, and there is a reason they work. They help form habits. They give us a small sense of accomplishment. And, of course, they keep us coming back to the app. None of that is necessarily bad.

But I wonder if all this streak-building is also training us to think that consistency is the same thing as relationship.

It isn’t. And that matters when we open our Bibles.

A streak can tell you whether you did something. It cannot tell you why you did it – or what happened while you were there.

You can read your Bible every morning. You can complete the assigned chapters. You can check the box. You can watch the number on your Bible app climb from 30 days to 100 days to 365 days. And you can do all of that without really communing with God.

God warned His people through Isaiah:

“This people draw near with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
while their hearts are far from me.”
– Isaiah 29.13

The problem wasn’t that they were doing nothing religious. They were. The problem was that their outward activity had become disconnected from their hearts.

That danger hasn’t disappeared. We can become very disciplined at doing Christian things without paying much attention to the God those things are supposed to draw us toward.

That doesn’t make habits bad. Discipline matters. There will be mornings when discipline gets you out of bed and into the Word when you don’t particularly feel like doing it. There is something good about developing habits that regularly put us in places where our hearts can be shaped by God’s truth.

But the habit is not the goal. 

God is.

Imagine measuring your closest relationships by streaks. Talked to my wife today. Another day completed. Streak intact.

Something about that immediately feels wrong. I don’t want merely to maintain contact with my wife. 

I want to know her. Listen to her. Talk with her. Share life with her. A relationship is more than repeated interaction.

When we open the Bible, there is a Person there whom we are seeking to know. God has spoken.

So the question isn’t simply, Did I read my Bible today There are better questions:

Did I listen? 

Did I believe what God said? 

Did I allow His Word to correct my thinking? 

Did I submit myself to what He said? 

Did I come to Scripture because I wanted to know Him – or merely because I didn’t want to miss a day?

Don’t confuse consistency with communion.

Keep the habit. Build the discipline. Read your Bible every day. But don’t settle for the streak.

Don’t open your Bible tomorrow merely because you opened it today.

Open it because there is a God you need to know, hear, trust, and walk with.

The Opposite of Zeal

Most Christians are not destroyed by sudden rebellion.

They drift.

A neglected discipline.
An idle hour.
A comfortable routine.
A growing indifference.

Little by little, zeal cools. Scripture warns us far more often about complacency than persecution.

Comfort has lulled more believers to sleep than opposition ever has.

God made us for purposeful work, disciplined living, and wholehearted devotion.

The battle for faithfulness is often won or lost in ordinary moments – in the small disciplines, daily duties, and unseen choices that shape our lives.

The opposite of zeal is not heresy.

It is indifference.

“Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.” – James 1.22