The practical importance of devotional time.

Family Camp 2012

<p>The practical importance of devotional time.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Restoration International

Alane Waters

Meaningful Morning Time

I'm so thankful that the doctor said I could come to Oklahoma.

Well this morning I want to talk about a subject that's very dear to my heart and I think it's very dear to each of your hearts.

I know last night in Brother Paul's message he talked about sometimes what is 1 of the most important aspects of gaining and maintaining a Christian character, right?

And over and over and over last night we heard responses such as this, time for communion with God and study of the word.

Was that kind of the overwhelming thoughts that came back?

OK, was that the overwhelming consensus we came to, right?

This is a vital key to develop the lovely character of Jesus Christ.

Now this question I want you to answer in your heart.

You don't have to raise your hand But I know from my own experience and I know in our family speaking for all 5 of us There have been times in this journey that the morning time of prayer and communion, and we choose to do it in the morning because we have proved too many times that if we do not seek first Christ, if we do not seek first the will of God for us in the day, you know what happens?

So how many have ever had that experience?

We get distracted in the morning and we have good intentions that I'll catch that in an hour or I'll get that it when I have this break in the day but it doesn't really happen and we go into our day without finding the connection that God wants us to have when we begin the day.

So all of us have experienced that but now in our family we have also experienced that sometimes we are just not really enthusiastic and excited about having time for meditation and prayer or we are not necessarily excited or how shall I say we're not feeling that we are gaining what we hope to gain in our study of the word.

Sometimes it seems like we can be going through the motions but not gaining what we want to gain.

Now I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands because I know there's other people in this room today that have experienced that like we have.

And I want to encourage you don't give up, persevere.

And then we're going to look at today is how do we take this time in the morning with God, how do we take those moments whether they're a half an hour, 15 minutes or an hour, whatever you choose to to spend in that time of communion and study how do we gain the greatest blessing?

What can we do to freshen it up to liven it up to make us look forward to to be motivated and to come there to receive a blessing.

Because like I said, it hasn't always been that way for us.

There's times it's dry and sometimes we can be discouraged.

And so this morning I wanna share with you some things that I have found personally very helpful to me.

And as a mother working with our children as they were growing at different ages and stages in life that was very helpful in our family to make our morning time with God not just something that we can check off okay I did that for today like a checklist okay got my chores done I have my time with God I did this I did that this that and get to the end date all my list is done but most importantly to make it meaningful to us to make it personal to us to make it so that it has an effect on who we are in the day.

Because if we just sit and read and we go through row prayers we can get up and be the same people we were the hour before we started and not be any different.

We've made a commitment to come here because we want to become more like Christ.

So there's 2 ingredients to meaningful morning time And I've already said what they were, and we talked about it briefly last night.

And that is time for prayer and time for Bible study.

So we're going to divide it into those 2 areas.

And I'm going to be sharing this again from my personal experience and as a mother.

So those of you who have children, and children, young people from the ages of 4 and up and maybe even younger can listen because I'm going to be talking about things you can do to make your time with Jesus in the morning fun, exciting, special, meaningful, and life-changing.

So I want us to focus on Christ's prayer, kind of as the launching point for us today in our communion time with God, because again I think if we were all honest, whether we're little children or whether we're mature adults, we can get in the habit of saying the same prayer over and over and over in our mind, even out loud.

And we can go through the whole 5, 10, or however many minutes it takes you without a lot of thought of what we're saying.

So I want us to look at the model prayer of Jesus, because here we see the ingredients of what our prayer should consist of.

And I found this so intriguing, so encouraging, so helpful to direct my prayers to break me out of the tendency to pray the same prayers again and again and again.

Now do I pray for the same people every day?

But we can pray in a manner in which it's fresh and alive every day for today that makes it meaningful for us.

And so we're going to be looking at Matthew chapter 6 and verses 9 through 13.

We're going to dissect this prayer and I'm sure if we all just didn't even open our Bibles we could say the Lord's prayer out loud together And we've probably done it many times in churches and we repeat it again and again together.

But how many of us are focusing what Christ is really teaching us in this prayer?

So that's what we want to look at this morning for the first part of the message.

And so Jesus begins with these words, Our Father.

He was illustrating his prayer to his disciples and he includes the disciples and all of us in that prayer before we were ever born he included us isn't that a neat thought our father which art in which art in heaven immediately Jesus helps us to recognize that we are children of the Almighty God and we are made in His image.

He formed man in His image out of a heart of love And so he immediately sets us to recognize that God our Father is in heaven.

We can acknowledge him as our Father even if we don't have an earthly father, which means then that we can trust and put our entire dependence upon God.

Just like a child would look to their father or in the situation it's a single parent home or a single mommy home, that child looks to mother and finds trust and dependence there.

And the younger they are, the more they're dependent on us, right?

We are babes in the Christian experience, and God wants us to know that he cares for us as a tender father and that our dependence can be on him that we want to be guided by his wisdom, obedient to his will, and accept his plan for our life.

All of those thoughts are included in that opening phrase.

That God has the authority, he is the rightful parent to us.

He is our creator, our maker, and through Jesus our redeemer.

So right away we recognize God loves us and he wants to be our tender Father.

Thy kingdom come is the next phrase you want to look at.

And for me I had to stop and think what is the kingdom of God like?

And then I had to think what do I imagine heaven to be like?

Have you ever had those kind of thoughts?

Have you ever sat back and just daydreamed about what heaven's going to be like?

If you haven't, I encourage you to do that.

Think, just meditate on what you believe heaven will be like.

Okay, I like feedback so if you can help me, I want to know that you're understanding here, is there going to be any complaints in heaven?

So when we begin, thank you, when we begin to imagine what heaven's like, and now Jesus is teaching us, thy kingdom come.

The kingdom of heaven is where is it supposed to come?

Jesus is saying to the Father in heaven, Thy kingdom come.

Christ was praying for the power of His Father to operate in his life for that day through those words.

Your kingdom Father I want in my life today.

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Meaningful Morning Time

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