Focus on key phrases first. As you do the other words will fall into place. Spend five minutes at the beginning of your devotions reviewing a scripture or two. If you do this every day it won’t be long before you will have a lot of scriptures memorized.
2. Read or listen to three chapters of the Bible: 20 minutes
At three chapters a day you read almost the whole Bible in a year (there are 1,189 chapters in the Bible—if you divide this by 365 it comes out to 3.26 chapters a day). There are a couple of chapters of names of ancestors and allotments of land to Israel’s tribes which you could skip if you want to listen to the whole Bible in a year.
3. Write things you’re thankful for: 5 minutes
I use a moleskin journal and a nice fountain pen and write a single page of things I’m thankful for. I write it out in prayer form, e.g., Lord Jesus, thank you for another day. Thank you for the gift of sleep, and for your protection during the night, etc.
4. Pray: 15 minutes
Often I use prayers I’ve written out in various categories, e.g. my family, God’s kingdom come, our nation, the persecuted church, etc. I may pray for one or two categories a day. Though I don’t restrict myself to using my written prayers, I’ve found that by referring to them it helps keep me on track. I hope to elaborate more on this in a future blog post.
There you go. Devise your own plan for making time for God and try to make it a habit. Again, start small if 45 minutes seems too long. Spend one minute on a Scripture, read five minutes, etc. The key is to try to be consistent. Nothing satisfies or yields more joy than spending time with Jesus.
This article about making time for God originally appeared here.