Why Your Daily Time in The Bible is So Important – Part 1 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

Truly God is good to Israel,
    to those whose hearts are pure.
But as for me, I almost lost my footing.
    My feet were slipping, and I was almost gone.
For I envied the proud
    when I saw them prosper despite their wickedness.

You guide me with your counsel,
    leading me to a glorious destiny.

Psalm 73:1-3, 24 (NLT)

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Transcript

Good morning.

Well, every weekday morning at this time, we stop to take some time with God in the Bible, God’s word, and just listen to what God has to say about our lives. How desperately we need God’s perspective on our lives. Our perspective is so shortsighted, and God’s perspective is so different.

All this week I want to talk with you about why your daily time with God in the Bible is so very important.

Not just the time we spend together here with this radio spot – but your own time with God, opening the Bible, listening to Him.

So today I want to take you to a passage in Psalm 73. The psalmist starts off by saying, Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly slipped, for I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

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And he goes on to talk about the people in his life who are not following God at all, and yet their lives just seem to be great, their prosperity is great. They have everything they need, it seems like, and here he is struggling, and he says my feet had almost slipped as I thought about this. I almost lost my confidence in God.

Then he comes a few verses later, and he says, If I had said I will speak thus, I would have betrayed this generation of your children. But when I thought how to understand this, that is, when I thought about all these people who are not honoring God and yet seem to be doing great, it seemed to me a wearisome task until I went into the sanctuary of God. Then I discerned their end. Truly they are set in slippery places.

So he starts this off by saying, it just seemed so unfair to me. My feet almost slipped because I was seeing how well people were doing who weren’t following God. But then he says, when I went into God’s sanctuary, it gave me a different perspective on life. I saw things differently. When I took the long view. I saw that actually these people’s feet were on slippery places, that they were in an insecure place in life.

The only security that is found is the security of a good relationship with God.

Because God is the one in control of my life.

Well, you can see how significant it is to spend time in God’s word every day because God’s perspective always gives you hope.

When you start to despair about the situation you’re in, you know, in the middle of a situation, it can seem like things just cannot get better. There’s nothing that could change the bad situation you’re in. Think of when you have month after month of rain.

And you’re sitting at home thinking, I’m so sick of this rain. What’s the forecast like? And you look at your app, and there it is, another 6 days of rain ahead, and you think, oh, it’s never going to change. Or think about back when we were in lockdown from COVID, and it just seemed to go on and on, and it seemed like there was no end to it.

Think about the disciples’ perspective, the disciples of Jesus after His crucifixion, and how they were just meeting together. They were in despair like everything was over.

Well, when we spend time with God in His word, it reminds us that there is a bigger picture. It reminds us that there’s more going on. It reminds us that God is in control, that He has a plan for our lives, and it gives us hope that things will not remain the way they are as we continue to trust God.

So there’s reason number one for you to take time with God in His word every single day of your life.

His word gives you God’s perspective, and that gives you hope.

I’m John North.

To go deeper in your faith, visit AFCI.com.au.

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