Hello, my name is Ivo and I would like to start a new mini-series about some important topics of everyday christian life.
The point is for readers to think about their faith and if there is anything in their lives they should improve to make the relationship with God better. I will also try to cover some popular topics and questions in the following posts.
A lot of information is from our local church pastor, who is very wise and who changed life of many people.
I understand Christianity not as a hobby, but as a life-changing identity, where God has chosen you when you did not deserve it. I also believe in Bible that it is God's word and in Jesus who died in a cross for our sins.
The topic I would like to start with is very important one. As a Christians, we believe God wants to have a relationship with us, He wants to teach us and change our hearts. The main way how is He doing it is Bible and Praying. But since we are still a sinful humans, we have a tendency to forget how important that is. It is easier to watch a movie or play a game than read bible and think about it. Often we decide to read every day and after a few weeks we forget more and more often or we feel like the Bible isn't talking to us anymore.
Here is some advice how to pray and read Bible in a way, that makes sense. This is definitely not an only way how to study bible or pray, it is one of the ways that works great and does not take too much time (since not everyone can spend hours daily studying the Bible, although maybe we should).
read a section with finished thought - in the original Bible, there were no chapters. Chapters came few hundred years later. But the division to chapters is quite handy so most likely read one whole chapter, not only some verse or the whole book at once :)
now how to work with it: (I use as an example the text from Daniel chapter 6.)
Who is the God and who is a man - what does the text say about the God and what does it say about a man? What are God's characteristics and what are man's characteristics?
For example we find in the text that God is someone who saves people and who makes miracles. Someone who saves people you never thought can be saved (like the king in Daniel). You can think about people around you who are saved by God and how did they got saved. As God saved the Daniel from lion pit, He also saves us from our lion pits. And as third thing, God calls people to serve him and does not tell them it will be great and easy. He called Daniel to the area where people wanted him dead for praising true God. So He calls us also to difficult situations.
As on who is man, we see people who are jealous, wants power, does not wish anything good to another person, people who listens when someone plays it on their ego. But Also we can see Daniel who persevered in difficult situation.
That is the Bible reading part. now for the praying part (remember, we use what we read in the bible before we started praying):
1) Praise - Thank God for who He is and for what does the text say about him. So in this text from Daniel, thank God for the people He saved and that He is still saving people. Thank God that he calls us and that we have a reason why we are here.
2) Repent - Try to look on what the man (people) do in the text and think about yourself, how it is connected to your sins. So maybe I am also a person who cares about what other people think and who likes when someone plays it on his ego. And I have to repent from it, say "God, i am sorry that when I did this yesterday, I cared more about myself than about you." Try to be very specific.
3) Request - Ask God to change you and your surroundings, because you cannot change it yourself, God has to keep on changing your heart through the Holy Spirit. Ask Him to take away your sinful desires and give you the right desires to seek Him. Also pray for other people and again, try to be specific. Pray for Christians around you and also for non-believers to open their hearts. Ask God to change the hearts of non-believers around you, He is the only one that can do that.
4) Freestyle - whatever comes to your mind. It can be from the text you read before but it doesn't have to.
Well, if you read the whole article, you now have a guide on how to study the Bible and pray every day. If you can, do this every morning as a start of your day. It changes how you think about your work or school, it makes you think more about how you should behave to honor God. And it makes you see the things you see in the Bible more in your surroundings.
Also if you have more time, I encourage you to study the Bible more than this. But this might be a very good start, if you are having a hard time to read and pray.
Thanks for reading and see you in the next article. The topic will be something like "The storms in your life", not sure yet.