For the past few years, I’ve struggled with trying to find a daily devotional I can stick to. For those of you not familiar,
Daily devotionals are publications which provide a specific spiritual reading for each calendar day. Daily devotionals have a long tradition in religious communities… They tend to be associated with a daily time of prayer and meditation. Traditionally daily devotionals came in the format of a book, with one reading passage for each day.
I’ve tried using the Holy Bible app with built-in devotionals, as well as actual hard-cover books to read. Every time, after a few diligent days, the devotional gets tossed to the wayside. Even when I was a part of prayer groups, where there should have been motivation to read due to a built-in accountability factor, I’d always end up confessing that I’d fallen behind on my devotionals. Over the years, I’ve experienced a lot of guilt in relation to my inability to keep up with my daily devotions, which I associated with an inability to commit to my faith and prioritize it.
Those of you who’ve been following my blog for a while have probably deduced that I’m a bit of a self-improvement junkie, so I’ve never stopped trying to work out a viable solution. Of all the Youtube videos and self-help articles I’ve consumed, the messaging is fairly consistent: to make a habit stick, you must do it daily and create a place in your routine for it. The hard part is, in order for you to fit this habit into your routine seamlessly, you need to remove as much friction as possible. Friction is known as whatever makes it difficult for you to perform the action every day. In the case of my daily devotionals, I realized that it was the simple act of reading. In the morning, I found it hard to bring my bleary eyes to read anything that’s not a social media notification – if I started off the morning with my devotionals, I’d invariably end up easing back into dreamland.
I realized I needed a daily devotional in audio format if I wanted any hope of creating a habit. I looked up “daily devotional” in my podcast app and… in entered The Morning Mindset into my life.
The Morning Mindset is a 5-minute daily podcast that usually centers around a few bible verses. Up until Christmas started, the pastor was going through the book of Ephesians. It’s been a tremendous influence in righting my mindset every morning, and I’ve found that it also eases some of the anxiety I feel when work and other obligations prevent me from going to church. I hope that if you are in a place that needs it, that you’ll give it a listen and see if it will fit into your practice.
Breathe, 