A Model for Personal Devotions
A practical blueprint for making the most of 20–30 minutes in personal spiritual disciplines, with Relational Reading as one of its key elements.
How to Grow from Reading the Bible
When Bible Reading Feels Hard
Bible reading and meditation are important spiritual disciplines for growing in Christ, but many of us struggle to do them well. Sometimes, our personal devotions feel burdensome, unhelpful, or even boring. We may finish a passage without remembering it, feel distracted, or sense little impact on our lives. These challenges are not unusual—but they are often signs of underdeveloped devotional habits.
The good news is that they are easy to fix. When addressed, our personal devotions can open the door to profound intimacy with God and a deeper personal relationship with Him—sometimes unlike anything you’ve experienced before, or perhaps something you’ve experienced in the past but have recently felt lacking.
We’ve created three resources to address these common struggles:
The 4 R’s of Relational Reading
A powerful, four-step process for engaging with God relationally through Scripture and experiencing transformation from the inside out.
The Bookmark Reading Plan
A self-paced Bible reading plan designed to provide well-spaced literary variety for contemplative personal devotions.
Below is a brief explanation of the 4 R’s of Relational Reading. A Quick Guide to keep in your Bible—featuring our Model for Personal Devotions on the back—is available to download at the bottom of the page. Full-color reference cards are also available for free in the Resource Shelf.
Two Ways to Engage with Scripture
There are two main ways to read and interact with the Bible: third-person engagement and first/second-person engagement.
- Third-person engagement (“it/He") treats the Bible merely as a literary, historical, or theological artifact. You might learn interesting facts about God, humanity, or Christ, but these truths remain at a distance and aren’t perceived as immediately relevant, similar to when you study subjects like biology, history, or astronomy. This is the kind of engagement anyone can have with the Bible, including non-Christians.
- First/second-person engagement (“You/I”) happens in the context of a real relationship with God. The same text helps you understand yourself and the Person you know personally. The truths of the Bible are immediately relevant because they shape your relationship with Him and your life. Only God’s children can engage Scripture in the context of a reconciled personal relationship with God.
It is important to recognize that academic study and devotional study are not opposed to one another. Serious intellectual engagement supports our devotional engagement. The better we understand the text and the truths being studied, the better we can experience them in the context of our own personal relationship with God. For this reason, we recommend using a study resource during personal devotions to help ensure a more accurate understanding of the text.
Imagine someone wrote every fact about your spouse or best friend in a book. A stranger could study it from a third-person perspective, learning interesting facts about him without knowing him personally at all. But if you read the book with your spouse or friend in front of you, looking at them and saying, “that’s you,” you are now reading the exact same text from a second/first person perspective. The truths about this person deepen your real relationship with them. You don’t just know about them, you know them—and now you know them more. In a similar way, all our engagement with Scripture as God’s children should be relational. The approach described below is designed to help us intentionally and fruitfully read Scripture in the context of our own relationship with God.
Reading Scripture Relationally
During personal devotions, we recommend using a simple, relational approach to Bible reading. This resource is designed to be used alongside our Model for Personal Devotions and should be preceded by the Ask, Study, and Read elements outlined there. When starting out, it can be helpful to keep the Quick Guide nearby and walk through each step diligently. Over time, the process will become second nature, and you’ll move fluidly between reflection, reaction, and response without needing a guide.
Do everything out loud—including reading, reflection, and prayer. Speaking aloud helps with focus, reduces distraction, improves retention through both hearing and speaking, and forces greater clarity by formulating thoughts into complete sentences. If you’re skeptical about this practice (or the approach in general), try it for a week and see how it goes! The blessing might surprise you.
Each of the steps below should also be done prayerfully and relationally. You are not just speaking about God; you are speaking aloud before Him and to Him, in His presence.
1. Reflect
Begin by reflecting on the passage from a first- or second-person perspective—“you” and “I”—addressing the Father, Son, or Spirit directly. Think on what you personally need to consider about God, about yourself, and about Jesus in light of this passage. What you personally need to consider about God, Jesus, or yourself from the text may not be the same as what someone else needs to consider. There may be many things you could reflect on, but contemplate those which are especially pertinent to you.
General applications must be made specific to you. For example, Scripture may call husbands to love their wives, but reflection here asks what that means for you in the context of your own relationship with God—you are called to love your wife. And for you specifically, that would like you doing X, stopping Y, changing Z. Get down to the personal, specific, concrete implications for yourself.
2. React
Each step builds on the previous ones. Next, express your genuine reaction to God based on what you have reflected on. How does this make you feel? If you feel joy, conviction, gratitude, confusion, or even nothing at all, be honest about it and say so to God. If you do not actually feel much but should, take time to consider why that might be the case.
3. Respond
Based on your reflections and reaction, respond to God using the ACTS acronym as a guide. Make each element specific and personal to you:
- Adoration: Adore God based on what you reflected on, especially how those realities have been experienced in your own relationship with Him. For example, if you reflect on God’s sovereignty, worship Him for His sovereignty as it has shown up in your own life, naming the specific ways He has protected you or provided for you.
- Confession: Confess sins considered during your reflection, seeking forgiveness, renouncing that sin, and resolving to turn to the opposite virtue of righteousness. Do not only confess general categories like “pride,” but specific actions in your life (e.g., “forgive me for being prideful toward my spouse when they tried to correct me about X recently”).
- Thanksgiving: Thank God and praise Him, not solely in general terms, but for specific, concrete ways you’ve experienced His goodness towards you, based on your reflections (e.g., “thank You forgiving me for my rudeness and pride towards my spouse last night”).
- Supplication (Requests): Ask God for whatever you desire for yourself and others in light of the passage—including your family, the church, and the world. Be specific and concrete when possible.
If this is the main time you will spend in prayer that day, include any other kinds of prayers as well, even if they are not connected to the passage.
4. Reform
Christianity is concerned with real internal change that produces visible fruit in our lives, not merely with external behavior modification. Verbally describe the heart transformation that should lead to life transformation in light of the previous steps, moving from the inside out. This can often be summarized in a statement like, “This makes me…, therefore I will…”
For example:
- This makes me love God more, therefore I will seek to please Him more in my life.
- This increases my faith, therefore I will be less discouraged.
- This makes me hate lust more, therefore I will fight it more seriously.
- This makes me want to see the lost saved, therefore I will share the gospel more.
- This makes me want to love my wife as Christ loves the church, therefore I will serve her better.
Then create a single, specific, and doable action step to take. Each of those qualities is important. Choose a single step because it is harder to focus on and achieve multiple goals at once. Ensure the step is specific, since vague intentions make it difficult to know what to do or whether you have done it. And since you want to actually take that step, it must also be doable and realistic.
For instance, the three action steps below correspond to the last three examples of inside-out change above:
- I will stop scrolling social media feeds that lead to temptation.
- I will initiate a spiritual conversation with my coworker, Joe.
- I will serve my wife by taking out the trash proactively, without being asked.
This is the practical, concrete step you will take to live differently in light of God’s Word and intentionally walk in accordance with the heart transformation you’ve experienced. Jot this down in your journal. Next time you read relationally, review your previous action step to evaluate your progress.
"Some people imagine that if they read so many chapters of the Bible every day, it will be much to their profit—but it is not so if the reading is a mere mechanical exercise. It will be far better to read a tenth as much and weigh it—and let it take possession of brain and heart. A little food cooked is better for dinner than a great joint raw. A man who wants to see a country must not hurry through it by express train, but he must stop in the towns and villages and see what is to be seen. He will know more about the land and its people if he walks the highways, climbs the mountains, stays in the homes and visits the workshops, than if he does so many miles in the day and hurries through picture galleries as if death were pursuing him."
Charles Spurgeon
Download Now
CCC’s Quick Guide for Personal Devotions is available to download for free in two formats.
Reference Card
A full-color 5″ × 7″ Quick Guide with our Model for Personal Devotions on the reverse, sized to keep in your Bible. Available for pickup at the Resource Shelf.
Printable Insert
A printer-friendly version that uses less ink and folds in half to fit neatly inside your Bible.