Overall Lesson Effectiveness
3. The Method
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PRAYING THE BIBLE, DONALD S. WHITNEY1
Prayer is essential for the Christian, but it’s not easy. Why is prayer so difficult? Why is prayer even sometimes boring? Why does 5 minutes of prayer feel like an eternity? Is it because we are second-rate Christians? The answer is likely, “no!” So why is it so hard to be consistent in prayer?
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Use the Psalms of the day. This divides the 150 Psalms into 5 Psalms for each 30 days in a month. Take the day of the month as your first Psalm. Then keep adding 30 to that number until you get 5 Psalms. So, on the 15th of the month, the Psalms of the day would be Psalm 15, 45, 75, 105, and 135. On the 31st of the month, use Psalm 119. Take 30 seconds to scan these 5 Psalms of the day, then choose one to pray through.
If you get distracted, just come back to the next verse and continue.
You can use any passage of Scripture to pray through.
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ABSTRACT
EQUIPPING THE MEMBERS OF FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, CALVERT CITY, KENTUCKY TO DEVELOP THE
PRACTICE OF PERSONAL DEVOTIONS James William Ewing, D.Min.
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2016 Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Joseph C. Harrod
The purpose of this project was to equip members of First Baptist Church (FBC), Calvert City, Kentucky, to develop a daily practice of personal devotions.
Chapter 1 provides the goals, context, rationale, and definitions for this ministry project.
It also describes the research methodology and discusses key limitations of the study.
Chapter 2 provides biblical and theological support for of daily personal devotions as a spiritual discipline and then introduces the biblical practices of reading, meditating, and praying over the Word of God.
Chapter 3 examines in detail the practices of devotional reading, meditation, and prayer and then provides an introductory format to help develop and maintain devotions as a daily discipline.
Chapter 4 describes the execution of the ministry project as well and includes statistical and qualitative results.
Chapter 5 offers an assessment of the project purpose, goals, strengths and weaknesses of the project, and concludes with theological and personal reflections.