Latest / Read, Do, & Tell / Ep. 32: The Dangers of Devotionals

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Ep. 32: The Dangers of Devotionals · Read, Do, & Tell

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the read, do and tell podcast.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Becky.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Can you start again?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think my eyes were closed.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the read, do and tell podcast.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Becky.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Amy.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining us again.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Today we want to dive into devotionals.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we will start with what a devotional is and what it isn't.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: I will start with what a devotional is not.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a devotional is not a Bible study.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: A Bible study is when you are purposefully going into the Word of God.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: You are going to observe the context of what you're reading, you're understanding what is happening so that you can interpret the context of it accurately.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we actually have a tool that we created back in episode four when we discussed reading the Bible for the year.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: It is a um it's a tool that walks you through questions that you should answer.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, if you wanted to start in the book of John, you're gonna answer questions like who, where, when, and these questions can be applied in many different ways.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Who wrote the book?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Who is the book being written to?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, where was he when he wrote it?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Where are the people that he's talking to?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: So there's many different questions that you can ask to help you get a better understanding of what it is that you're going to be reading about.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: You can also answer these questions as you're reading through the book of the Bible that you're studying.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, lastly, the Bible study would be having the ability to evaluate and apply what you are learning in God's word.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we also have a tool that we did in episode nine.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's like a little triangle.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: It we were in that episode going through the Old Testament law and how that or if that applies to us today.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: And in the triangle that we created, it talks about what is the character of God that we can observe in this text?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: What is the application for the people of that day that God is talking to?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then is there something about the truth of this word that would apply to me today?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of what the triangle does.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can use that in every every time you actually sit down to read the Bible, that's a great tool to use.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: So what a what a devotional Yeah.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: What a devotional is, I would say, is when so it's a normally a book that goes through every day of the year, um, or at least every day of the week, and it takes a verse out of the Bible or part of a verse out of the Bible completely out of the context.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: And if it's talking about something in that verse that relates to prayer, it is going to speak in a way that gets you to emotionally engage in either self-reflection or some type of applic application.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: So, an example of a devotional, a very popular one that many churches give out for free would be our daily bread.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think you could even get them online, if I'm not mistaken.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: So if I were to turn to like uh, let's see, this is July 11th.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: At the top of it, you were mentioning it can say a verse or part of a verse.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: It just says, Therefore, I endure everything, dot dot dot.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: And that's Second Timothy 2, 10.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: And that's all you got as far as scripture, part of a verse.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then I guess you would read it.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then it has down here some questions you can ask in a prayer to pray.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: So there's your devotional.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's a really common one.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of devotionals out there.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say that just because something says it is a devotional doesn't necessarily mean it fits into this category.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think even when someone says, I did my devotional this morning or my devotions this morning, it could have been that they were actually reading God's word and not reading a devotional.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: So those words can sometimes be interchangeable.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to make sure that we clarify that.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: So we're not speaking of someone reading God's word.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about reading a book or a devotional that's separate, like in how you were describing it.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the way I see devotional, so I will say this little story.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: When when I wrote uh Shadows of Our Savior back at Christmas last year, before Christmas, Amy was like, We're working on your devotionals and we love them.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Well, don't use that word devotional.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, devotional has that connotation, it makes you want to throw up in my mouth.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: And speaking of throw up in your mouth, I was thinking of, so the word of God is called the food of God.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's reference to being food a lot of times.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so it made me think of the skit.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's an SNL skit that's actually quite gross, but there's not any bad words or anything in it.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a fun one to watch if you like that kind of gross humor, which Amy said she doesn't, but I think it's hilarious.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's where they, it's I think it's called like the bird family or a dinner at the Blakes, and it's where this grown-up man comes to eat dinner with his family.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: Will Farrell is the father.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: He is bringing his girlfriend.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: This is their second date, and it's this wonderful spread of food.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: And the father proceeds to cut up the food on the grown man's, his son's plate, chew up this chicken or turkey or whatever it is, and the the man then open his son then opens his mouth like a baby bird, and he spits the food.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it's really gross, but it's very funny.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: He does the same thing with the corn on the cob and with uh sourdough bread.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: And this, you know, the date is like, oh, this is gross.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: But but that's what to me, for me, that's the connotation of devotional.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: I am opening my mouth to receive food that someone else has chewed up and written about, and now they're spitting it into my mouth.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's so they see that's what that's the way I feel about devotionals.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: They're just, I don't like them.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, now that's personally, I'm not saying that if you read devotionals and if you even read our daily bread, I'm not saying, you know, you're not going to heaven or anything crazy like that.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: But devotionals to me just I don't want somebody else's chewed up food.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: So uh we also want to talk about why people read devotionals.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to start by saying that there are people, I'm sure, that have wonderful reasons for reading devotionals.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: The reasons we're going to be giving are some that I've personally heard people say.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, one would be I just don't have enough time to sit down and spend time in God's word every day.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: Devotionals are quick, many of them can take five minutes or less to read.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And another reason why I have heard um that people would pick up a devotional as their main source of study is because they have this idea, it's not a false idea, that they should be in the word of God.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: But this is easy, it's short, it's simple.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so they check this off their list of I've spent my time with the Lord today.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so you feel good about spending the time with the Lord, and that makes you feel like you've achieved something in your in your walk with him.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: I think also that sometimes people want to do they want it to be easy.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's quick, it's fast, it's easy.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: And really sitting down, reading God's word in context, studying God's word, it takes much more work.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's hard, but in the sense I have found that it's hard but good work.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, hard doesn't mean bad, it's good work.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: Another reason I think that people use devotionals is because they may say, I've heard a lot of people say, I try to read the Bible and I just don't understand it.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so a devotional can take a concept about the Bible or something about the Bible, break it down and kind of feed it to you like that baby bird, and help you understand something that you may not necessarily get out of it if you just sit down and read it on your own without all the study.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: But there are some dangers with using devotionals.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And when we talk about using devotionals, we're saying as your primary source of study and time with God.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll give you an example of one that doesn't have false teaching in it.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: So Charles Spurgeon Mornings and Evenings is a devotional book.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: And one day, um, because I was preparing for this podcast and I read it one day, it was about prayer.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: It said, continue to pray.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And what it did was it gave you examples of characters in the Bible like Jacob, Daniel, David, Paul, Silas, who prayed.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't tell you when, why, or how they were praying.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it skips that part of it and it reinforces the importance of prayer as you're reading.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then it tells you what you should pray.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like it gives you an example of a prayer that you should pray that focuses on being holy, um, honoring the Lord.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: And these are not bad things.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: The problem with it is that you've missed the meat of the God's word, and that you don't have the full context of why Jacob is praying and where Daniel is in the moment that he's praying and what opposition he's facing.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, some of David's prayers are encouraging, and some of his prayers you can feel his discouragement.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: So there's all kinds of prayers.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's dangerous for someone to tell you how you should pray.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Contrary to that, when you're in God's word and you're reading, there's a conviction of the Holy Spirit because it says that his spirit is what transforms your mind.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: It transforms your mind.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: As you're reading the word, you're coming under conviction many times.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that in itself can lead you to the prayer that God needs you to pray.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Not that he needs you to pray, but where he's showing you you need to lay something down at his feet.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Prayer of humility.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: One of the issues that I have had for a while with devotionals is that again, like you said earlier, there's oftentimes little to sometimes even no scripture referenced, but sometimes it's just that part, but it's always pulled out of context.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: The other thing that we were given a devotional book a couple of summers ago to read it was the same one, and I think we got through the very first one, and we both were like, No, day one, I was done.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: Can't do it, can't do it.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was talking about Abraham and Sarah.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, granted, when you read God's word, there are parts of the story that are left out, but they're not left out because God's like, ha ha, I don't want them to know this necessarily.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: You think about Noah, that 120 years or however long it was of him building the boat.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: We we don't have a day a play-by-play of his day of what happened to him and and how he felt and all these things.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: So when you have a devotional that begins to add that to the part of scripture.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: So the devotional we were reading was about Abraham and Sarah.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, it was telling us, like, you know, Sarah could have had her hands on her hips and she could have been thinking this, and she probably said this too.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: And and then at the end of the devotional, it wanted to ask questions about how Sarah felt, but it was based off of conjecture, what the author thought that Sarah could have said, what how could she, how she could have been feeling, and it was like, wait a minute, this is not what God's word says.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think we have to be careful with devotionals.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's great to use what our pastor calls your spiritual imagination.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes we can we can think things about I wonder how we felt or wonder whatever.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: But when you build a theology or a teaching on something that is not even in scripture, we have to be really careful with that.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: We also have to be careful with devotionals.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: Another danger is that oftentimes the application, if you don't have the proper context of what's going on, like these prayers, for example, your application could be a great application, but has nothing to do with what the Bible was telling you in those verses that you were just were just mentioned.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: So the application could be off.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: In some really nefarious devotionals, I would say, like Jesus calling, the application actually contradicts scripture, or it's not what we're commanded to do in scripture, or it's not what Jesus would actually say what we know of the character and who Jesus is in scripture.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: And again, I would say that as believers, the Bible is our primary source.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: So the outside sources we use, even if it's a Bible study or a devotional, we have to know what God's word says because we're gonna check what that Bible commentator says, and we're gonna check what that person says about how Sarah was acting.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna check that against our primary source, which is always scripture.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: We have to start there.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, what should we do instead?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And episode 18, we talked about the different translations.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, a good recommendation is to pick a translation that you can understand.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's word for word, thought for thought style translations.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I would start there and read different ones.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: I have the amplified version and an older version of the NIV.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: I like to take those.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: I have all my notes from my different studies in the NIV because I've had it since high school.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the amplified version is the one that Becky got me because I kept referencing it when we were doing um our different studies of different texts in the Bible.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that version because it literally amplifies what it's saying.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: So there's in parentheses like definitions of words, or if it says they, it tells you who the they is in parentheses.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't get lost.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: It just amplifies it.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and another thing I like to do is um Becky and I do this a lot.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: We take the blue letter Bible and I'll go in it and I'll pull up um the different translations and just kind of read them side by side to get a broader understanding of what it's saying.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I like that it has the Hebrew, the Aramaic, and the Greek in there, and you can really get to understand what a word means.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: For example, love in English, I love pizza, I love my husband.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: We use it in so many different ways, but in the Greek, there were specific words for different kinds of love.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: Many people will say the Bible is hard to understand, and I know I've said that before today, but when you approach God's word, call I call it popcorn reading, where you just open God's word, any mini money mo.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't even know, my daughter gave me a rhyme that goes with that, but I don't even know what it is.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: Any mini moe.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Any mini money moh any mini money mo, where shall I go?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Something like that.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: Something like that.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: So if you open God's word and you're like, I'm gonna read Judges 20 today, or tomorrow I'm gonna read Proverbs 31, and you're just jumping all over the word, it's gonna be hard to understand it if you don't have that context to know what's happening before, what's happening after, what's happening in that time period.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: There's so much separation we have from the people as far as time goes, culture goes, language goes from the people of that time.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's helpful to understand and read these things in their context so you can see, oh, that's why that person did this or said this.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: So again, I would say avoid jumping from passage to passage.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: And when you're reading things in context, let's say you want to read the book of John, when it references another passage, maybe an Old Testament passage or another New Testament passage.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you have a footnote that says this passage uses the same Greek word or something like that.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: Go and read those passages to really build on your understanding of what it's trying to say.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: And again, I'm gonna say it again.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: The Bible is our primary source.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: Devotionals, I would not say all of them are dangerous, but I would say they are our secondary source.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: If you're not checking what they say against your primary source, it is a danger.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can be misled.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, in conclusion, we are not saying that you should avoid devotionals.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but as Becky has said, it should not be your primary source.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'll give you an example.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, as I was preparing for the podcast, I looked at a few different devotionals.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: I won't tell you what websites I was wandering through.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: However, I came across one that used John 1 um 19 through 36, which is the testimony of John the Baptist.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: And really, it gave you just a smidget at the very top of what was covered.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: It literally gave me like eight words or something like that.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then it said, this is in John 1, 19 through 36.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then it proceeded to talk about how John knew his purpose in life and therefore was successful in doing the will of God that God had planned for him.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then it talked about how we can be successful as well.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it was I mean, it sounded encouraging, like, yes, I want to know God's will and plan for my life, but really the context of 19 through 36 is in the first chapter of John, right?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I would recommend that you start reading the introduction of the book of John, then read all of chapter one before you ever touch the devotional that tells you what it wants to tell you about John 1, 19 through 36.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: That way, when you have the full context of John 1, you'll see that it's about who Jesus claims he is, how this is about the fulfillment of prophecy.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: When John testifies of who he is, he says, I am the one, and he quotes Isaiah where he was prophesied about.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so really that's what it's about.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And if we talk about the success of John the Baptist, I mean he was beheaded for his faith.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, the devotional didn't say that because it would have left you like, I could be persecuted for my faith, right?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it just it guards you from being led into um a weak walk in in your in your journey with the Lord.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: That was well put.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: So let's be like Ezra.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: Let's read, do, and tell the word of the Lord.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I need to not emotionals.