Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader Podcast. This weekly conversation is designed to equip and resource you to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practice the spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Life Group Leader Podcast. Today we're joined by our friend Michael Kelly to talk about one big topic, daily devotion.
Why it matters, why it's hard, and what's inside? The new Root It Rhythm's Daily Devotion Workbook, and how it strengthens a whole life group journey. So let's jump in. Once again, thanks for joining us for our Life Group Leader Podcast, and we're just excited to have you on again to talk about the Root It Rhythm of Daily Devotions, which was released in October, right?
Yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah, and it's in our Mariners bookstore, and we got a copy of it and was looking through it, and it's amazing. We're a wonderful resource for our Life Group and our leaders. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about this Root It Rhythm, and to start off, why is, would you say, Daily Devotion, such as Spentual Rhythm for a Christ follower, especially in the context of a Life Group?
Yeah, yeah, totally. I think it's the sustained impact of consistency. So Scott, I've thought about this before. This might be a helpful illustration for people.
Think about the difference between a microwave and a crockpot. So they have some similarities. They both cook food, but one works a lot faster than the other one does. So you could actually cook a steak in both, right?
Like you could put a steak in the microwave and you could cook it, but it's not going to come out great. It's going to get warm, but it's not going to. Whereas if you put it in a slow cooker in a crockpot, any kind of meat that you put in there, over the course of time, it's going to marinate. And it really does change the composition of what's been put in there.
A lot of times I think we treat the Bible like a microwave. So we think we're just going to pop in every once in a while and get a quick dose of wisdom or some quick encouragement. Now, to be clear, that's certainly better than nothing. It will get the food hot, right?
But God's will for us is transformation. And so in order for us to be transformed, like the composition of our minds and hearts needs to change. We need to simmer in the word, not just be zapped by the word. So that's the Daily Devotion part of it is that when you have the sustained rhythm over the course of time, it really does change through the power of the voice here.
It changes the composition of your heart, makes you softer, more malleable, and more open to the voice of the Lord in your life. I love that as you're sharing that I was kind of reminded of, the Jacob Pearson's work, the long obedience and direction, and how it does take that marination. When I cook a steak, you're right. When I cook it up, microwave, it tastes different.
Over one of those crockpots or those grills. We call them grills that you cook for a long period of time. Yeah, like a smoker. A smoker.
Yeah. Yeah. There we go. I was going to say, you talked a lot about consistency, and I'm looking at scripture right now, Acts 2, which is where we did all of the rooted rhythms from.
Verse 46 says, every day, the apostles devoted themselves to meeting in the temple. Verse 42, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching into fellowship. So there's a consistency there. Yeah.
Being in scripture and also being in fellowship around scripture. And it talks about every day. But I want to share with you guys this study I found. Michael, you've probably heard this study.
You probably wrote this article that I found it on. In one study by the Center of Bible Engagement, they pulled 40,000 people to see how they were engaging with scripture. And when people were interacting with scripture at least four times a week, feelings of loneliness, loneliness dropped 30%, anger issues dropped 32%. Bitterness in relationships dropped 40%.
Alcoholism drops 57%. So they're just numerous effects on ourselves when we interact with God's Word. When I hear that, I'm like, man, I want to be in my Word. Every single day.
And this talks about just interacting with it at least four times a week. But yeah, when I hear this, I just want to continue diving into scripture. But for some people, it's really hard to find that time. And they actually struggle with it.
And I hear about groups. I'm sure this is a nature with every single church. Is that there are some groups that turn into being a social group rather than being in the Word. And sometimes they struggle with that.
So from your perspective, what is at the heart of struggling with digging deep in scripture despite all of these positive attributes? Yeah, despite all the benefits. I mean, I think there's some general life things that make it hard. People are busy.
If you're a mom and you have young kids, it's like it's tough, the carb out time to do that. But the thing that came to mind, I think right now, as sort of a cultural thing, Sam, that came to mind for me is that we don't seem as a culture to have the ability anymore to have a sustained amount of concentration on one single thing. We live in an entertainment or every in its society where everything is entertainment. Education is entertainment.
And the news is entertainment. And so we just crave that. We crave entertainment. And God's Word is not there to entertain us.
But because we've been conditioned like that from the culture outside of it, it honestly makes the idea of, I must have been 15 minutes just reading and meditating on the Bible. A really, really hard thing. In order to do that, we really do have to choose to swim upstream against the cultural currents and say that there are some things that are more important than being entertained in the system. That's good.
Yeah, I mean, guys, just share that, Michael. I'm thinking about how it does. I mean, I think about even my own life. I tried to have a regular, quiet time of devotion.
But it is a struggle at times. Sometimes there are times when I'm going through certain passages and I'm like, how is God speaking to me through this? Versus, I don't know, being entertained by YouTube, but it's like throwing through the Instagram for something. It's easy.
The Instagram is just so easy. All you have to do is be a recipient of it. You don't really have to engage when you're on Instagram. Yeah.
So how about we go through, I think we'll talk through a lot of the different topics. Yeah. As we go through the daily devotion workbook, and we broke it down to five weeks. That's right.
And so can we go through the other weeks? And so in week one, talk about what makes the Bible special. Do you unpack that a little bit? Yeah.
So that's just a basic understanding of what the Bible is. According to the Bible, what does the Bible say about itself? And in summary, the Bible says it is the inspired word of God. But what does that mean?
So it's meant to lay the groundwork for people of understanding the uniqueness of the Bible among any other book that you can pick up, that this one is unique. That's right. How about a week two, we talk about how we can understand the Bible? Sometimes for people, when they first start reading the Bible, it is difficult.
Looking at, you know, you got to read it and contextually and in general. So if you can unpack that a bit. Yeah. It's meant so that week is meant to.
So we establish this is the why the Bible is unique. That second week is meant to be a real quick kind of crash course in reading the Bible rightly. So you shouldn't read one of the gospels the same way that you should read one of the books of the law from the Old Testament or the same way that you should read one of the books of prophecy. In order for us to really understand the Bible, we have to know something about why it was originally written, who it was originally written to, and what human agent actually wrote it.
There's an old saying that I think helps us with this. It is, the Bible can't say now what it didn't say then. So we don't all have to be like biblicists. Like we don't have to have PhDs in some kind of older New Testament.
But it is good for every Christian just to have a real basic understanding of things. Like you said, Scott, what are the different genres of scripture? What does context mean and why is that important? So just quick hitters in that chapter on that.
Yeah, and then in week three and four, you talk about how we can approach the Bible, what is our posture and how do we use the Bible? Can you share about that? Yeah, so approaching the Bible is what you said. It's about, okay, so now we know something about the Bible, we know something about the different genres and how to read it rightly.
Now we're gonna open the Bible. What should our heart be like when we open the Bible? What should our posture be? And so there's a number of characteristics there.
But in summary, it ought to mean that we are humble and teachable. So we want to, we're coming to the Bible open-handed to let the Bible tell us rather than us tell the Bible things. And then when we use the Bible, that's meant to emphasize the fact that when we read the Bible, it is not purely an intellectual exercise. We're not reading just so we can know more stuff from the Bible.
It's meant to be actually put into practice in the life. So how do you do that? That's what that week is about. And then I guess, as you share about, the Bible is an applicable way for us to live.
So that's week five. How do I live according to the Bible? What does that look like? Yeah.
Week five is meant to kind of bring a lot of these things together and to help people understand that when you do simmer in the word of God, like we talked about earlier, and when you understand a little bit about how to read the Bible and you're consistently having this rhythm of daily devotion, what starts to happen is the Bible starts to become the lenses through which you view reality. So you're not just thinking about stuff anymore. You're starting to think biblically. And that's when you start living out the Bible.
It changes the way that you view current events, relationships, struggles, suffering. It changes the way that you see all of those things. That's how you live in the Bible. Right.
So good. I'm taking a master's course, a hermeneutics course at Biola. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
And week three is basically my entire course right now where it's looking at wide end of the funnel, what is context, what is culture, and then digging deeper, what is the genre that you're looking at because you have to look at them differently. Now, my course is 16 weeks, but you guys put this into a five week super. It's really cool. Look, yeah.
And I, we're just so thankful that you guys put together this rooted rhythm series because, you know, when people do the 10 weeks of rooted, they learn about all of these rhythms, but you're giving them something that they can continue to work on. Yeah. Like individually, but also as a life group. So, you know, this, this specific daily devotion rhythm, how, what do you hope that people just continue to improve on in their walk with God as they interact with it, as they interact with scripture, whether it's practicing, putting into practice, whether it's knowing God intimately, what do you wish that people would just take away?
Well, all of those things. I really, really do. I think I might go back to answer that question to some of the statistics you were sharing earlier. Isn't it remarkable that it's like a domino effect.
If you do this one thing, then so many other things in your life will change. In fact, I don't think this is too much of a stretch. I really don't. That if I could say one thing to every life group member, one thing that if you do this one thing, it will change your life.
It would be read the Bible regularly. It will change your life. It is the one thing that you can do that lifts every other thing. Like when you think about the other rooted rhythms, if you practice daily devotion, you are inevitably going to be more generous.
You're going to be more passionate in worship. You're going to share your story more freely. You're going to pray more frequently and more fervently. So it is sort of the tide that lifts all the other boats.
It is critically important for the Christian. Mm, that's so great, Michael. What does your personal rhythm of daily devotion look like? Yeah, yeah.
So I'm an early guy, not a late guy. So I don't, if I'm not in the bed at about nine or nine 30, something has gone wrong in my day. So my best stuff is done in the morning. So mine is early morning.
It's before, it's like after I wake up and before I go to the gym. And what I usually do is a combination of two things. I have a very helpful app on my phone that is called, I use it every day and I can't tell you what it's called. It's just called Bible memory.
And so these are, it just helps you memorize verses. So every day, it provides a review of verses that you have previously memorized and then it lets you work on the verses that you're doing. So the first part of mine is crack that open. Let's review, let's review verses that I've been memorizing.
And then the next one is just not a long section, but a short section of scripture. So like right now I'm reading through the book of Colossians. So it's Colossians 3 this morning. And sometimes it, for me, it is actually the several, the same passage several days in a row.
It's written Colossians 3. And then maybe tomorrow I'm still read Colossians 3. But if I feel like that, okay, I think the Lord is at least for now, you know, especially the human beings, you know, to the next chapter. And then you just keep on working your way through it.
I'm also a fan during that time of praying as I read. So it's not like I wanna read and then I wanna pray. If you just for me personally, it works better for me to read and then pray and then read and then pray. And so all of that together is usually about 15 to 20 minutes.
And yeah, so that's what it looks like for me. Yeah, I mean, the value we have one of our values is the word essential. Yes. And as we think about our leaders leading their groups, I think just encouragement that as we stay connected and God's word that he guides us, he gives us courage, he gives us faith, all those things that we need to be able to shepherd well.
And so as we look at this study and in our personal lives as well to like, what's one encouragement or challenge you would give to our likely leaders listening right now? I think consistency, consistency. It is, Scott, you said, or I love that phrase from Peterson, along obedience in the same direction. If you're not gonna feel all the feelings every time you open the Bible, but you still do it, so consistency, consistency, consistency.
That's how you simmer and how you marinate. And sometimes it does feel like a slog, you know, to get through it. Leviticus. Yeah, that's right.
Like the Leviticus days are not awesome, right? It's very much needed, but tough to get through. Tough to get through. But consistent, just stay at it.
Stay at it. Do not give up. When you miss a day, so what? You missed it, do it again tomorrow.
You know, like just get back on and do it again tomorrow. Don't abandon the trajectory just because you might have missed up here or there. Consistent in the same direction. Can I just ask a follow-up question?
Yeah, sure. For a leader or a member of a group, a lot of questions I get to find is, I get so excited I get passionate about reading and I start in the book of Genesis and I get to a certain book of the Bible, like a bit of kids or something. And I get discouraged. And once that consistency or rhythm is off, I just quit.
I just don't know how. Where's a good place to start reading the scriptures? So if somebody who's never read the Bible consistently before, I think one of the best places to start is the book of John. So John is, that's because it's kind of narrative in nature.
John is the most, I think it's weird to say it this way, but it's like the most imaginative of the gospels, even though it's not imaginary. That's not what I mean. It just means it's more descriptive than many of the other gospels. It's readable.
So that, I think that's a great place to start is get through the book of John. Get through the book of John. I'll say too from personal experience, having a great devotional. If you're going through the Bible, whether chronologically or if it breaks it up by some Old Testament, some New Testament, some Psalms, and some Proverbs, I know some devotionals do that as well, having a great devotional to remind you, like, hey, this is where God is moving in the scripture, even though it's hard to see, or maybe the absence of God in this reading today should tell us X, Y, Z about how we should live.
So having a great devotional to help explain what I'm reading has been really helpful for me. Scott, I don't know if you had that personally. Absolutely, man. Absolutely.
It's a, yeah, we have tools for a reason. Like the tools can be super, super helpful to do it for sure. Well, Michael, we so appreciate everything that you have done. Again, as Scott has mentioned before, you are the brains behind a lot of the material that the Rooted Network puts out.
God is using you in incredible ways, and we're thankful for you. True story, last week, last Thursday, I was having lunch with my wife on campus here at Mariners Church, Irvine, and as we were walking to this coffee stand area, we came across this lady who was looking for her women's Bible study, and she was holding the daily devotional book. What's your really book? True story, 100%, true.
That's great. Just it's impacting groups already, even though it just came out. And so we're thankful for you just allowing God to work through you and your creativity and your mind to craft. And the rest of the team as well, I know there's a whole team behind it.
But would you please just pray us out and pray over our leaders that they would just continue to have that consistency, that obedience to be in scripture, those that are struggling with it, or those who are continuing on their journey consistently? Would you just pray over them and their groups, please? I'd be happy to do that. Father, you have not left us without a word.
You have not left us without a word. And we want to treat it like it is your word. We believe that this book is living and active. It's sharp, like a double-edged sword, even sharper.
It divides soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart. This is what the Bible does through the power of the Holy Spirit. And we pray for all of our life groups that you would grow them in both their passion and their consistency for your word.
Would you create a real hunger for them to hear from you from your word? And then please, Lord, be faithful to speak through what you have spoken. And we pray for these leaders as they seek to lead these people well. Help them, Lord, to both model what it looks like to be people of your word and to inspire that kind of consistency in those that you have entrusted to their care.
We trust that you'll do this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.