Seeing the Gospel in Your Daily Devotions

Dane Ortlund:

What are some tools/practical tips you’d give to a person to help them see the gospel in their daily devotions?

1. Reflect deeply, in an unhurried way, on your own sin. Not misanthropic introspection, but healthy self-assessment, in the spirit of 2 Cor. 13:5. One reason the gospel does not feel real to us is that our sin does not feel real to us.

2. Get married, then have kids, adopting if need be. Nothing exposes your sins and need of the gospel like living with other people who see what you’re like when you’re not out in public, wearing various masks, trying your hardest to come across a certain way.

3. Discipline yourself to read Scripture every day. It’s hard to get in a spiritual rhythm of communing with the God of all grace if you only have fellowship with him sporadically.

4. Sing. Print out your favorite hymns and worship songs and sing amid your Bible reading. We are whole people, not brains only.

5. Belong to a church that loves the gospel and preaches the gospel so that you can learn from a wise pastor how to see the gospel all over the Bible.

6. Read every passage mindful of what Jesus himself says in John 5:39-46 and Luke 24:25-27, 44-47, and what Paul says in 2 Cor. 1:19-20. If that’s how Jesus and Paul read their Bibles, shouldn’t we?