(Day 13 of this series called “23 days to a better devotional life.” I’m posting daily this month on devotions.)

How much time should you spend in Bible study and prayer every day?

Some of us including myself can be unrealistic in how much time we plan to spend with God. We hear of the old time saints like Martin Luther who would pray over two hours a day. So we set a goal of praying that long. However, because we’re not even used to praying for 10 minutes, we fail miserably.

Set a goal that’s realistic. Not too long yet not too short that you don’t get anything from what you’re reading. I find that it takes me about five minutes just to slow down and focus on praying or reading the Bible.

If you can only pray for 5-10 minutes, give that to God and be consistent. It’s better to pray 5 minutes a day for 7 straight days than to pray 35 minutes in one day for the whole week. We need to have time with God every day. Remember what Jesus said in the Lord’s prayer, “Give us today our daily bread.”

As you continue to give God 5-10 minutes, you’ll find your time will grow as you become used to spending time with God. It’s all about making our devotions a daily habit even though we feel like we’re not giving that much time to God. God understands where we are in our spiritual growth.

I remember being able to pray for 30 minutes a day. Then, a couple situations in my life discouraged me and I stopped doing devotions for a couple months. During that time, I even stopped going to church. When I finally turned back to God, I couldn’t even pray for 15 minutes. I felt that I was letting God down, because I used to pray for 30 minutes. But then I realized that my spiritual growth had suffered and I had become a different person. I realized that God was okay with my 5-10 minutes. The important thing was to be consistent every day. After this realization, I had peace in my relationship with God. And after a couple of weeks, I found myself praying longer. I had “worked back up” to my previous habit of spending 30 minutes in daily prayer.

If you’ve haven’t been consistent with your devotions, start with small steps. Try five minutes of prayer and another five minutes of Bible reading every day. That’s a total of only 10 minutes. I think you do that. And just focus on doing this every day. Pretty soon, you’ll find yourself wanting to spend more and more time with God.

God is more concerned that we turn to Him daily rather than praying for hours but only sporadically.

In Luke 9:23 Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily.”