Senator Bill Nelson trained for and flew on a six-day space shuttle mission on board the Columbia. In his book Mission, he explained how difficult it is to maintain a proper orbit in space. There’s no resistance in space, so an astronaut can literally turn over the huge shuttle on their own. To maintain the correct orbit, the onboard computers constantly make course and altitude corrections by firing small rockets which make tiny adjustments, while larger jets burn fuel to make major adjustments. These rockets are critical – if they don’t consistently fire at the right time, the shuttle can drift from its orbit and go tumbling into outer space or crashing into Earth’s atmosphere. There’s an important lesson here for us. Left to ourselves, we tend to drift out of our spiritual orbit into lukewarmness and indifference. Or worse, we end up in sin and rebellion. That’s when the rockets of prayer and Bible study, ‘fired’ on a continuous and consistent basis, help us to keep our course correct, and prevent our lives from spinning out of spiritual control. Bible study and prayer go together. We should pray before we read the Bible, asking God to help us understand what we’re about to read. And we should also pray after we read it, asking God to help us apply what He’s told us through His Word. ‘All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness’ (2 Timothy 3:16 NIV). Getting into a habit of a daily prayer and Bible study time is so important – it’ll help us stay close to God and quickly become aware if we’re drifting off His path so we can make whatever adjustments are necessary to get back to Him.

What Now?

Before reading your Bible today, pray that God would help you understand what you’ll read and that He’ll reveal something new through His Word. After, pray that He’ll help you put into practice what you’ve learned.