How to Do Daily Devotions — Tozer’s Plain Method
⏱ 16 min read
You bought the devotional in January. The one with the soft cover and the gentle morning illustrations and the promise of three hundred and sixty-five days of restored intimacy with God. By the second week you were reading the pages without remembering what they said. By the fourth week you were skipping every other day. By the seventh, the bookmark had stopped moving forward, and you were doing a thing many women in their forties have privately done with a stalled devotional — flipping idly to whichever page looked manageable on a given Tuesday, pretending to yourself that you were still keeping the practice. The pretending is, perhaps, the loneliest part of a stalled devotional life. The devotional itself was not the problem. The shape of how you were trying to do daily devotions was.
This is the slow article on how to do daily devotions, and it does not begin with a new app or a new colour-coded reading plan. It begins with A. W. Tozer — the twentieth-century pastor whose The Pursuit of God is the most lived-with description of devotional hunger the modern Christian library has produced — and the recognition that the practice you are trying to keep is older, simpler, and considerably less dependent on the chosen devotional book than the publishing market has suggested. The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women carries Tozer’s pattern into a daily companion — a single passage, a small structure for the honest response, a slow page that does not demand more than you can bring on a tired morning — if you would like a place to take this practice after the article. For now, read slowly.
The trouble with the modern instinct for daily devotions is that it has confused the book with the practice. The shelf at the Christian bookshop offers eighty different devotional volumes, each promising a slightly different angle into a deeper walk, and the woman who has tried four of them has begun to suspect that none of them is going to deliver what was promised. Tozer would gently tell her that the books were not the issue. The practice underneath the books is the issue. The book is the small daily reading material. The practice is the thirsting — the slow daily turning of the soul toward God in the small interval the book occupies. The book without the practice is paper. The practice does not require an elaborate book. It requires a slow daily heart.
The lost shape of the practice
There is a kind of daily devotion the modern devotional shelf has largely forgotten how to describe. It does not look like the highlight reel. It does not promise breakthrough by chapter twelve. It does not measure progress in pages turned or days streaked.
It looks like this: a small interval in the morning — fifteen minutes, sometimes ten on a hurried day, twenty on a slower Saturday — kept at roughly the same time, in roughly the same chair, with a short passage of scripture and a small honest response. The reading is brief. The prayer is brief. The journal sentence, if there is one, is short. Nothing dramatic happens on most mornings. The practice does not produce visible results in the first month. The woman who keeps it does not notice she is being changed until the second or third year, when something quiet has shifted in her that the people around her may notice before she does.
That is the daily devotion the older Christians actually kept, and the daily devotion Tozer built his life around. He called it, in his plainer moods, the pursuit. The pursuit is the practice. The book is incidental. The chair is incidental. The hour is incidental, as long as the hour is reliable. What is not incidental is the small daily turning of the soul toward the One it was made to want.
If your devotional life has collapsed under the weight of choosing the right book, that is because the modern model has placed the book at the centre. Tozer would place the thirst at the centre, and let the book be the small daily occasion for the thirst to be exercised. The thirst is the engine. The book is the appointment.
(For the wider context on the God your devotions are toward — the question of who you are pursuing before the question of how — what are the attributes of God — Tozer’s plain theology walks Tozer’s clearest sketch of the God the older devotions assumed. And if the question underneath the devotional collapse has been what is the point of this at all, what is my purpose in life as a Christian — Tozer’s plain answer is the sibling article on the older Christian sense of vocation.)
The first passage: the children of the burning heart
“Thine own eternity is round Thee, Majesty divine! To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart. Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking.”
— A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Notice the phrase to have found God and still to pursue Him. Tozer is naming a paradox the modern devotional has largely missed. You have found Him. You believed years ago. You are not a beginner. And yet the pursuit is not finished. The pursuit continues. The continuing is the daily devotion. Still to pursue Him — after the finding, after the conversion, after the years of faithfulness — is the small daily shape of the older Christian life.
This is the line that quiets the question why am I still doing this after all these years. You have been wondering whether the devotional practice should have produced a finished arrival by now — a settled feeling of having reached God, of being done with the seeking, of resting in some final spiritual destination. Tozer would gently tell you that the older Christians did not believe in a final arrival in this life. The pursuit is the relationship. The finding is real, and the pursuing is also real, and the two together — the having found and the still pursuing — are what the children of the burning heart lived inside of for their whole lives.
Justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart. Notice the phrase. Burning heart. Tozer is borrowing from the Emmaus road — did not our hearts burn within us while He talked with us by the way — and naming the older Christians as people whose hearts had been set on fire by the presence of God, and who kept the fire by daily pursuit. The fire is not maintained by intensity. The fire is maintained by the small daily walking with Him. The daily devotions are the walking. The fire is what the walking produces, over years.
For the woman whose devotional life has felt cold for stretches at a time, this is the older diagnosis. The cold is not a sign that the relationship is failing. The cold is what the fire passes through, in seasons, while the small daily practice is being kept. The keeping of the practice through the cold is what eventually allows the warmth to return. The warmth does not arrive because you have done something to manufacture it. The warmth returns because you have kept walking, in the chair, with the small daily passage, through the season the warmth had withdrawn.
The second passage: the longing to long
“I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me.”
— A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
This is the most honest prayer in Tozer’s whole devotional vocabulary. Read it slowly, twice.
Notice the verb. I want to want Thee. Tozer is acknowledging, on the page, that he does not currently want God enough. He does not pretend his way past the deficiency. He does not produce a feeling he does not have. He admits the lack of desire and prays for desire to be given to him. I long to be filled with longing. The longing is itself the prayer. The thirst for thirst is the practice.
This is the line that gives the woman with a stalled devotional life the older permission to begin again from where she actually is. You have been hesitating to return to the devotional because you do not feel the way you think you should feel. Tozer would tell you the feeling is not the prerequisite. The honest admission that the feeling is absent — and the small prayer for the feeling to be restored — is itself a real devotional act. I want to want You. I long to be filled with longing. That is a complete prayer. The morning has held a real prayer. The devotional has been kept.
Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Notice the verb. Begin. Tozer is not asking God to continue something he himself has been failing at. He is asking God to begin — fresh, from this morning, regardless of last year’s stalled attempts. The beginning is His mercy to start. The keeping, after the beginning, is yours.
For the woman who has felt unable to return to the devotional because of the weight of how the previous attempt collapsed, this is the older invitation. The previous attempt is over. The new beginning is not a re-running of the previous attempt. The new beginning is a small, ordinary, unhurried sitting-down in the chair tomorrow morning with a short passage and an honest prayer — Lord, I want to want You. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. That is the practice resumed. The collapse of the previous attempt is left in the previous attempt. The new beginning is not held against it.
(For the most ordinary form of this beginning-from-where-you-actually-are — daily devotions written for women whose devotional shelves are full and whose practice has stalled — daily devotions for the woman who doesn’t want pep is the sibling article on the kind of devotional that holds for tired Tuesdays.)
The somatic that goes with the daily devotion
Pause here. The daily devotion has a body to it, and the body is where Tozer’s older language becomes most translatable to a modern morning.
Sit somewhere quiet. Place both feet flat on the floor. Place one hand lightly on the cover of whichever devotional or Bible you are about to open — or, if there is nothing in your hands, rest both hands palm-down on your knees. Let the shoulders lower by a small amount — not by trying to relax them, but by stopping the small ongoing effort to hold them up. Take one slow inhale. On the exhale, let the breath go all the way out, slower than the inhale. As the exhale finishes, let one short interior sentence form: Lord, here I am. Then open the book.
That is the somatic at the start of the practice. The body lowering. The breath finishing. The small acknowledgement that you have arrived at the chair, in the morning, for Him.
The somatic matters because Tozer’s pursuit is built in a settled body before it is built in a settled mind. The braced body cannot pursue gently. The body that has learned to lower itself, even by a small amount, can. The slow exhale is the body’s small thirsting — the small daily clearing of internal pressure so that the longing for God has room to arise. Tozer would not have used the word somatic. He knew the body and the soul were one in the matter, and the men and women he wrote about — the ones whose burning hearts he named — had bodies that had learned the rhythm of daily devotional sitting across decades.
The Everspring slow companion
The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women was built around this older shape — a single passage, a small structure for the honest response, a slow page that does not demand more than a woman can bring on a tired morning. The journal is not the daily devotion; the keeping is. But the page being shaped, already, removes the small daily friction of what do I read this morning and lets the morning begin in the practice rather than in the choosing. The friction was not your character. The friction was the absence of a small daily shape that the older Christians built into their lives almost without noticing. The Everspring journal carries that shape into the contemporary morning chair.
This is what how to do daily devotions looks like in a daily companion — not a programme, not a streak-tracker, not a colour-coded reading plan. A slow daily sitting-down with a short passage and an honest prayer, made portable for the tired Tuesday morning.
The third passage: the sanctuary anywhere
“Lift your heart and let it rest upon Jesus and you are instantly in a sanctuary though it be a Pullman berth or a factory or a kitchen.”
— A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
This is the sentence that re-locates the practice. Read it slowly, twice.
Lift your heart and let it rest upon Jesus. Notice that Tozer does not say enter a quiet room. He does not say get away to a retreat centre. He does not say find a chapel. He says lift your heart. The lifting is the practice. The lifting can happen in any location. The location does not produce the sanctuary. The lifting does.
Though it be a Pullman berth or a factory or a kitchen. Tozer is being deliberately specific. He lists three locations no devotional book would name as a sacred space. A Pullman berth — the cramped sleeping compartment of an early-twentieth-century train. A factory. A kitchen. He is naming the spaces where actual women and men in 1948 spent the working hours of their lives, and he is telling them the sanctuary is portable. The sanctuary is built by the lifted heart, not by the architecture of the room.
For the woman whose devotional has collapsed because the morning is too noisy, the children too immediate, the calendar too demanding, the corner of the house too uncluttered for a quiet practice — this is the older liberation. The practice is not waiting for ideal conditions. The practice can happen in the kitchen while the coffee brews. The practice can happen in the car at the red light. The practice can happen in the bathroom with the door closed while the children fight in the hallway. Lift your heart. The sanctuary follows the lifting. The kitchen becomes a chapel for the thirty seconds the lifting holds.
This is how to do daily devotions when the morning chair is not available. You take the lifting with you. You carry the sanctuary in your chest. The fifteen minutes in the chair are the central appointment, but the practice does not collapse if the chair is impossible on a given day. The lifting can happen at the kettle. The lifting can happen at the wheel. The lifting can happen in the half-minute between two meetings. Lift your heart and let it rest upon Jesus. That is the practice in its smallest reproducible form. Anywhere.
How to actually begin tomorrow morning
Here is what Tozer’s pattern looks like, translated to the morning you have ahead of you.
Pick the smallest possible daily appointment. Fifteen minutes is good. Ten is enough. Five is enough on a sick week. The smallness is not a compromise. The smallness is what allows the practice to survive every kind of Tuesday. The over-ambitious appointment is what collapsed your previous attempt. The slower model asks for less.
Sit in the same chair, at roughly the same hour, with the same short text. A Psalm. A few verses of John’s Gospel. A page of an older devotional. The repetition is what builds the practice. The body learns the chair before the soul learns the practice. The chair is part of the architecture.
Begin with one slow exhale and one short sentence. Lord, here I am. The somatic and the verbal together. The opening of the practice is the lifting of the heart and the slowing of the body. The reading follows.
Read the passage slowly. Let your eye stop where it wants to stop. The snagged phrase is where the prayer will begin. You did not choose it. He drew your eye to it. Read the phrase again. Let it sit.
Pray the snagged phrase back, in your own short sentence. If the phrase is be still and know that I am God, pray Lord, let me be still this morning before the day pulls me. The prayer is one sentence. The prayer is yours. The prayer is the small return of what He has spoken.
Close the book. Sit for one more minute in silence. Then begin the day. The silence is the listening. The listening is the older shape of the practice. Then the kitchen, the children, the inbox — and through the day, when you can remember, the small interior lifting of the heart in whatever room the day finds you in. The fifteen minutes in the chair are the appointment. The lifting through the day is what the appointment seeds.
That is how to do daily devotions in the older sense. Not a programme. Not a streak. The small daily sitting-down with a short passage and an honest prayer, in the same chair at the same hour, kept across years, until the practice has slowly built the burning heart the older Christians lived inside of.
(The sibling articles on the same contemplative ground sit at how to develop a quiet time with God — Brother Lawrence’s hidden method and how to pray morning and evening — Habermann’s daily prayers.)
What a year of the slow practice looks like
A year of Tozer’s pattern does not look like a transformation arc. It looks like a woman who, in January, was sitting in the same chair for fifteen minutes with a short Psalm and a small honest prayer — and in December of the same year is doing the same thing. The mornings have not changed in any way an outside observer would notice. The woman inside the morning has slowly become someone whose first thought on a hard Tuesday is a phrase from Psalm 27, whose chest carries a small interior chapel into the kitchen, whose practice does not collapse when the chair is impossible on a given day because the lifting-of-the-heart has become portable.
That is how to do daily devotions in the older sense. Not by the right book. Not by the highlight reel. By the small daily sitting-down in the same chair, with the same short text, and the slow honest pursuit of the God who is still being pursued — even after the finding — by the children of the burning heart.
Get Seven Days of Stillness — free
A free gift from Hayley Louisa Mark. A short devotional companion drawn from the 140-Day series — seven passages, seven contemplative practices, sent to your inbox over the coming week.
No noise. No spam. Unsubscribe whenever you wish.
A daily home for the practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Prayer Journal for Women. Each morning, a short passage and room for the honest prayer — the small daily anchor that holds the pursuit together when the will alone would not.
The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women carries Tozer’s older vocabulary — the pursuit after the finding, the longing for longing, the heart lifted into sanctuary — into a daily companion built for the woman whose devotional has stopped working, and who is ready, slowly, to begin again differently.
