BY ROY ADAMS

VER THE YEARS I'VE LISTENED TO tons of advice on healthful living: what to eat and when to eat it; calories and ways to avoid them; bad cholesterol and how to keep it from your plate. And there's much about water and work and exercise and rest and vitamins and organic eating, etc., etc.

The surest way of coming down with something would be for me to focus on every last detail of all that good advice. The approach that preserves my sanity and my health is to disregard the multitude of detail and try to find what works for me.

And that's exactly the direction I take as regards personal devotions. I find it difficult to follow the many good "programs" out there. Wired the way I am, I default to a more freewheeling devotional regime--unstructured, unscripted, spontaneous.

Yet there's method to my madness.

Before I Face the Day
My devotional life centers on the Bible--the one stable, recurrent element of the whole experience. Because of my distance from the office, I find it convenient to divide the daily time into two segments. Arriving at the office before the workday begins, I go into the first segment with just the lower lights burning in my room, creating the ambience I find most conducive to meditation and prayer in the morning.

My focus during this early-morning segment centers on the "softer" portions of the Bible, rich in encouragement, promises, and the human experience. In this category I place the Psalms, Job, Isaiah, and the Gospels. And a marker tells me exactly where to begin that day. The time isn't long in the morning--a half hour at the most. So I read--sometimes silently, sometimes aloud, two to three chapters, or long enough to find some arresting admonition or promise to carry me through the day. That done, the lower lights turn off and in the semidarkness of my room I spend the final moments with God in prayer.

Rising from prayer, I reflect on the day ahead. And depending on what I see, I turn to one or the other--sometimes several--of those promises that have meant so much to me across the decades. When I feel burdened, I turn to Isaiah 40:29-31: "He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. . . . But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength" (NKJV). When I feel overconfident, I turn to John 15:5: "For without Me you can do nothing" (NKJV). When I feel rattled, I go to Isaiah 26:3: "You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You" (NKJV). When I feel the need for wisdom, I go to James 1:5: "Ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault" (NIV). When I feel utterly overwhelmed, I turn to Psalm 20:1, 2: "The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble; . . . send thee help from the sanctuary." And when I feel I'm forgetting what it's all about, I go to Revelation 21 to renew the vision of our final destiny: "Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. . . . 'Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. . . . And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes'" (verses 1-4, NKJV).

My preference would be to do all this at home, but traffic considerations bring me to my office early--which is not all bad. It's a neat thing, in fact, to get down on my knees in the very place where I'll spend many hours of my working day and, before talking to colleagues or any visitor, invite God into that space early in the morning.

And When the Day Is Done
The second segment of my devotions happens at home, following evening family worship. Up in my study I spend time reading the Bible from Genesis on--or from whatever place I choose to start that particular year. Again there's a marker that tells me exactly where I stopped the day before. Some years I don't finish every book, not because I get bogged down in Chronicles or Ezekiel, but because of the exciting things I can't help but stop to view along the way.

Perhaps the most beautiful and rewarding of these stops comes when a text or passage grabs hold of me, sends me digging round about it, and calls my mind to other scriptures far beyond. (And remember that I'm describing devotions here--not Bible study, as such.) My heart smiles broadly when the text leads me to pull commentaries off the shelf, check out references in Ellen G. White and other works that bear upon the theme at hand, and consult the original language. Doesn't happen like that every day--sometimes not for many days. But when it does, I'm invigorated, buoyed up, as if I've been transported to another world.

Open to the Unexpected
The devotional mood can carry through the day. Sometimes I stop for minute meditations, with some spectacular nature scene on my computer screen in front of me. Sometimes at home, in a room other than my study-away from magazines and books and papers and everything else that looks like work--I get down, cross-legged, on the floor (a posture I mastered eating around low tables in Korea). Squatting in that quiet spot, I spend time--10 minutes, 20 minutes, a half hour--doing nothing, just waiting, letting thoughts of God and thoughts from God fill the soul.

I can go on, but you get the idea. There's no script. Sometimes I journal. Other times the last thing I want to do is write. That's how I'm wired. And I share all this personal, private stuff, so that perchance I can encourage someone out there who happens to share my peculiar temperament.

No, one does not always make huge strides through the Bible following my way. At the end of such a devotional period you frequently cannot say: "I covered seven chapters today!" But what you feel, deep down inside, is that you've been with God.

Making Time
It's a daily struggle finding time--adequate time, quality time--for prayer and meditation. Two things I keep in mind, however: one is to never give up the struggle, however discouraging it becomes at times; and the other is to remember that God made me different. I'm wired different. And I must seek the approach to God that suits my circumstance, that fits my personality.

Whoever you are, however you're wired, seek Him in your own way--but seek Him earnestly. And you will find Him.

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Roy Adams is an associate editor of the Adventist Review.