As that quiet awareness continued to grow, I found myself searching for something more steady in my life with God. Not something new, but something deeper, something that could move beyond moments of inspiration and begin to shape the everyday rhythms of my life. That search eventually led me to one of the Christian practices known as the Daily Office. At first, I did not fully understand what it was. I only knew that it offered a simple structure, set times during the day to pause, return to Scripture, and pray. Morning. Midday. Evening. A gentle rhythm that invited me to come back to God again and again. There was something immediately grounding about it.
Instead of relying on how I felt in the moment, the Daily Office gave me a way to remain connected even when life was busy, distracting, or unpredictable. It created space where there had often been none. In the beginning, it was the structure that drew me in. There was comfort in knowing what to read. There was clarity in knowing what to pray. There was a sense of stability in returning at the same times each day. It felt like something I could hold onto. And in many ways, it held me.
It helped bring consistency to my days. It gently reordered my attention. It created moments where I would pause, breathe, and remember that God was present, not just in the big moments, but in the ordinary flow of life. Over time, I began to notice something shifting. What started as something I was doing began to shape how I was living. The repeated returning began to soften my pace. Scripture began to settle more deeply into my heart. Prayer became less about saying the right things and more about simply being present. I was not just engaging a practice. I was being formed by a rhythm.
And yet, even as this was happening, I still thought the power was in the structure itself. I believed that if I could just stay consistent, follow the pattern, and maintain the discipline, then that would be the key to a deeper life with God. And while there was truth in that, it was not the whole story. What I had not yet fully realized was that the structure was never meant to be the center. It was simply the doorway. In the next part of this journey, I began to discover both the gift and the limits of structure, and how what I thought was the foundation was actually pointing me to something deeper.
Steve Lawes serves as the lead pastor of Keys Vineyard Church, founder of the Online Bible Institute Network, and leads the Christian Practices initiative through Tower of Praise, Inc. His heart is to help people grow in a steady and authentic relationship with God through simple, accessible rhythms of Scripture, prayer, and spiritual formation.
