THREE ANGELS BROADCASTING NETWORK DEVOTIONAL
Seven Minutes with God.

By Curtis Badger December 18th, 2025

“My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning I will direct it to You, and I will look up.” Psalm 5:3​

Growing up as a Roman Catholic, I knew of the Bible, since I received one at my First Communion when I was seven, but I certainly did not know the Bible. All that changed when I met my wife Dara. She introduced me to the Seventh-day Adventist beliefs and the wonderful Bible truths they share and teach.

As I studied with my new pastor, and even after I was baptized, I didn’t fully realize my connection with the Lord. But now I’ve worked my way through the Bible and I’ve spent time every day with my Heavenly Father.​

With my wife’s assistance, I found Robert Foster’s book, Seven Minutes with God, which teaches us to approach Him in a personal manner. We start our seven minutes with God with a 30-second preparation of our hearts, thanking Him for a good night’s sleep and a chance to live another day. We say something like, “Lord, please cleanse our hearts so we can hear You speak to us through Your Word. Give us guidance, ready our ears, and make us alert. Create a responsiveness in us, and surround us with the knowledge of Your presence right now as we listen to You. Amen.”

Next, we spend four minutes listening to God by reading our Bible. We find a good chapter, or choose a book of the Bible, and digest it. There are many tools to help us understand it, like Bible apps, concordances, Bible commentaries, or even the 3ABN Bible study guides. But our greatest need is to hear from God and allow His Word to strike fire in our hearts!

We spend the next two-and-a-half minutes talking to God through prayer. A useful acronym to remember is ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication

Adoration is deep love and respect—the purest form of prayer. It’s all about God, and nothing about us. We worship Him, tell Him we love Him, reflect on His greatness, His power, His majesty, and His sovereignty.

Confession is where we admit our wrong-doings and mistakes. We want to be sure every sin is cleansed and forsaken. And this is important: He already knows what we’ve done, so we want to let Him know that we are repentant.

Thanksgiving is where we express the gratitude we have for Him. We should be specific, thanking Him for our family, our work, and our church. We thank Him for answered prayers, and for the hardships we face, since these are part of who we are.

And finally, in Supplication we ask for something earnestly and humbly—making our petitions known to Him. First, we ask for others, then we can ask for ourselves. We include our family, workplace, community, even our state, nation, or other parts of the world. We can pray for missionaries, ministries, college students, or someone we know who’s serving in the military. But above all, we pray for the lost ones we know personally, and for those who have yet to hear about Jesus.

We quickly realized that seven minutes was nowhere near enough time—and soon we were taking 15, then 20, and even 30 minutes a day. Quite often, a whole hour goes by before we realize it—and we are those who, just a few years ago, spent zero minutes a day in prayer, and worked 80-100 hours a week!

And finally, if you’ve never done so, please read the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. You will benefit greatly, and feel free to use an app that reads it to you if you like. But whatever you do, do not become devoted to the habit or pattern itself. Instead, devote yourself to your Savior! Spend time with Him because He grants you the priceless privilege of fellowship with Him.

Try it seven minutes a day for seven days in a row. Yes—Seven. Days. In. A. Row. I know that if you do, you’ll find it to be so meaningful that you’ll desire to do it more!