Quiet time with God

Spending daily time with God seems like such a simple task in the Christian life. But sometimes, it can be the most challenging thing to do! If you’re like me, you have a lot going on. Perhaps you are in school, with a rigorous schedule and lots of homework, and maybe you are even working a job on top of that! Maybe you’re a stay-at-home mom, like I am. You have children to keep clean, fed, taught, disciplined, etc...it’s a full-time job, isn’t it? Maybe you work a job or are involved in a lot of church ministries that keep you very busy from one day to the next. All I know is, no matter what you have going on in your life, there IS a lot going on. Life just gets busier and busier and spending time with God and developing our closeness with God can tend to fall by the wayside. Friends, we can’t afford to NOT spend time with God each day! Without His help, guidance, and closeness in our lives, we would fail miserably! True success comes when we are saturated with God’s Word and when we are obeying it. Joshua 1:8 says, “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.” We can’t let the excuse of busyness keep us from that closeness with the Lord. Sin also hinders us from spending time with God. If we are harboring sin in our hearts and lives, that desire to know God more and more fades away pretty quickly. Just like Adam and Eve hid from God in the garden after they’d sinned and broken that fellowship with Him, we may find ourselves “hiding” from God and avoiding spending time fellowshipping with Him if we are living in sin. Repent, dear friend, and regain that closeness with your Savior once again! Remember, God never moves...we are the ones who drift away from Him. He stands there, in that same position, waiting for us to return with His arms wide open! Just as the prodigal son’s father welcomed him home, God will welcome us back into fellowship with Him as soon as we decide to leave the sin behind and go back home to that place of closeness with our Father! Do you find yourself being just plain lazy when it comes to carving out time each day to spend in God’s Word? Remember that Matthew 26:41b says, “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” We cannot allow our lazy flesh to rule. A life ruled by the flesh is miserable. You know what is right, but you don’t have the strength to choose the right way. You live in a constant state of feeling like a failure. If you want to see this way of life reversed, you first have to make a choice. Decide you are going grab the flesh and “bring it into subjection” as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 9. It won’t happen on it’s own. You must make that choice. Starve the flesh and feed the spirit, and the spirit will grow stronger and stronger while the flesh diminishes away. Ask God to daily strengthen your desire to spend time with Him and give you the willpower and determination to say no to the flesh and yes to the spirit. Let’s talk practical now. If we are going to decide to put God first and make spending time with Him a priority, we need to have a plan! Proverbs 21:5 says, “The thoughts (or plans) of the diligent tend only to plenteousness; but of every one that is hasty only to want.” Maybe you will plan to read your Bible through in a year following a Bible reading schedule. This method is quite popular, but can be dangerous (as I have learned firsthand!). Beware of rushing and not paying attention to what you’re reading when following this plan. I have chosen this method of Bible reading many times, but always, without fail, tend to find myself rushing and skimming in order to stay on track. Perhaps, you will start small and build up to more. Try an Old Testament reading plan for the year or just the New Testament, along with a Psalm a day or a Proverb a day. Perhaps you would like to try what I’ve been doing this year: deep studies in specific books of the Bible. So far, I have done Romans and now am beginning Hebrews. I’m hoping to maybe be able to do four books of the Bible before the year is over. I have a Bible study book that I read/answer questions in. It is so refreshing to not feel rushed to read through passages, but to be able to take my time and study verse by verse and really get to know a book of the Bible and meditate on ALL it has to teach me! Maybe people enjoy journaling as they study God’s Word. Writing down thoughts, lessons learned, or even prayers to the Lord as you go through your devotions allows you to really think through what you’re learning and gives you the opportunity to go back later and meditate again on old lessons you learned. One thing I have started to be quite convicted about is my lack of Bible memorization. God encourages us to hide His Word in our heart (Ps. 119:11), and I did a lot of memorization as a child and even in Bible college. But then I got married, had kids, and let that part of time with God fall by the wayside. The past few months, I have been encouraged (by my mom’s example, specifically!) to start memorizing a book of the Bible. I know...I was petrified at first. “I have such a foggy mommy brain – especially when I’m pregnant! – how will I ever memorize verses, let alone whole chapters of the Bible?!” But I knew God wanted me to start, so I did. I chose the book of Ephesians and after a couple months, I had the first chapter memorized! Then I began chapter 2 and I have recently finished memorizing that one! This fuzzed up mommy brain is being challenged and stretched and I really feel like it has been good for me (not only am I hiding God’s Word in my heart but I am challenging my poor brain and keeping it in better shape than it was before!). God rewards those who obey Him. He wanted me to start memorizing His Word, I chose to obey and He has greatly blessed me for it. It is NOT as hard as I was afraid it would be! I encourage and challenge each of you to surrender this area to God and see what He will teach you and equip you to be able to do when it comes to hiding His Word in your heart! A great way to begin and end your time with God is with prayer! Especially when you think of your quiet time as having an intimate conversation with God. A conversation goes back and forth right? It should never be one-sided (it wouldn’t be called a conversation if it was!). So perhaps try beginning your time with God in prayer, asking Him to quiet your heart, eliminate distractions, focus your mind and heart, and teach you something important from His Word that day. Then, He will talk to you as you spend time reading/memorizing the Bible (God’s message to us). At the end, you can thank Him for what he taught you, and praise Him for Who He is and what He has done in your life. Bring your requests before Him (maybe you use a prayer list for this), and bring the burdens of others to His throne of grace as well. Remember, Galatians 6:2 says, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Praying for others is direct obedience to God! I will be completely honest with you: prayer is probably the hardest part of the “quiet time with God” process for me! It takes a lot of discipline, patience, and humility to pray. Many preachers, when preaching on prayer, have said it is the easiest yet hardest thing a believer can do! I am hoping to continue growing in this area, as God molds me more and more into His likeness! I pray that whatever areas you may struggle in (whether it’s the whole quiet time thing in general, or a specific part of it like Bible reading/studying, verse memorization, and/or prayer), you will be encouraged through this article to give those areas to God and watch Him teach you, help you, and develop you into the Christian He wants you to be!