- Are You a Disciple?
- The Key is Surrender
- The Old You vs. The New You
- Time for a Check-Up
- Learning to Float Upriver
- It’s About Time
- The Bible in Your Quiet Time
- Your Daily Quiet Time
- Livin’ On A Prayer
- To Serve Man
- What’s That About Spiritual Gifts?
- Together We Stand…
- Growing Through Giving
- Don’t Be a Dead Sea Christian
- All You Need Is Love
When I was a kid, any time my parents needed gas in their car they would pull up to a gas station and a guy would come out and ask, “Fill ‘er up?” If my folks wanted him to fill the gas tank they’d say “yes,” but most of the time they’d say something like “Just give me $3 worth.” Which, seriously, would just about fill the tank back in those days.
Then a gasoline shortage hit the U.S., and suddenly gas stations went away from having attendants that put gas in your car. We had to actually pump the gas ourselves! It was outrageous. We were paying more money for the gas and having to get out and do it ourselves. So I was about 10 years old and my dad taught me to pump the gas because he didn’t want my mom to have to do it. Anytime she was driving and I was in the car, I pumped the gas for her. More than once I had to remind her to shut the car off. There were no signs saying to do that, there were no instructions anywhere at all, but I figured I didn’t really want to be handling gasoline around a running car.
A few years later I had my driver’s license, and I started paying for the gas at the pump. We were still driving those massive, huge, gas-guzzling cars, and I discovered another reason to shut the car off when pumping gas: my car drank so much gas, if I left it running it would use up the gas faster than the pump could put new gas in! Or at least that’s what it felt like.
Sometimes we as Christians go through life like that. We get so busy and so caught up in our lives that we never “shut down,” we never stop to spend time with God, and so we are in danger of running on empty. We don’t stop long enough to be completely filled with him.
We’ve been talking for a few weeks now about discipleship, and we’re finally at the point of looking at some specific disciplines we need in our lives in order to grow in our walk with God. The first discipline I want to look at is what some people call a “Daily Quiet Time.” Some of you may read this and think this post is not for you, because you know all about a quiet time. But are you actually having a quiet time each day? Do you have a time set aside every day for God?
So what exactly is a Daily Quiet Time? I learned this definition a long time ago, so I’ll just use it here: A Daily Quiet Time is “time alone with God, usually spent praying and reading the Bible.” What do I do during a Daily Quiet Time? Well just like the definition says, we usually would spend time with God in praying and Bible reading. We’ll start looking at those things in the next post, but today, let’s focus on the simple act of spending time alone with God.
What I’m talking about is a regular time each day where you stop your busy-ness and spend time with God. Just the two of you. No other distractions, no computer, no phone, no TV, nothing but you and God, one-on-one.
This regular time with God is so important because God wants that time of fellowship with you! That’s why he says in Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God” (ESV). Your Heavenly Father loves those times when your focus is solely on him.
I love it when I visit my parents. Obviously, a lot of the time we’re together, we’re talking to each other. But I may watch a football game with my dad or a movie with my mom, and we may go a long time without ever saying a word. And that’s ok, because we’re together. We’ve each taken time out of our lives just to sit in each others’ presence, and that means so much to us. It isn’t always about what we do or say, it’s all about the time we spend together. God wants to experience that with you!
Plus, this time is so important because you need this time with God! You were created for fellowship with God, but we let life and it’s problems and demands get in the way. That’s when we take our eyes off of him, and we begin that long spiritual drift away from his power and presence in our lives.
The truth is, God is always with us, but we can do things that make us numb to his presence. Sin makes us numb. Busy-ness makes us numb. But God wants his children to have an overwhelming sense of His presence. Slowing down our lives, sitting with God, telling Him that if he has anything to say to us, we’re ready to listen, that’s a habit that can open us up to really experiencing His presence in our lives.
So how about you? Does your heart agree with the words of Psalm 63:1? In that verse, David says, “Oh God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water” (NLT).
If those words are not what’s in your heart, would you begin to at least pray each day that God would give you that desire for him? Maybe that’s where you should start – set aside a few minutes each day just to ask God to give you the desire to spend time alone with him.
If those words are what’s in your heart, then it’s time to set aside a few minutes each day to spend alone with God.
Would you at least be willing to give God 5 minutes a day? Maybe 15 minutes a day? You can always grow from there, but the key is starting. If you’re thinking that you don’t have time, would you consider giving God just 1/100 of a 16-hour day? Assuming that you get 8 hours of sleep, would you give 1/100 of your waking hours to God? That’s only 9.6 minutes! Could you give 1/100 of your day to God out of gratitude for all that he will bless you with the other 99/100?
“As the deer pants for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and stand before him?” – Psalm 42:1-2 (NLT).