Spending time with God...
It's something that I always struggle with...making time to be with God. I've had to try different things and change when I schedule my quiet times over the years as life changes. When I was younger, I would read my Bible and pray right before going to bed. Now I am a morning person and absolutely love spending time with God in the quiet morning hour before the household wakes up.
I'm also recently learning how very wonderful and refreshing it is and I find that I keep wanting to spend more time in the Bible and in prayer. I have to admit that having this growing desire is a bit new for me but very exciting as well!
So how about you? When is the best time for you to have a "quiet time," a time of reading the Bible and praying--just you and God? I know it's hard to find time each day but it's so important as Christians to spend time with God, just as we would with our friends. We make time for our friends every day, for sports, for computer and facebook, for getting ready for the day (girls, we tend to spend a lot of time in front of a mirror); why aren't we making time for God?
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We had sermon at church this morning kinda like what you are saying. Many of us don’t make as much time for God as we should because we get distracted. Maybe we purposely get distracted by not wanting to face God and making ourselves so busy that we don’t get the time to face God. We should make time for God because a task without God will never be as good as a task with him. We should put God in the centre of everything we do and he will bless it and it will be better than anything we will ever do without him. Psalm 91v 1-16 everything is better when you include God he will look after you and protect you.
i try to read my Bible before I go to sleep at night but I usually end up getting into bed and then falling asleep because ive been so busy doing other stuff, I don’t spend time on ‘unnecessary’ things but things that I feel I have to do like homework, coursework and music practise. I got rid of my facebook because I never got time to do other things but I still don’t get time. I have got a bean bag in the corner of my room that I occasionally sit on and think about things and that does usually include praying but I don’t read the Bible as often. If I think about something during the day or somethings stressing me out I just type it into bible gateway on the internet and read that verse or passage that helps. Sometimes I get to like wedensday and suddenly think: I havent prayed this week since Sunday at church,how has time gone so quickly? During lent ive been trying to have some time of each day that I spend time with God but its not going as well as I planned.
I've found a bit like Ruth that quiet times work differently at different points in life. When I was at The Oakes until I had Aily (my daughter) I did one in the mornings - but not on camp days because we got up so early. This meant that in the Summer I didn't do them more often than I did. We work such long hours on camp though that it would be a legalism to say you had to do one every day no matter what time.
When I was in my first year at uni I took an extra long one at lunchtime 3 times a week. This worked really well for then - I spent longer periods getting my head round books like Hebrews and Romans. I loved it. Although I didn't do it every day I benefitted from spending longer amounts of time less often. In my 2nd and 3rd years I saw my housemates at lunchtiime so I did my quiet times in the morning.
Now I have Aily I do 15-20 minutes in the morning after my breakfast. It works because she takes ages over breakfast and after she's had breakfast she amuses herself for a bit. But on mornings we have to be up and out I might not manage it. It's only short and it's never uninterrupted but it means that people get prayed for, I get the benefit or reading the Bible and Aily sees that it's something to make a habit of.
Billie, Dan the director's wife, once said that of she'd had time to eat and watch TV she'd had time to do a quiet time. I might not apply that every single day - you can be exausted or ill - but if we look at the pattern of our life we can see the things we make time for and if the Bible and praying isn't there then that's an issue. If we never miss a meal or our daily does of TV but we rarely read the Bible it tells us what we love the most.
To summarise, I suppose I'm saying that don't get down if a season of life makes it difficult but do do what you can. When you have lots of time make more time to pray and study the Bible. The more you know the more you'll remember when you don't have as much time. The Bible doesn't tell us how long or how often is enough. I guess because our relationship with God doesn't work like that!
End note: If you are short on time there's a series of notes called 'Breakfast with God' and you can vary how long you spend on it - you can just do 'coffee' of the 'full english'. We don't sell them but I saw them on Amazon.
For me I never used to read my Bible except at Church, I grew up thinking I knew the Bible and my faith really well, but only this last year did I realise that there were actually a lot of important things I didn't know. So I read it! Every night I read a few chapters from the Bible.. this isn't always done in the best way though - I leave it quite late and am often too tired to really focus on it and I often read too many chapters to completely take in what I'm reading, but despite that I have got a lot out of it. I found that at first things went a bit slow, I got bored by what I was reading a few times and I often felt like giving up on it, but as I read more that changed - it got more exciting, more engaging and I have found myself desperate to stay up a little later to read that extra chapter and find out what happens next (just like I find with a great novel - except this one's true).
I think it's good to set some time aside regularly if you can, but I would (like Mez) say that when or how you do that doesn't have to be the same as anyone else - as long as you're praying to God, reading his word and meeting with other Christians you will be challanged, encourarged and matured in your faith.
Elizabeth, that was quite a move to drop facebook. I am encouraged by girls like you who see things that need to be changed and do it, that make sacrifices -- especially for their relationship with Christ. I read a book last year about a girl who made some huge changes. She actually dropped out of school and started home-schooling because of the poor influences in her life at school; she knew that was the only way she could get a real life change. Not many people do this and for most of us, it's probably not necesary but it is important to be able to see what needs changing and then DO IT!
Keep up the good work of making changes to better serve our Savior! If He gave His life for us, why can't we be sacrificing for Him?