Baggage and weirdness
Is there anybody 100% satisfied with how their personal relationship with Jesus is going? And if you are completely satisfied, has it been that way from day one?
Prayer, time in the Bible, serving, giving, worship, Christian fellowship. These are the activities from which your personal relationship with God grows, right? Different resources will name them differently, but these are the fundamentals of walking with God.
Some of them seem pretty straight-forward, like serving and Christian fellowship. You use your gifts and skills to help others in need and build the kingdom, and you hang out with like-minded believers so you can keep each other accountable and build each other up in the faith.
However, some of the other undertakings are—and should be—topics for investigation in and of themselves, particularly prayer and studying the Bible. You know…the “quiet time” ones.
I’m going to guess that most Christians find the whole concept of prayer to be a moving target—sometimes it feels effective and makes sense, other times it seems like a fruitless labor of sheer will power. I would also guess that many Christians at some time or other find the idea of studying the Bible—rightly handling the Word of God—to be formidable.
My hand is in the air here. I’ve been a Christian for longer than I can remember (according to the date in my mother’s bible) and I keep gravitating toward books about effective prayer and responsible Bible study. Each reading gives me a different nuance or something new about God, about me, about prayer or Bible study. The concepts seem to shift to new understandings as I mature in the Lord.
And quiet time seems like it’s always in flux. Quiet time. Devotions. Jesus time. Whatever it’s supposed to be.
That’s just how it is. We observe, we try things, we grow, we wrestle, we walk things out. Things work and things don’t and we know it’s important to keep trying.
Results will vary.
None of this is a problem until we get stuck. Stuck in what we think should be happening, or in our perceived failure. So stuck that we quit. Quitting will give you peace—for a while. Then, you know, that guilt thing pops back up. And you forget what you know of God. Neither of which is good.
There’s no magic formula for unfailingly ideal devotions that produce “the right results,” no single one-time solution. But I’m convinced that there is a lot of baggage around the idea of quiet time that can be cut away, a lot of weirdness that can be outsmarted. I’ve had to find ways to get away from the frustration that crops up so often. Here are some of the thoughts I’ve adopted over time. Maybe something here will make sense and ease the aggravation for you.
Plan on seasons
Some periods of your life will go smoothly and you can get into a good routine. Take advantage. Because sooner or later, things will shake up and you’ll have a hard time carving out the time, or the challenges life tosses at you overwhelm your few minutes a day. Use the calm season to press in while you can. Store up good supplies of wisdom and faith for when you’re depleting faster than you can replenish.
But don’t let loss of the routine tell you that you’re losing it all. Seasons come, seasons go.
Lay aside your expectations
Who should say what your quiet time, your prayer life, your Bible study should look like? Yes, there are some aspects that should be in place, because that’s what prayer and Bible study is, but…
Are you crushed by guilt that you can’t pray like Sister Esther for hours at a time? What’s the proof that she prays three hours a day—her own report?
Are you frustrated that you don’t seem to be able to stick with an in-depth, lengthy study like Precept upon Precept? What’s right and best about in-depth, months-long studies with hours of homework and video teaching and table conversations every week?
Why is it so important to have neat notebooks of all your observations? Prayer lists with dates and praise reports? What’s that thing, that image, that idea you have around your quiet time that stares back with a frown and dares you to think you could ever measure up?
Whatever you’re beating your head against as your should—step back and ask yourself what makes that should the ideal? Is it really the best? Or is that just what you’ve told yourself? Lay those expectations aside and explore what works for you.
Go with your wiring, not against it
Does what you do just make you restless? I’d suggest spending some time discovering your learning style. You can develop an approach to your personal disciplines that maximizes the way your brain likes to function. What about your spiritual gifts? Your personality and preferences?
Of course, be aware of letting your tendencies create excuses for you to avoid certain aspects of self-discipline. But see if you can find ways to use your tendencies to make your pressing in to God less of a dry duty and more of a pleasure from which you gain benefit.
Go to your favorite search engine and type in questions like “what is my learning style?” and “what is my spiritual gift?” Take a few inventories to get to know yourself better. Each set of results should offer ideas about how you can take advantage of your wiring. Again, don’t do what you think it should look like. Do what appeals to you.
Who wrote those “rules”? Write your own.
Make it a habit…but
You know and I know—the way to create good habits is by scheduling them and then doing them. Do your best to find a time of day that
· Gives you the time you want to invest
· Is free from distractions and other urgency
· Fits a physical space that’s conducive to your activity
· You’re most likely to actually do it
Then do it. Write it on your calendar, defend it from encroachment, do it, mark it off.
But—don’t make it law. If you miss, you miss. Don’t give up in despair—just start again the next day. Don’t succumb to the voices in your head that tell you you’ll never achieve “good quiet time” or whatever it is your voices whisper. Don’t bash yourself. Just do it tomorrow.
Grace to you!
Mix it up
Don’t expect every day to be the same. One day I might just pray and journal, the next I’ll read my Bible and sit in meditation and silence. If your allotted time can’t include everything, rotate through. If it helps, make a list of what you like to do and be sure you’re getting to each one reasonably often.
Plan time for longer, deeper forays. If you love to get lost in worship, set aside a Saturday morning to drive and turn up your praise tunes. I regularly schedule a chunk of hours to settle in over a question or deeper study. You might discover that a half a day or a weekend near a body of water is best for your type of centering and focusing.
Along with the concept of seasons, the thing you’re doing or the exact way you’re doing it might be necessary for now, but you’ll find it unhelpful in the future. It’s OK to shelve something that no longer leads you to His footstool as effortlessly. Remember it though, because it might serve again.
Ask God to show you
I’m getting more comfortable with this—and I’m amazed that it seems strange to ask God to show me what would be good for me to try. When I request God to show me something He intends to make a good option for me, I don’t usually get a specific answer at the time I ask. But frequently enough, I encounter something that seems to be the answer to my wondering. I’m trying much more of this—asking God to show me whatever I’m questioning at the time. I think He delights in this level of seeking.
Why not?
…
Hear me out on this one thing, please.
It’s not the doing of quiet time activities that’s the goal. There’s no value in checking things off the list, except the personal satisfaction that you accomplished something on your list.
The goal is your relationship with God. Getting to know His heart, His voice in your spirit, what delights Him, what grieves Him. Learning how to gain your strength and purpose from Him instead of from anything else in the world—every moment of every day.
Without the transforming relationship grown in the prayer time and the study time and the serving and the worship…these habits are works of the flesh, earning your salvation. They don’t bear the fruit that matters the most.
I think God would rather five minutes of genuine connection with you than two hours of flogging yourself through a teeth-gritted exercise. And for my part, the sweetness of that five minutes makes me more hungry, more committed to getting away from just going through the motions and getting straight into the presence of God.
The more I press in to God Himself, the more I understand how high His standards are, but also, the wider, deeper, and more crystal clear I perceive His love and grace for me. I’m settling into an odd OK-ness with the realization that I’ll never get it right, any of it, on this side. Instead of making it easy for me to give up trying, that understanding pushes me instead toward God, because I’m convinced He’s more aware of my flaws and frustrations than I am, and they bother Him much less than they bother me. He just wants the relationship, no matter how brokenly it’s offered.
He more than makes up the difference. If I’ll just let Him.
Toward the promise,
Lana
Through the Bible in a Year Reading Plan and Challenge
And this week we finish up with Isaiah. It was a slog, but that wasn’t so bad was it, once you got into the music of the language and the rhythm of the pleadings and threats and comfort. So much comfort! (Did I mention that already?)
Are you hanging in there? Good for you! I’m still behind. Far behind. I’m gonna get it done, but it might not be December 31st. Just so’s you all know.
Sunday, October 17 Catch up and reflect
Monday, October 18 Isaiah 49-50, 1 Thessalonians 2
Tuesday, October 19 Isaiah 51-53, 1 Thessalonians 3
Wednesday, October 20 Isaiah 54-55, 1 Thessalonians 4
Thursday, October 21 Isaiah 56-58, 1 Thessalonians 5
Friday, October 22 Isaiah 59-61, 2 Thessalonians 1
Saturday, October 23 Isaiah 62-66, 2 Thessalonians 2-3
Question for this week’s reading: How many references to the Messiah can you find in Isaiah 53?
Here’s the link to the archives of Toward the Promise. For my new readers, you can skip the last six or so weeks, as challenges ensued and my writing took a hit. But the earlier stuff is still pretty OK.
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