But Jesus withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
Luke 5:16 NIVUK
Quality time.
Two words that are the delight of most parents and the dismay of most children, especially teenagers. The phrase means to spend time together without other distractions: to be focused on each other and their interests above our own. Parents love it because we recognise that modern life is very busy for our offspring. Not to mention horribly stressful. We want to feel that we are important and needed in our child's life. We want to feel like we're 'in the loop' and can contribute. We want to help.
However, for anyone under the age of around thirty, quality time is boring. Friends, movies, computer games, social media, are all much more interesting. And way cooler. I mean, who would boast to their friends that they had quality time with their parents?
We all have a Heavenly Father. But do we want to spend quality time with Him? Or would we rather fill it with noise and music and dancing?
Modern life moves at about a thousand miles an hour. And it is utterly relentless. I'm sure I'm certainly not alone when I say that I'm exhausted at the weekend. That's why mental health practitioners advise us to step off the madness for a while and allow ourselves a break. Our brains are like muscles. If we over-stimulate them constantly, they are bound to snap.
Secular counsellors and therapists know this. But do we? Do we, as believers, use the ancient practices handed down to us through the ages to look after our own mental and spiritual health?
As Christians, we often sing and talk a lot about how much God loves us and we love God, but do we actually want to spend quality time with Him?
I have been in church programmes that mandate what we call 'quiet times'. I have been on church weekends and camps and training programmes that encourage them by having space on their programmes set aside for them. But I honestly do not believe that these are the answer.
For us to have quality time with God, to sit at Jesus' feet and learn from Him the way Mary did (Luke 10:39), and like many of His disciples and even children did, we have to want it. We have to actually want to deliberately set aside a period of our busy day for Him. That takes willpower. It takes determination. It takes organisation.
it takes effort.
And, it goes without saying, that we should not just want to be there, we should enjoy it too. For us to get the most from our quiet time with God, it has to be more than just about discipline or habit. No, it must be about pleasure.
That is precisely the problem with a legalistic approach to quiet times. That's why I don't subscribe to the idea that we should all have our quiet times at certain times of day. That's nonsense. Different people have different approaches. What's important is that we have them because we want to and enjoy them and grow as believers as a result.
However, as I hope you will see, there are some principles and methods that are useful and help us to get the most out of our quiet times.
You see, when I was a high school student and preparing to go to university, my feet were already starting to get a bit itchy. You know that feeling when a teenager starts to get the desire to leave the nest and strike out into the big, bad world on their own? The phase where everything they were brought up with seems different and they don't want it anymore? That was me.
And the thing I didn't like was my pastor's sermons. They seemed lightweight. And boring. And empty.
But that was wrong of me, of course. I was getting little or nothing out of his sermons because I was putting nothing in. I was not spending time and effort listing carefully for God's voice.
But the one good thing that came out of this negativity and unwarranted criticism was a desire to 'find my own food': to strengthen my own quiet times so I could 'get more out' of them. Many of the concepts in this series of short studies come from that time.
Meeting with God can be a life-changing, paradigm-shifting, earth-shaking experience, like it was for the Asaph in Psalm 73 as he brought his doubts on the justice of this world before the Lord. Or, like with Elijah, it can be the still, small voice that reassures us God is in control and has a plan (1 Kings 19:11-18).
I've been a Christian since I was five. I'm now forty-six. I seriously started investing in my quiet time when I was around sixteen-seventeen. So these thoughts come from around thirty years of experience. And I didn't always get it right. There have been a lot of mistakes along the way. But I hope you find these principles helpful in developing your own quiet time where you spend quality time with God and feed yourself with rich spiritual food.
The first of these principles is SECLUSION.
Comments