PERSONAL QUIET TIME
A Time to Still Your Heart To Hear From God
By Glenda Ward
McDowell County
Personal quiet time with God is a welcome invitation to slow down. Amid a full, busy life, you can spend quiet time with God. You don’t need to be inactive, static, or remain the same for your heart to be still. Being a static person is remaining the same without growing in one’s Christian belief. It is one’s shortcoming that proves to be their downfall. They choose not to grow in their relationship with God. Your beliefs, motivations, and principles should not all remain unchanged when you still your heart and listen to God speaking to you. One should undergo internal change over time. This is a change that should be apparent to people you interact with in your daily life. God’s original creation intent: It was where He walked and talked with Adam and Eve regularly.
With a journal, Bible, and reference books in hand, settle down and take time to place yourself in a space that is conducive to encountering an experience with God. Prayer – a devotion to a relationship, encounter, and conversation with God – prayer is the root of all we do. Directionless lives are given meaning in a relationship with God! This relationship is grown by establishing and developing a personal devotional life. Just as Adam and Eve walked with God in the coolness of each day, you can grow a relationship with Him through the practice of quiet time specifically to tune into God through prayer, reading of God’s Holy Word, and reflection. This is a time not only for you to speak to God but also to ask God to speak to you. Quiet times are about encountering God. To meet with Him intentionally is the key. In the beginning, God began with a regular intentional encounter in a specific place at a specific time. Humanity’s original space for an encounter with God began in a garden.
Imagine Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the evening stopping, waiting, and listening for God, stilling themselves getting ready to walk and talk with Him. This is what the original quiet time, as God had planned looked like. God created us to interact with Him and to have an intimate relationship with Him. God desires that we walk with Him daily, enjoying the rich fellowship that He offers.
In Genesis 3:8 – Two humans trying to hide themselves of their sin from an all-seeing, all-knowing God. How could they think they could actually hide from God? But yet we do the same thing when we try to hide from God the things we have done. Correctly we are to share all we do and think with God and not try to hide. To hide from God – It can’t be done. These verses in 8 and 9 show God’s desire for our fellowship. Sin had broken Adam and Eve’s fellowship with an all-loving God. God longs to be with us. He actively offers His unconditional love. When we sin, our natural response is fear because we can’t live up to His standards. But if we recognize His love for us, regardless of our brokenness, it will help remove that fear so we can draw close and have the right relationship with God our Father.
The power of the Bible is a guide for our feet in our daily walk with God: and a light on our path as we journey through life. “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105). For an effective quiet time, the Bible is an essential tool to commune with God. The Bible must be approached with prayer, and you must approach prayer with the Bible. The order doesn’t matter, but your Bible should always be at hand when you pray. We need to allow what we read in the Bible to challenge, inspire, and shape us and the way we live our lives. As we meditate on the Scriptures we read we are to take a stand in respect for what God has given to us written within the pages of the Bible. We are to meditate on the Scripture day and night. You can learn how to follow God by meditating on His Word. Meditating means spending time reading and thinking about what you have read: asking yourself how you should change so you are living in God’s Will. Knowing and meditating on God’s Holy Word are the first steps toward applying God’s instructions to your everyday life. The more you delight in God’s presence, the more fruitful you will be. God provides whatever you need when you live in submission to Him. God moves out ahead of us, preparing our way, and bringing us into good and pleasant places. He does not promise a lack of trials but does promise eventual victory. We will be perfectly secure because He is our eternal shelter. To achieve anything worthwhile, we must have God’s Word in our hearts. (Reference Psalm Chapter One). Stop to meditate and absorb the full flavor of what you are reading. Biblical meditation is not an emptying of one’s mind, but a filling of one’s mind and thoughts with the Word of God.
Committing verses from the Bible to our memory is to hide God’s Word in our hearts. It takes the Word of Scripture from the page into our souls, from our head to the heart. Bible verses that you have memorized will sustain and strengthen us throughout life. “Thy Word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Psalm 119:11).
_________________________________________
Glenda Ward is a member of Grand View Baptist Church in McDowell County and is a Christian writer/author of “Something to Think About” – weekly Christian Articles. She finds purpose and joy in writing Church Programs & Bulletins, VBS Material, Christmas and Easter Programs, Memorials, and now expanding to include weekly articles to other churches, as well as writings to include Christian-based articles on Relationships in Marriage; all material based on the KJV of the Bible. From personal experience, I hope to set an example of how to serve a risen Savior and live by the Holy Spirit with joy. My goal is to help people partake of the better option in life to experience the transforming power that is available in Christ Jesus today. You can read more, good, Christian news from Glenda HERE.
_________________________________________
