Many years ago I was helped by another, more mature Christian, to recognize the importance and privilege of meeting daily with God. This person helped me to understand how salvation by grace through faith in Christ leads us into a relationship with Christ – a relationship that transforms our entire life, and while it includes faithful engagement at church, goes well beyond Sunday morning.
My friend showed me how to set aside time to be with God, alone and undistracted, and to read the Bible and pray, to confess my sins, seek His forgiving and strengthening grace, and to rejoice in His wonderful work in my life. It began quite small, to be honest, and I did not draw aside every day, but since that initial start over 37 years ago, meeting with the Lord has steadily grown into a daily time with God that I cherish and through which Christ has worked mightily in my life.
It is true that since the Holy Spirit lives permanently in our hearts, we have 24-7-365 access to our heavenly Father and are encouraged to call on Him throughout the day, implementing Paul’s teaching to “be alert” and “pray without ceasing” (Eph 6:18; 1 Thes 5:17). This is good and, of course, necessary, for lots of reasons. But, we have many God-given responsibilities to attend to in the run of a day and our minds are constantly taken “this way and that”. We are focused on other, often important matters. And that’s one reason why we need a daily time to be with the Lord, unhurried, undistracted, focused. We simply cannot listen well to more than one voice at a time (cf. Mk 4:9)!
Through a daily, focused and unhurried time with Him – and many other “means” as well – the Lord has changed my purposes, dispositions, and decisions in life so that they align more with His will and my true happiness in Him. I am humbled and eternally grateful for His loving and present shepherding of my heart through the means of daily bible meditation and prayer. 1
Now it may be that you’ve heard this before, but for whatever reason, you’ve struggled to put a daily time with God first in your life. Perhaps you’ve tried hard, but through guilt, defeat, and discouragement you’ve abandoned it. Now is the time to change all that, by the grace of God and the power of His word and the Spirit in your heart. I would encourage you to join with some Christian friends and commit to the Lord and each other to regularly spend time with God, alone and together as well (2 Timothy 2:22)! Use one of the reading plans on knowinggod.org. Start a “Quiet Time” group on knowinggod.org, if you’d like. Forget about the past, and by God’s grace and mercy strive toward the future; take hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of you (cf. Phil 3:12-14)! Seek His strengthening grace and the joy of His countenance like you’ve never sought it before (Ps 42:1-2)!
I love the Psalms. The Spirit of Christ who lives in us regularly impresses the words and images of the psalms on our hearts, igniting a greater sense of Christ-centered hope and renewal in our oft-deflated souls (Ps 116:1-2). By His word God expands our vision of the exalted and reigning Christ (Pss 2; 113) and freely enables us to express delight in Him (Ps 16:8-11), to come to Him in times of grief (Ps 42), to exult in Him with shouts of praise (Ps 100), and to properly lament our sin and that of others (Pss 32; 51). Our heavenly Father is our inheritance and it is our birthright to call Him Abba, Father, to cry out to Him (Gal 4:4-6)! In short, the Lord is always at work expanding our faith, vision and passion to know and serve Him (cf. Phil 1:6; 3:10-11; Jer 9:23-24)!
During a period of intense personal struggle – something all of us can relate to – the Psalmist begins his prayer to God in the following manner:
Psalm 42:1 As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God! 42:2 I thirst for God, for the living God. I say, “When will I be able to go and appear in God’s presence?”
When I meditate on these words and discuss them with Christ, I am drawn to Him with a deep longing to know Him, trust Him, honor Him, to seek Him, regardless of what’s going on in my life. And though I groan and daily face the weakness inherent in my efforts (Rom 8:23, 26; 2 Cor 5:1-10), I know that He is working in me what is pleasing in His sight (Eph 3:20-21; Phil 2:12-13; Heb 13:20-21) and will continue His gracious work in me until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil 1:6; 3:20-21). So I strive toward the prize coming from the upward call of God (Phil 3:14), surrendering my life to His glory (Phil 1:21).
I believe that joyful and meaningful, daily time with God is a practice that He uses to call us forward in our Pathway journey with Him. Though we are wasting away outwardly, inwardly we are being renewed day by day (2 Cor 4:14-16). Let us pursue Him daily, knowing full well that it is He who works in us both to will and to do what is pleasing in His sight (Phil 2:12-13)!