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Today on the podcast we are talking about our spiritual disciplines and specifically focusing on our quiet time with God. It’s so important to set aside time to spend with God. This podcast will give you tips on how to set up a morning routine that works for you. We will also talk about how to incorporate quiet time in that morning routine that will set you up to live for God for the rest of your life!

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Links:

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Transcript

Here at A More Beautiful Life Collective, we know that the hectic hurry of everyday life can drown out our focus on what matters. This podcast is a moment to intentionally pause and realign our focus. Together, we’re working to find the rhythm of Peace in him through the pace of beauty and order. Thanks so much for joining me.

Announcements

Hey everyone! Welcome back to A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast! I’m so excited to jump into all of the great stuff that we have planned to talk about today. But, before we do that, here are some quick announcements.

We have a new newsletter! If you haven’t checked out the blog yet, be sure to do so at: amorebeautifullifecollective.com. The link is in the show notes! You can subscribe which will get you access to two great resources. First is our weekly newsletter. This has links to everything going on in the community each week as well as links to some of my favorite recipes, books, and podcasts. Second is our subscriber library. Here you can find access to several Bible studies that I’ve written for my youth group and classes that I’ve taught over the years at church. They would be great to use during your own bible study or with a friend! I hope that they encourage and equip you in your study of God’s word!

You can also subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube so that you never miss an episode. If you haven’t yet, please leave a rating and review. This helps others to find the podcast, and I would be so grateful for your help in growing our community! Now onto the episode!

Habits… as liturgies

In our previous episodes, we spent some time discussing technology. Specifically, we considered how technology can function as an idol. We discussed several ways that technology is actually harming us. It affects our minds, bodies, and souls. We ended those episodes with the idea that when we take something out of our lives, we have to put a new thing in its place. A better thing. Jesus actually talks about this in Matthew 12:43-45. When you get your life in order, you can’t just rest in victory thinking that you’ve done all the work, now it’s just time to relax. If you aren’t actively replacing negative thoughts, actions, and patterns with positive ones, you may find yourself in the same situation or worse.

Technology is a tool, and obviously by recording this podcast, I’m not anti-technology. But, technology represents one area of life that is an idol. It is something that can take our focus off of what really matters. It can become the created thing we are worshipping.

So, after we get our heart in order and we put technology back in its proper place, what is the next step? What should we do next?

Our habits are liturgies. As Justin Whitmel Earley says in The Common Rule, “The habits we play out day after day are not tangential to our worship but actually central to it. Worship is formation, and formation is worship. As the psalmist put it, those who make and trust in idols will become like them (Psalm 31:6). So we become our habits.” If you want to learn more about the formation of habits and why they are important you can listen to Season 1 Episodes 1-2. Habits create who we are. So it’s up to us to train our habits in the way they should go, and by extension, to train the habits of our family, friends, and community towards something that is life-giving and beautiful.

The Common Rule gets its name from the ‘rule’ that monasteries established in medieval times. It comes from the Latin word, regula, which is a word associated with a bar or trellis. As Earley states, “The idea is that we (like plants) are always growing and changing. The rule of life is intended to pattern communal life in the direction of purpose and love instead of chaos and decay.” We talked about some of the ways in previous episodes that our current habits can move towards one end of the spectrum or the other.

Today, we are going to focus on our keystone habit. The habit that if you remember it – if you walk away from listening to any podcast, reading any book, learning about anything – and you include it, your life will be changed. This habit is your quiet time with God. Today, we are going to focus on three things: (1) we are going to discuss why having a quiet time with God is important, (2) we are going to look at ways that you can include this time in your life, and (3) we are going to discuss what you can include in this time. No matter where you are in your Christian walk, this is an area of life that can always grow and deepen. My hope is that through this, you are encouraged to dive deeper into your walk with God.

Is this even necessary? Why do you need quiet time with God?

So, pause for a moment and think back to this morning. What was the first thing that you did when you woke up? How did it shape your view of the day? Yourself? God? What feelings did it create? Were they positive or negative? This habit that you have in your morning routine is shaping you. It is the habit, your liturgy, that is forming your heart.

As you think back to this morning, you could feel like it should be a cause for celebration. Maybe you woke up early and did everything on your to-do list. You even ran a couple of miles and mopped the floors before heading off to work! If so, give yourself a pat on the back! That is awesome!

Now for the rest of us, you may have feelings that range from conflicted to downright despair. Maybe you did wake up, but the rush of getting out the door left your Bible still jammed in your closet gathering dust. Or maybe you did get to your devotions, but your 3-year-old refuses to sleep past 6 or stay in his room, so you have to choose: Are you going to be the mean mom and make him stay in his room? Or Are you going to give up on your quiet time with God because it won’t get done?

We all come from different life circumstances. And we also all have differing personalities and temperaments. There’s a need for flexibility as we establish our habits and our rule of life.

But, we also have to recognize the importance of this quiet time with God because it too easily becomes some amorphous goal that never is truly achieved. We have to recognize why it is so important so that when we are forced to make decisions about where our priorities lie, we make the right ones.

The question we have to ask ourselves is this: What do your current habits say about the importance you place on your relationship with God?

When was the last time you read your Bible? The last time you prayed? What does your daily quiet time with God look like? If we are constantly treating God like someone we can brush off because we’ll get to him later, our relationship with him will be dry and brittle. We will be the deer panting for water, but instead of pausing to drink from the well that we have in Christ Jesus – we are dying of thirst because we refuse to drink!

To start, let’s look at some verses that will help us to understand what the Bible says about this habit. I’ll read through them quickly, but if you want to look at them more closely, you can visit the show notes for a copy of these verses! The first three verses focus on the importance of scripture and the second is on the importance of prayer. If you want to read more, you can also look to Deuteronomy 6 and Psalm 119 to learn more.

Joshua 1:8 – This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.
1 Timothy 3:16-17 – All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Hebrews 4:12 – For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 – Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Ephesians 6:18 – And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
1 John 5:15 – And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.

These verses focus on two primary points: God’s word is alive, active, and working in us through the Spirit and we can come to God about anything and he hears us (also through the Spirit). I could have read countless other verses to you about the importance of prayer and reading the Bible, but the point is this – we know that we need to have these spiritual disciplines in our lives. It is up to us to start to put these things into practice.

This is why we use the term spiritual disciplines. These disciplines are a daily choice, a daily habit, that we may not want to do. We train ourselves to do that thing and eventually, it becomes second nature. These spiritual disciplines are discipling us to become more like Christ. It is through these spiritual disciplines that we are being sanctified (as the Holy Spirit works in us). There’s really no way around it – we must practice the spiritual disciplines of scripture reading and praying if we are true Christians. If we want to bear fruit. These spiritual disciplines occur when we have daily quiet time with God.

But, as we talked about before, sometimes it is so difficult to actually make this happen. We don’t know where to start in our quiet time. We don’t know the next step to take. And so we live feeling like we need to make a change but never actually do something about it. We have to figure out our time routine to make a lasting change.

So, here is one place to start.

Redefining our Quiet Time with God.

Kat Lee, the author of Hello Mornings, advocates for a 3 part morning routine. Her three-part routine includes the following:

God Time
Plan Time
Move Time

What she states that is so grace-filled and life-giving is that these three elements can fill an hour and a half morning routine, but they also can be three minutes. Basically, you should aim to at least give your first 3 minutes to God by doing this morning routine. Then, if the rest of your day comes at you hard, you don’t feel like all is lost.

For her God time, she recommends reading at least a verse in your Bible every day. She actually has memorized the verse Psalm 143:8 and says that verse before she gets out of bed. That verse reads “Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.” Then, she takes another minute to plan out her day using her calendar. She wraps up her morning routine by drinking a glass of water.

By keeping her morning routine small, she is effectively creating tiny habits that are her baseline. This routine is not difficult, so she always does her morning routine. There isn’t a need for skipping days.

This is the first step to redefining your quiet time with God. You need to create a routine or quiet time that you can consistently do day-in, day-out. Kat Lee describes that “The heart behind God, Plan, Move is to create an on-ramp for our God time to infiltrate the rest of our day. It starts with time in the Word and prayer, moving into prayerfully planning our day, and then ensuring we have the energy that day for whatever God may ask of us.” By doing this morning routine, you are recalibrating your brain daily to hear what God is directing you to do. You are creating space for him in your life. You are showing that it is a priority to be spending time with him daily.

Justin Whitmel Earley describes two different morning routines that are a part of his quiet time with God that helps to realign his heart and refocus it on God. Every morning when he wakes up he prays on his knees by his bed. He also prays during his midday meal and right before bed. This works prayer into his daily rhythms in a way reminiscent of monks’ daily prayers in monasteries. In addition to this, he intentionally does not look at his phone until he has read scripture. In this way, he has changed his quiet time with God in the morning from a bible reading plan that he may have abandoned in Leviticus, to something that he does daily out of habit. His quiet time is a daily habit, not a pre-packaged product. It is authentic, routine, and easily incorporated into the hecticness of daily life. This is more than just a quiet time routine. It is a lifestyle.

Pulling Away into our Quiet Time with God

We see Jesus often retreat in scriptures into the quiet to spend time communing with God. It is obvious that both the scriptures (his daily bread) and prayer were essential to him and his relationship with God. Jesus’ life is the model for us. His life displays the life of a perfect man. One small step we can take every day is to pull away from the hecticness of the world and pursue God in the quiet. Sally Clarkson, an author and speaker, who has a great podcast for moms called At Home with Sally, describes her quiet times in those hectic years of young children as balmb for her weary soul. In a post, she describes that “she found that the more time she spent in His word, praying, seeking to trust Him with all of her problems and issues and fears and sought to have His values, they almost always led her away from culture–even from the Christian culture she was surrounded by.” When we go to his presence, we receive a clear vision of what God desires for us. His good, pleasing, and perfect will.

When we carve out the time to spend quiet moments with God, we are strengthening our relationship with him, and we are strengthening the legacy of faith that we will pass on to our family, friends, and the greater community. We need meaningful quiet time to be strong in the chaos. We need to pull away from the world to hear the still small voice of God. We do this when we have daily quiet time with God.

Our individual daily quiet times will not be revolutionary at the moment, but it is the layering effect of years and years of pulling away into the quiet to be strengthened and encouraged that real faith is made. Author Anthony Trollope says, “A small daily task if it is really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules.” A spasmodic Hercules is someone who thinks that one action will beat the 1,000 actions that come before it. They work in irregular, inconsistent bursts. How often do we believe this? We can overcome years of spiritual inactivity by one church service, one moment of opening our Bible, or one prayer. Nothing can beat the daily coming to God in the quiet. Our daily quiet time with God.

Join the Community

Thanks so much for listening! You can come join the conversation at A More Beautiful Life Collective on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. I would love to hear your thoughts on quiet time, the Christian walk, and spiritual growth. What do you struggle with? What do you feel is your best resource? You can message me there or leave a comment! See you next week!

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