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Meaningful Time With God

The typical quiet time includes Bible reading and prayer. What is missing in our lives that could enhance our experience, promote our intellectual development, and draw us nearer to our Creator? So often we impose a system or formulaic structure to our time with God rather than giving it the space to be a living, breathing experience of truth with the living God as He transforms our lives.

While setting a regular time to do these worship activities is important, God desires that our whole life be filled with habits to develop a love for Him—habits that involve our heart, mind, and soul. Here are some helpful disciplines we’re suggesting you incorporate into your life and your time alone with God.

• Solitude . . . to keep our quiet time from becoming another task to be scheduled into our hurried lives and checked off on our to-do lists.

• Study . . . subjects in Scripture other than those that are immediately interesting to you or meet a need. Make some notes, pray, and seek other input to help you understand.

• Prayer . . . is the act of reflecting on our lives and communicating our experience to God.

• Observation . . . in the tradition of Solomon (e.g., Ecclesiastes), gives us an opportunity to learn to observe nature, people, and God and seek new truths in such observations.

• Taking thoughts captive . . . as we are instructed to do in 2 Corinthians 10:5, is evaluating the ideas we put into our minds (and talking them over with God), moving out of the passive role of merely viewing and absorbing information into an active role of analyzing the information and engaging the intellect.

Smart Thinking
Take a moment and reflect on and answer these questions:

1. How can time alone with God be your personal worship of Him?
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2. When was the last time you spent time alone with God? Describe that time (frustrating, rewarding, satisfying).
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3. How often, if at all, do you have time alone with God? How often would you like to spend time with Him?
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4. Do you really want to have a quiet time? If not, why? If yes, when will you, and how will you spend that time?
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If you do not have a regular time alone with God, take at least 10 minutes today to practice. Think about how you might incorporate this activity into your daily life.

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Adapted from Smart Faith: Loving Your God With All Your Mind by J. P. Moreland and Mark Matlock (TH1NK, 2005; www.th1nkbooks.com).

More articles from our flagship publication One-to-One Ministry Review.