“Every Christian must have a quiet time with God.” Can you be a Christian without spending time with God?”
“Every Christian must do their morning (and evening) devotions!”
You may have heard similar statements going around the Christian sphere – sermons, blogs and even, songs that eschew why we must have a quiet time.
These statements are so common and consistent that they’ve become a broken record, left on the sidewalk of our faith. We cannot move two steps without these reminders.
Here’s the thing:
I was over it!
I was over this need to be constantly “told” how to live this Christian life.
But before you throw the pitchforks and deem me a backslider or call me a certified pagan, please hear me out.
Have you ever wondered how this idea of having an obligatory quiet time became a thing?
I like to think of a quiet-time as a set- apart and unobstructed time alone with God.
For me, the keywords that distinguish this from any other moments are “set-apart’ and ‘unobstructed or intentional’.
When you look at your life, can you count the number of times, over the last few months, when you made that sort of time with God?
Take your time, I’ll wait.
You may find it’s either not as often as you imagined or more so.
I used to wonder why I struggled with this whole ‘set-apart’ time. Why I couldn’t be consistent with it.
This required some deep reflection and soul searching.
I questioned my Christianity. I wondered if my struggles stemmed from a lack of faith or belief in Jesus.
Thank God I did this.
It revealed a lot about my relationship with God and my connection with the church.
I realised that I rebelled against these ideas around daily Bible Study and prayers because it felt like an added burden or task I had to complete to be deemed a good and righteous Christian.
I know many of the pastors, teachers, ministers and other Christians meant well. They often backed their statements with Bible verses showing the need and place for a quiet time.
But…
There was still something.
I couldn’t pinpoint it at first until recently.
And when I did, It made all the sense in the world.
Here it is:
We can’t force anyone to serve God or spend time with God
It was like a breath of fresh air after spending days in a dark and musty cave.
There was a sense of freedom steeped in the knowledge that serving God is not mandatory.
It has always been and it will always be by choice.
Similarly, there is no standard way that we must worship or spend time with God.
I don’t know what your Christian journey has been like but I hope these words give you the freedom it gave me. I hope they loosen any shackles of religion and doctrines that have held you down. Doctrines that seemed to add layers and layers to what Jesus did for us.
One of the inalienable parts of God’s love for us was in giving us free will.
He did it from the very beginning of creation.
He placed man in the garden and told him what he could and could not eat, and the reasons why. But it was still up to Adam to choose to eat or not to eat. (see Genesis 2 and 3)
I have heard people ask why God put the tree of good and evil in the garden if the man was not supposed to eat it. I had even asked this question at some point in my Christian journey.
But if God had removed that tree, then he would have been making man’s choice for him. It would have invalidated the claim to free will.
God did not force mankind to choose Him. He wanted us to choose him for ourselves because when we make that decision freely, it changes how we live.
I didn’t want to have a quiet time just because everyone said I should. I knew it wasn’t something I did just to tick the box of ‘good Christian living’.
It had to mean more.
With freedom comes responsibility
“Beloved ones, God has called us to live a life of freedom in the Holy Spirit. But don’t view this wonderful freedom as an opportunity to set up a base of operations in the natural realm. Freedom means that we become so completely free of self-indulgence…”
Galatians 5:13
Our choices matter, not just for themselves but also because of the consequences of those choices. When we do what others expect of us, when we go with the flow without questioning or understanding the issues, this is a choice but often not an active one.
“Read your Bible, pray every day if you want to grow.”
That was a song I learned when I was 8 years old. It was ingrained into our hearts at Sunday school even though we didn’t fully understand it.
It was two more things added to the long list of things we were to do as good children of God, including:
- Going to church every Sunday
- Not telling lies
- Giving an offering, amongst others
But is this really the standard of Christianity? Is it about what we do or more about who we are? In many ways, these activities have taken the place of true relationship.
It’s easy to go with the flow, to just do what we are told to do but we often miss the real significance of the act.
There is the lure to just tick the box and move on with our lives. It may explain why there are so many professing Christians whose lives are no different from that of non-Christians.
In some way, we have become like the Pharisees, who could quote the scriptures but didn’t recognize the Son of God.
I didn’t want that type of Christianity so I avoided the whole shebang. It just felt like it was better to do my own thing rather than do what others were breathing down my neck.
But my way sucked, too.
I had to realize that the problem was not the idea of having a quiet time but that it was often more about the quiet time than the God we were going to meet.
We had unceremoniously placed this act above the reason for the act.
Realizing this changed my Christian life and journey.
I had to go back to the why, to the word and to the One who called me out of darkness into his marvellous light.
One of my favourite verses was when Jesus explained the meaning of ‘eternal life’ to his disciples in John 17:3.
He told them that eternal life is about knowing God.
I often go back to this instructive scripture when I notice I am veering off his path.
You don’t go to a king’s palace to see the palace, to spend time with the palace, you go to a king’s palace to see the king.
Our quiet time has to be a choice freely made and intentionally pursued to spend time with God.
Knowing God in an intimate and loving manner is not something we do off the cuff, in a rush and willy-nilly. Then again, God is so merciful that he can still reveal himself to us even in the most unstructured instances.
But only imagine what happens when we make out ’set-apart, unobstructed and meaningful time with him’. When we pursue, with our whole heart, the One who owns our life but does not force us to serve him. Wouldn’t that be something!
Where we know him in our heads and our hearts.
The Bible says we will seek God and find Him when we seek him with our whole heart. Jeremiah 29:13
It also reminds us that a broken and contrite heart the Lord will not despise.
See, God doesn’t need our Bible Study or quiet time if it’s all about feeling good about how pious and righteous we are. The Pharisees in Bible times did it and look where it got them.
It has to be about Him.
It is so beautiful when we make that conscious decision to know our loving father. When we realise we don’t have to prove our Christianity to anyone but need only to pursue God honestly and lovingly.
That’s what I long for.
I want to make time to commune with my father, to talk to him about everything and nothing.
I know I need this time because that’s where I draw strength for the day. I know that it’s the only way I can live a life worthy of my calling, a life that pleases God and a life where I am a blessing to all those around me.
This idea of having a quiet time remains a sensitive but important part of our Christian walk.
I hope you remember that no one can force you to serve God. You get to choose how you live this Christian life but I pray you seek your Heavenly Father with your whole heart and never let go.
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