Quiet Times - Developing Your Christian Faith
Written by John Fontanella
Sunday, 24 October 2010 10:00
Next Steps In Developing Your Christian Faith
A lot of Christians don’t know what the next step in developing their faith is. Its like they join team Jesus, they know that Church is on Sunday, maybe they even get Baptized but what is there beyond that? How do we see a fruitful increase in faith? I’d say there are a large percentage of Christians who would have a hard time putting to words what some effective ways of growing their faith are. Church is great, its like the game time. But when are the practices? Maybe you go to a forward thinking church like Gateway and you’re asked to join a small group, but that’s still only two days a week. I want to be a Christian 8 days.
Let’s compare and contrast 4 different occasions by 4 different authors that record remarkably similar events, look for some key details that these verses have in common.
Matthew 14:23: “After he had dismissed them, Jesus went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. (Mark 6:45-46) (just after feeding the 5,000)
Mark 1:35: "35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. (see also Luke 4:42)
Luke 5:15-16: "After Jesus had cleansed the leaper 15 the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. 16 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
John 6:15: 15 Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.
I find three remarkably similar details about the Habits of Jesus.
- He goes off to spend time with God,
- repeatedly, often
- Away from everybody else
Why does Jesus spend so much time praying by himself?
He withdraws and he prays and he seems to do it lonely solitary places. To borrow a counseling term from my wife. Jesus is modeling good behavior for us.
He’s doing it in such a way that Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John all see him leaving, withdrawing in order to go spend some time with God. This shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. Jesus uses quite possibly the greatest teaching or fathering technique known to man.
Watch how Jesus does this in Luke. First, in Luke 5 He demonstrates for the disciples how to spend time with God, notice He doesn’t start teaching them how to do it yet, he’s just modeling the behavior. Then later on, Luke 9 on the Mountain of Tabor, where the transfiguration takes place, He teaches His best students, his inner circle, James Peter and John, how to do it, but doesn’t yet include the whole group, he’s training leaders so they can help him later. Then in Luke 11 after teaching the inner circle he opens it up to all the disciples and teaches them how to spend time with God.
Luke 5:15-16: "After Jesus had cleansed the leaper 15 the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. 16 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
Luke 9:28: "28 About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray."
Luke 11:1: One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray…
And I found this pattern is also recorded in Matthew Mark and John but if we want to get out of here by kickoff you’re gonna have to take my word for it.
What is a quiet time?
To quote Stephen Eyre, “A quiet time is a meeting with God.”
After Reading through the first 4 verses above, I believe Jesus is showing us that there are 5 Characteristics of an effective quiet time…in order that they are presented.
5 keys to an effective Quiet Time/Devotional
- It is in the morning.
- It is a priority.
- It in a lonely place.
- Do it often.
- Jesus is prepared.
What are the Characteristics of an effective quiet time?
1. Time to have it is in the Morning:
While Luke doesn’t tell us exactly when Jesus was doing his quiet times, Mark 1:35 is clear that, “very early in the morning Jesus goes off into a solitary place” to have His Quiet Time. It must have stuck out to Mark how early Jesus is getting up because there are two different words in the Greek for morning time. One is just for the regular morning time, but the one Mark uses describes the earliest part of the day when it is still dark and into daybreak.
It is more important than you might think.
Three kings travel at night, not just because of the stars, but because it is cooler at night.
As I went back through the Bible I noticed that again there was a pattern to when time is spent with God. I’ll present my case in the order they appear in the Bible.
Numbers 28:3-4: "3 Say to them: 'This is the offering made by fire that you are to present to the LORD: two lambs a year old without defect, as a regular burnt offering each day. 4 Prepare one lamb in the morning and the other at twilight."
So God has just set up the sacrificial system in Leviticus and has given some real specific instructions for the burnt offering. Here’s what’s super interesting about the burnt offering. A burnt offering is burned for one of two reasons.
- Sacrificed specifically for the ‘satisfaction’ or ‘appeasement’ of sin. Or
- General display of dedication to the Lord.
Really good Bible Scholars have been comparing and contrasting for years the Sacrificial System and the ultimate realization of the Sacrificial system in Jesus Christ. The most commonly compared offering to Jesus Christ is the burnt offering. Its so paralleled in fact that the same terms used for why we would give a burnt offering are the same terms used for Jesus sacrifice on the Cross, only finalized. So its like Jesus is the final sacrifice that atones for our sins ever. And while the command to have the burnt offering in the morning is not quite as important as a commandment, it seems to be more than a really really really good idea, God actually required, that we do it in the morning, first thing and, because it shows that no one nothing no idols have been put before Him. By doing it first thing in the day it shows God that He is a priority in our lives.
We know for certain that those who took God seriously did in fact present burnt offerings in the morning.
NIV Job 1:5: When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would send and have them purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, "Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." This was Job's regular custom.
Preparing a burnt offering took a lot of work. Job was focused on God.
Joshua before he goes to war to take down Jericho, focuses on God, early in the morning.
Another case in the psalms… David would cry out in the mornings for God before battles and important decisions.
Part of this is practical and part of it is essential.
***God has set up our lives in a way that busy during the day. Joshua and David were busy at War, Job was busy on the farm. You’re busy at your job. But there is always room in the morning before the craziness starts.
As we work our way throughout the Old Testament we can see that, God puts a premium on getting time with Him in the morning. Why?
2 reasons why God puts a premium on getting time with Him in the morning
Your Brain Is Most Focused...
The first one is very practical. You’re brain is most focused in the morning and right before you go to bed.
I checked Discovery Channel.com’s general health section, and they confirmed what the Navigator’s topical Memory system has been telling us for years.
Navigator’s topical memory system advises us that the best time to memorize and recall scripture is early in the morning and at night before you go to bed.
It shows commitment
The second reason is infinitely more important
When I was in college, I took an intro to kinesiology class, which was basically to see if you want to be a trainer 101.
I’ll never forget that they gave us the advice that if you want to see if a client is really committed to working out and even bigger than that, committed to changing their lifestyle to become physically fit. If you really want to see if they are going to stick with it, try to schedule their training sessions in the morning. The idea was that if they were willing to lose sleep over getting physically fit and they were willing to train first, it would become a priority in their life.
2. It must be a priority:
That’s our second characteristic of an effective quiet time.
God wants you to make time with him a priority. And by spending time with God in the morning you demonstrate your commitment level.
I counted 14 recorded times in the New Testament where Jesus is praying or doing something specific that is representative of a quiet time before He goes and does something miraculous. He makes spending time with God a priority.
Matthew 4:4 says spending time with the Lord is more important than eating bread. Quiet time is becoming more serious the more we look at it. I worry, myself included, that there is an attitude of, “God can wait until later.” We drawn to the notion that once we have found God, He is in our lives and that is that. But what we are talking about is the next step in your Christian walk, what happens after accepting Jesus Christ into your life. Some of you have been a Christian for 1 week and some for ten years and still have not made spending time with the Lord a priority, and people and you wonder why people complain they’re not getting anything out of church or that their faith.
As my coach said in High School, if you don’t practice, you don’t play in the game. Church would look very different if we all showed up practiced up and ready to go.
Illustration: In the early 1900’s when developers were allotting land for Beverly Hills, they didn’t leave any room for churches because they didn’t generate profits or tax revenues. When Movie Star Will Rogers objected, they reconsidered. They managed to squeeze a church in on a strip of land that was going to be a public park.
If we don’t make God a priority we will end up squeezing him in wherever we find time.
A sure way to make sure that you don’t end up squeezing God in is to do your quiet times regularly, let it become a habit.
3. Jesus withdraws often
You know what we would call “withdrawing often?” If we do something a lot, regularly, we call it a habit. Jesus has made spending time with God a priority and it has become a Habit.
Listen to what a prominent self help website says about how to change or start a new habit.
Stay Consistent – The more consistent your habit the easier it will be to stick. If you want to start exercising, try going at the same time, to the same place for your thirty days. When cues like time of day, place and circumstances are the same in each case it is easier to stick.
Sounds incredibly similar to the accounts of Jesus spending time with God doesn’t it?
Well this is a gentle reminder that it’s not too late. It’s not too late to find yourself a lonely place to sit down with God and pray that your heart be changed to make it a priority and that it will become a habit.
And that lonely place seems to be a really big deal.
4. Set aside a lonely place:
I can think of at least three separate places where Jesus withdraws to a lonely places, the wilderness, the mountains, the garden… Jesus was not able to have his quiet times in a place crowded by followers and disciples.
The average American Home has somewhere around 3.5 tv’s in their homes and 1.9 computers. A room with a tv or a radio or a computer in it is not a lonely place. Therefore by definition most American Homes are challenging places to get time alone with God.
Our time with God needs to be a little more like a dinner date and less like a pizza night.
Have you ever thought about why you go out on dinner dates with your wife? Think about it for a sec. If it’s a really special date. Maybe your anniversary September 2nd. You make reservations at a restaurant. So you’ve set aside a time that you are going to commit to you wife. Just the two of you, shows your wife that she’s important. The waitress brings the menu, you get to choose what you want to eat. No one has to run to the grocery store, they cook it for you, they bring it out to you, they clean up after you. All so that you can focus on the person sitting across from the table. And that’s what the dinner date is all about right ladies? Its about being a priority in your husband life, you want his undivided attention.
There are some striking parallels to the way that an effective time with God can be carried out.
So you should have two ideas in your head right now, we gotta practice and do it more like a dinner date and less like…Honey I’ll pick up a pizza, the boys are coming over.
Okay. Checklist time: do it in the morning, make it a priority, make it a habit, no distractions… and what was the last one, oh yes be prepared.
5. Be prepared for quiet time:
In the Navy they have a saying, “Proper Preparation Prevent Poor Performance.”
If you are into music I suggest you pick up a cd, maybe Chris Tomlin or Hillsong United
If you are into the history channel, why not pick up some Christian History books?
Into sports? How about reading a Christian author Tony Dungy or Joe Gibbs
Like Trivial pursuit, pick up some Bible Q & A flash cards.
And if you’re a Dummy, there’s Christianity for Dummies
If you’re and idiot, there’s Christianity for Idiots
Never away from your blackberry, sign up for the Daily Office project and do your devotional by text. But I warn you step away from what you’re doing to read it. Or it will just sit there.
One Pastor is quoted as saying, “If I don’t do my devotional time to God in the morning, I will assuredly be asking for forgiveness at night.”
Discipleship Journal Polled its readers on several questions about Time with God. 81% of those surveyed noted temptations were more potent when they had neglected their time with God. Discipleship Journal, November / December 1992.
Part of covenant at Gateway Community Church is practice creative devotion. That means if you gotta go climb a mountain to get close to God do it. If you gotta memorize scripture, do it. If you gotta listen to music do it.
One of the things that Scott mentioned about practicing to be a rock star was that he got bored with playing scales and stuff all the time and it was more exciting for him to practice song and solos. Don’t let something boring stop you from doing devotionals. No one is saying you have to wake up at 5am and study the census records in Numbers. Were not even saying that you have to journal to God or read a book. There’s dvds and podcasts and Christian Book stores. Go to a Christian book store in the area tell them you need a devotional and what you are in to a figure out what is going to work. Get started that way.
I have a challenge that I want to issue to your small group. Or your friend or whoever it is that holds you accountable. Spending time with God is important. Get to the point where your life looks like this:
Illustration: Early African converts to Christianity were earnest and regular in private devotions. Each one reportedly had a separate spot in the thicket where he would pour out his heart to God. Over time the paths to these places became well worn. As a result, if one of these believers began to neglect prayer, it was soon apparent to the others. They would kindly remind the negligent one, "Brother, the grass grows on your path."