Spending Quality Time with God

If you have truly accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you will have a burning desire to get to know Him, to change your sinful ways and to know the Word of God. God gives us this desire when we are saved because He knows that we cannot change ourselves. The change that will take place within us requires His work. Just like we cannot save ourselves; we cannot change ourselves. With God’s help, we are transformed into the likeness of Jesus. This does not mean that we will not make mistakes or sin but it does mean that we have a desire to please God in everything that we do and not some things.

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Galations 5:24-25, NIV

As we spend time with God, this desire grows within us and we are transformed! This transformation doesn’t take place overnight. It is kind of like going to school. Every year we enter into a new grade provided that we have mastered our previous grade. Each grade teaches us something new and prepares us for graduation. Well, becoming like Christ is like progressing through school. Each day, God prevents us with new truths. Each day we are given an opportunity through life tests to exercise this truth in our lives. When we past the test, we are ready to move on to the next character development. This process continues until we get to heaven.

being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:6

So for the process to begin and to continue, we must spend daily quality time with God and in His Word. Some of you might be thinking, I have heard this before and I believe it to be but I don’t know where or how to start. Well, you have come to the right place. Before you can start your quality time with God, there is some prep work that must be done. First you must have a desire to know God.

When we are saved, Jesus tells us that we are cleansed from our sins. We are born again. We are new creatures. As new creatures, our focus should no longer be on ourselves but on God. Our focus should be on knowing God and His ways.

I have heard Christians say, “I don’t like to read the Bible;” I can’t get into reading the Bible because it is boring.” I find this to be quit disturbing and so should they. When the Holy Spirit lives in us, it draws us to God. It gives us a desire to want to know God. Without this desire, it will be very challenging for you to commit to spending daily time with God. If you do not have a desire to hear, learn and study God’s Word, I challenge you to search your heart and ask God to reveal to you if you are truly saved.

Next, you must create a plan to spend time with God. If your days are like mine, it is extremely difficult to add one more thing to it. That is why you must schedule your time with God just like with anything else that is important to you. As busy as Jesus was, He made spending time with God a priority.

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. Simon, and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!” Mark 1:35-37

You probably don’t have to make time to go to work each day because this is a priority and you know the consequences of you not going. We must make time with the Lord a number one priority. If we do not, it will fall through the cracks like many other things we have good intentions of doing each day. For those of you, who have organizers; use them to schedule your time with God. Don’t let lack of planning and making this a priority prevent you from doing it? The most important meeting we can have is our own personal time with the Lord.

So to help you with your planning, we have a couple of suggestions:

1. Decide on a daily time to meet with God. The time doesn’t matter but I recommend that you make this the first thing you do. This is crucial because it lets God know that He is a priority, it invites God into your day and it gets you focused on God first thing in the morning which will direct your day.

2. Find a quiet place. The great thing about starting early in the morning is that you have some quiet time before the children awaken. If you have to do it after the children are awake, help them to understand that his is your quiet time and you should not be interrupted. This could be challenging for them at first but if you consistently ignore them during this time they will catch on.

3. Make it a habit. Decide to do this daily. Some research says that habits can be formed in as few as 10 days. So make a commitment to set aside time for 14 days consistently and you should have a habit formed. Also, find and accountability partner. When we know someone is going to check on us then we are more apt to do it. When the alarm goes off in the morning, my husband and I do our devotion together. This is great because we can discuss the devotional and hold one another accountable.

Now that we have the planning out of the way, it is time to spend time God. Spending quality time with God can be summarized in the following categories.

4. Pray
I always recommend that people start off their quality time with prayer. I normally say something like this, ” Lord, thank you for today and the opportunity to study your Word. You have promised that you will reveal yourself to those who follow you and have a desire to know you. Please reveal to me anything that I need to know about You and about myself as I study Your Word.” Moses prayed to God frequently like in Exodus 33:13, “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so that I may know you…” Learn more about prayer

5. The Word
Start with the Bible. The Bible is the Word of God. The Bible reveals God. God is a living being. He’s a person. And because the Bible is the Word of God, because it reveals who God is, it is one of the most necessary ingredients for having fellowship with God. We need to spend time reading the Word of God to learn about God.

Getting to know God starts with His Word – the Bible. The Bible reveals who God is, His plan for man, His love for us, and what He expects from us. It is God’s love letter to us. This love letter starts with Genesis and ends with Revelation. I mention this because many Christians have a tendency to read only the New Testament and this is only the end of the letter. The Old Testament is so crucial in helping us understand God and how He deals with man.

The Bible should not be read but studied. Study it like you do your text book for a class. Read your Bible for understanding, applicability and retention because you will be tested on it.

We are going to walk you through a plan for studying the Bible. Bible Reading Plan

6. Journal
It is so important for Christians to reflect upon what they have read in the Bible. Remember this is not a novel, even though some books can read like one but an instructional guide. God is speaking directly to you while you are reading so it is important for you to reflect on what you have read and determine how this affects you as a Christian. God tells us to not be just hearers of the Word but doers of the Word. God expects Christians to obey His Word; His complete Word. So determine how you can apply what you have read to your life. If God calls out a particular sin, see if you have this sin in your life. So basically this reflection time is for you to examine yourself. Make sure you are honest with yourself because God already knows what is in your heart. He is just waiting for you to admit it and ask for His help to change it.

I find it quit helpful when I write down (journal) what God reveals to me when I study the Word. This allows me to keep track of His instructions, determine if I have obeyed Him and how much time it took me to do it, and it allows me to go back over my learning’s at a future date and share them with others.

7. Application
Studying the Word of God is only the beginning. God expects us to apply it to our lives. In step 5, you identified how you can apply this to your life and now you have to actually do it. James tells us in James 1:22-26

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it-he will be blessed in what he does.

My pastor always says that God is more concerned about our character than our comfort. Change is hard! God knows that changing is such a hard thing to do and that is why He sent us the Holy Spirit to bring to mind all those things that He reveals to us. Remember that you cannot change yourself but God can. So now pray about what God has revealed to you, ask God to forgive you and then ask Him to help you change. He has promised to help us if we listen to Him.

I hope this has helped you with getting started with studying the Word. Keep this in mind: the more you expose yourself to His Word, the more He will expose His Word to you!

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