Cartoon seen recently:
A fellow is listening uncertainly as a recorded voice says out of his telephone receiver, "Your number cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number you are calling and dial again. Or ask yourself if talking to another person is what you really need at this moment!"
Sometimes your need is just to be quiet.
At least once a day, you need to back off from all the other voices and hear only His. It needs to be a long enough time to be meaningful -- to express your love, confess your sins, receive guidance, delight in Him, listen.
I have an electric toothbrush, and I don't take it with me to conferences because it needs frequent plugging into the socket to get re-juiced. And you and I can't go anywhere for very long without the sacrifice of times of quiet with God to get restored again.
I said sacrifice.
A thirty-ish woman said to me at a conference two days ago, "There's no way I can have a daily quiet time. I have five small children who take everything I've got, and then I work every day from four to midnight." As I questioned her, I discovered she has a working husband and almost no debts.
She stood there, weepy, overweight, defeated. It would mean true sacrifice for her to add time with the Lord to her exhausting days. But until she does, she may not hear His solutions and so she'll spiral ever farther downward.
Whatever your circumstances -- if you'd lived in Old Testament times you would have regularly given God a male animal or bird -- whatever you could afford -- that had no defects: something you'd humanly want or even "need" for yourself.
If you're stressed out from a tight schedule, offer God the sacrifice of your time.
If you love to be with people, give Him the sacrifice of your solitude.
If you're not very excited yet about Bible reading and prayer, lift up to Him the sacrifice of your surrendered will.
And when you sit down or kneel to be with Him, what do you do?
No two people will have quiet times just alike, but first decide on a time, a place, and a plan -- and stick to it.
Since the children were in school, except when I'm conference speaking, I've chosen mid-mornings -- my high-energy time. I have with me my Bible, my notebook, and a pen.
First, in the prayer section of my notebook, I put the date and I write that day's prayers to Him. Maybe I should read my Bible first for a while . . . . Anyway, this is my current habit.
I write out my prayers to Him in complete sentences, like writing to a friend. Sometimes I structure sections of my prayer to ACTS: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. That keeps me from getting the "gimme's" too much.1
In any case, writing my prayers has probably been the greatest single encouragement in my walk with the Lord! Practically, it keeps my mind from wandering, and it monitors how much time each day I'm actually giving Him in undistracted prayer -- so I can't fool myself.
The Big Bonus has been discovering how seriously God takes my requests! Weeks or months later I've looked back and read over earlier prayers, and been amazed to see how He's started the wheels of heaven turning to bring about the things I asked of Him!
Then I take up His Word, still with notebook and pen in hand.2
For years Ray and I have read straight through the Bible annually. Of course, any way you read through God's Word will bring blessing -- but this is what I said to my eager young friend Cathy the other day. I urged her not to dip from Old Testament to New Testament to Psalms and back again. I said that's like trying to explore a mountain by being blindfolded and helicoptered into one section and studying that; then being blindfolded again and helicoptered into another section and studying that . . . .
The Bible is a book. It goes from start to finish, unfolding stories and developing themes as it goes. Get the sweep of the whole, over and over! Five pages a day will do it in a year.
Oh, how I love my personal Bible! It's brown, of course (smile). Each year in the margins I write comments and jot in cross-references and write brief prayers concerning what I'm reading, with the date beside it. Then each year I come to those roadmarks again. My Bible represents my personal walk with God for a period of three or four years, and when it's filled and ragged I start another.
Right now I'm finishing up the fourth year with this beloved, tattered old Bible, and because the Exodus 13-14 page is detached, the Israelites are having trouble getting across the Red Sea.
They keep wandering off into my lap.
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1. For more helps on private prayer and Bible reading, see my book Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman, pages 71-73 and 118-22.
2. If you're interested in acquiring a notebook, send me an email with your mailing address. Ray and I have put together for others, at minimum cost, the same kind of notebook that we use. Use the email address at the end of this online edition of the book.
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Let's pray together:
Lord, I need more prayer and more of Your Word in my life! Show me how to schedule these and how to structure them, to be diligent, consistent, making progress. Guide me to the right helps.
My problem is desire, Lord! Stir me up, O Holy Spirit of God. Help me to thirst for, to crave the pure milk of Your Word (1 Peter 2:2). it's what I need, what those around me need, what the world needs. And as I flood it with prayer, it will help me grow in grace as well as in knowledge (2 Peter 3:18).
Lord, I consecrate myself to You for this. In myself I will fail, but I fix my eyes on You.
In Christ's lovely name, amen.
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Prayer . . . indicates to God that someone would speak to Him, and God, so good and gracious, is ever ready to listen (with all reverence we say it) with the prompt attention of a faithful servant.
--Gold Dust
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