Quiet Time

 By: Grace Metzger

But He answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Matthew‬ ‭4‬:‭4‬ ‭ESV‬‬

I’ve heard this verse probably a million times before, heard sermon preached by various pastors. But lately the idea of quiet time has been my focus. I’m not great spending quality quiet time in the word. I spend hours every morning, night, and lunch breaks scrolling through social media, could spend hours watching Netflix. But spending time in the Word, I struggle to do this.

I’m not sure why I have these struggles, I just know that my mind finds it hard to quiet down and focus on God’s Word. My thoughts tend to race, I get busy thinking about all tasks I have to complete, all the things I procrastinated doing yesterday, all the cleaning I haven’t done in too long. I think this is human nature and something that doesn’t come easy to a lot of people.

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark,
 He departed and went out to a desolate place, and there He prayed.
Mark‬ ‭1‬:‭35‬ ‭ESV‬‬

However just because it isn’t easy doesn’t mean it’s unimportant or impossible. I’ve always found, in my faith walk, at least, that the hardest, most painful tasks end up being the most incredible blessings. Because of this, I have made this my focus of the month. I want to learn not only how to spend quiet time with God but how to make it a part of my routine.

So I started trying to figure out how other people do it. The first three people who come to mind when I think of spending quiet time in the word is my mother, my great grandfather, and of course, Jesus. My mother and great grandfather, who I called Papa, spent every single morning reading the Bible. They’ve done this for as long as I can remember. I remember visiting Papa to see him sitting outside in his rocker, reading his Bible or a lot of the times just sitting in the quiet with God. With my mother, I could always bet that when I came into the kitchen in the morning she would be sitting there with her Bible open, notebook and pens out, and her fan blowing on her.

I started thinking about how they did it and came to one possible answer, they both made it apart of their routines years ago and kept to those routines. No matter what happened in life, no matter where they were, you could bet your life that they were going to be spending their mornings reading God’s Word.

I thought about how often the Bible talked about Jesus going to a quiet place to be with God. He too made it into a routine to get away from everyone, take a break with teaching, and spend time with His father.

So how can we start doing this? Well I think it’s the most obvious answer, make it apart of your routine! You have to be intentional with this, you have to ensure every day that you are carving this time out. What helps to remember to do is this is by having it be apart of your routine. Whether that means that before you sleep every night you spend time alone in God’s Word or maybe this means that every morning before you even leave your bed you spend time in the Word. Whatever this might look like to you is okay, as long as you’re actively taking time out of your day to do it.

I challenge you in this upcoming week to start carving out time for your Bible reading. It doesn’t have to be this three hour long thing, just find 5-10 minutes to start out where you can be free of distractions and can focus on the Word.