A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about the spiritual disciplines and talked about how I planned on writing a series of blogs about them. When I attempted to tackle the first of the three spiritual disciplines, quiet times, I found myself writing a couple blogs about the Bible. Those blogs technically dealt with the subject of quiet times, but they didn’t really bring to light why quiet times are important or rewarding.
In this blog I want to just focus on why quiet times help form the foundation of my daily life.
Like most people, my life is filled with ups and downs; some of my days are great and others are pretty difficult. Sometimes it feels like my life is a constant roller coaster and that makes me feel like I don’t stand on solid ground. Even on the good days, I feel a slight stress because I’m waiting for a new crisis to come my way.
This kind of roller coaster mentality really wears me out and my quiet times are the perfect answer to that problem. My quiet times give me two things that really counter the effects of the roller coaster life. They give me a solid rock to lean on every day and they also teach me that this source of stability, God, is in control of my life.
Very few things in our lives are stable. Our relationships, jobs, and finances remain in a constant state of flux and that’s how we end up with the roller coaster mentality. Thankfully, God is always the same and we can rely on Him to NEVER change.
God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? – Numbers 23:19
My quiet times allow me to experience time with a God who never changes in the midst of a life that never stops changing. That constancy is priceless to me because it gives me a solid ground to stand on. No matter what, God will always be there and that means I can fall back on Him no matter how difficult life becomes.
The greatness of my quiet times doesn’t end there though. Along with providing me a constant in my life, my quiet times remind me that the constant I can lean back on is also in control. That’s really great news because it means no force of change can overcome what I’m leaning on.
I know from experience the difficulty of life when a major part, or even all, of your foundation falls to pieces. When my parents passed away, it rocked my world and left me grasping for anything that I could hold onto. The more I lean on God daily, the less of a danger that becomes.
My world can still shake and I can still fall down, but I won’t have to grasp for anything within reach because God will be there to uphold me.
Fear not, for I am with you;
Be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Isaiah 41:10
When tragedies or struggles hit, I can fall back onto a God who can’t be overcome and that means the world to me. My quiet times give me a daily experience with God and that reminds me of the unshakable rock that I stand on. Without that reminder, my sin nature will probably pull me into making things like success, relationships, or pleasure my foundation instead of God.
While I know that none of those offer the same reliability as God, they are shiny and I’m not a very good person.
Back to my point, my quiet times play a crucial role in God becoming the foundation of my daily life. I know in my head that I should lean on God because He offers the greatest source of reliability, but I had to experience that reliability for me to start actively leaning on Him instead of all the shiny things in this world. When my experiences of God in quiet times remained constant while everything else kept changing, I leaned on Him more than anything else.
This really helped me start trusting God with the daily parts of my life.
That change doesn’t have to happen overnight or even in a few months, but a daily experience with God will bring eventually bring change into your life. Would you like to have something in your life that always remains constant? What are you willing to do to make that happen?
Image Copyright: Doug Doldie
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