Take Time to Listen:
Breaking Out from Inconsistency in Your Quiet Time
“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." Romans 10:17 ESV
On and Off on Your Reading
I want to talk about the brutal truth hidden under your daily quiet time and unfold in honesty why I believe so many of us give it up so easily. If we were so intentional when we first started, why do we end up not following through with it? And how come we don't come back the next day to this guide God has carefully given us for life?
Maybe it has to do with how we get frustrated. At times we are just stolen from that by our own mischief. There is also the fact that we fantasize about being instantly made into a better person, a holier version of ourselves.
Suppose you and I are like children, learning something new… let's say we're learning to ride bikes. All of a sudden we start asking our daddy to teach us how to ride those bikes down the hill. Now, there is no way He will say yes, because you are still on training wheels stage. So we cry and we pout and the next day we realized this will be so hard, we just don’t want to come back to it.
That rush with the process makes me think of how we want to be with God. We want our struggles to be transformed, all our sorrows to be made well and we want to have life changing advice to give — all at once. But it takes time to understand. And suppose you and I are being more like this child, we will need that time.
Understanding your daily reading (not theologically speaking, but actually having a word be revealed to you) involves a lot of sitting and listening. Special lattes or Ensligh tea wont necessarily always be at hand, and many times there will be no lit candles around the house — no special music on the background. Some of us won't even have as much time as we wished we did.
When we don't come back the next day, we also end up not moving out of the beginners stage in that learning process. It becomes harder to practice and at times, much easier to read and live on the sugarcoated version of scripture that someone else wrote to inspire us. Or even on the harsh truth that has already been dissected by someone else's struggle.
Living on what was meant and created to last a few minutes, as a witness that was only supposed to be pointing us to walk the way to our testimony, is like exchanging the eternal for a glimpse of good that is offered us — glimpse: a temporary or partial view. We end up standing in the same place as before, with a fixed idea that depth with Christ is a time consuming and distant process and we don't dare to go anywhere under the surface.
We All Need Time to Hear Truth: Ugly and Beautiful
We won’t always like what we need to understand. But we are not alone. Every single Christ-like person you admire needs to take the time to listen to truth from above. All of them need to be convinced of all the things they need to understand: good and bad. SO DO WE! We all need to listen, to then begin to understand and finally surrender.
So here is my advice: be deep, dive in and come back the next day. You only have ten minutes a day? Give the Lord that… Are you in a bad mood? Give the Lord that! You're not inspired? Pray about it… Do something to move out of that vicious cycle.
Remember, you only understand when you are listening. You only listen to the Lord when He is the one doing the talking. Because friends, there is no power in living on someone else's version of what He said — you are the sheep, you need to know his voice. Your Bible is really all you need to be reading daily and ultimately, your heart is all you need to surrender.
