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Need Help With My Quiet Time |
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A Pocket Paper Robert J.
Morgan I rise before the dawning of the morning,
and cry for help; I hope in your Word.
My eyes are awake through the night watches, that I may meditate on
Your Word. Psalm 119:147-148 Today we’re coming to the end of our series of messages entitled “I Need Help ASAP” and our concluding study will be on the subject: “I Need Help with My Quiet Time.” By quiet time, I mean the practice of having a daily appointment with the Lord, a regular period of daily Bible study and prayer. Some people call this the practice of having daily devotions. Others call it the Morning Watch. It’s the missing vital ingredient in many a Christian life, and today I’d like to approach this from three different angles. First, I’d like to share a word of personal testimony on this subject. Second, I’d like to show you some Scriptures that address this topic in the Bible. Third, I want to share with you a handful of practical ideas and suggestions for having a meaning Quiet Time on your own. A Personal Testimony By way of personal testimony, I want to give a word of thanksgiving to the Lord for bringing several influences into my life that helped me establish this practice when I was younger. The first influence, although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, was my father. As I grew up, I would often see him reading his Bible at night; and when I was barely old enough to read, he bought me a little Bible which I kept beside my bed, and in this way I learned as a child to read the Scriptures daily. That didn’t mean,
however, that I was actively having a meaningful quiet time, and as I grew
older I got away from any sort of close daily fellowship with the Lord and
grew confused by life, as young people often do. In my confusion, I enrolled at In fact, student life was, at
that time in the early 1970s, very regimented, and the daily Quiet Time was a
required part of our schedule. We
were awakened every morning at Then one day a man came to preach in our chapel services, and I had never heard anyone like him. He stood in the pulpit like a machine gun, with a rapid fire, crystal-clear delivery with a crisp British accent, and he delivered brilliant expositions on interesting passages of Scripture. He had a great deal of spiritual power about him, and after chapel one day I went up to him—his name was Stephen Olford—and I asked him if he had any advice for a young man contemplating going into the ministry. “Yes,” he said with the same dramatic delivery I head heard in the pulpit. “Yes,” he said, “I do. Never, never, never miss your Quiet Time.” That’s all he said. But that was enough. I began to realize that there must be something pretty important about this half-hour between the bells. It was shortly after that when
another influence came into my life.
Through a mutual friend, I had the opportunity of spending several
seasons of extended time with Ruth Bell Graham, and she described to us how
important the Quiet Time was to her.
One day, when I was asking her about it, she said, “Robert, do
you have the notebook habit?”
I didn’t know what the notebook habit was, so I said no, I
didn’t think I did. So she
told me about her little loose-leaf notebook made of leather. She said that she kept wearing it out,
but she knew a leather crafter who kept repairing it for her. There she would record the thoughts
God gave her each day as she studied her Bible. That very day I drove down to Ashville
near her home and found a stationary shop and bought a notebook, and
it’s been a lifesaver to me ever since. All these years, I’ve used a
journal as part of my Quiet Time, and I owe it to that conversation in And then I began to come upon another set of influences. I became interested in Christian biography and autobiography, and over and over, as I read about the lives and ministries of great Christian men and women, I discovered they all had one thing in common. They maintained a Quiet Time habit. I’ll give you some examples:
Ø Missionary and author Isobel Kuhn, in her book In the Arena, wrote about a time when she was a student at Moody Bible Institute and found herself so busy with school and work demands that she was in danger of quenching her devotional life. Other students were facing similar problems. So they met together and Isobel suggested they sign a covenant—not a vow, but a statement of intention—to this effect: “I suggested our making a covenant with the Lord to spend an hour a day (for about a year) in the Lord’s presence, in prayer or reading the Word. The purpose was to form the habit of putting God in the centre of our day and fitting the work of life around Him, rather than letting the day’s business occupy the central place and trying to fix a quiet time with the Lord somewhere shoved into the odd corner or leisure moment.” Only about nine people signed the covenant to begin with, but the news spread and others began to join. For Isobel, the major problem became finding a quiet place. She wrote, “The only place I could find where I would disturb no one was the cleaning closet! So each morning I stole down the hall, entered the closet, turned the scrubbing pail upside down, sat on it, and with mops and dust rags hanging around my head, I spent a precious half-hour with the Master. The other half-hour had to be found at the end of the day.”[1] Ø
Another missionary to Ø The great Puritan, Thomas Watson, wrote: “The best time to converse with God is before worldly occasions stand knocking at the door to be let in: The morning is, as it were, the cream of the day, let the cream be taken off, and let God have it. Wind up thy heart towards heaven at the beginning of the day, and it will go the better all the day after. He that loseth his heart in the morning in the world will hardly find it again all the day. O! Christians, let God have your morning meditations.”[3] Ø
Here is what one of his biographers said about
William Carey, the “Father
of Modern Missions” who served many years in the Ø
A well-known British statesman, the late Earl Cairns, Lord Chancellor of
England, was an extremely busy man, but no matter what time he reached home
in the evening, he always arose at the same hour to have his quiet time the
next morning. His wife said,
“We would sometimes get home from Parliament at Ø This is what a biographer wrote about evangelist D. L. Moody: “He was an early riser. He generally rose about daybreak in summer, devoting the early hours to Bible study and communion with God. He used to say that one who followed this plan could not get more than twenty-four hours away from God.”[6] Ø This is what I read in the biography of the well-known 19th century Bible teacher, G. Campbell Morgan: “Here was a man who coveted for himself a constant withdrawal from the pressing demands of his busy life, and kept inviolate the sanctity of the early morning vigil of prayer and meditation. Here he breathed the atmosphere of heaven, and daily recharged his spirit with the power that in turn poured out in extravagant measure in the preaching and proclamation of the Word.”[7] Ø In the biography of missionary physician, L. Nelson Bell, John Pollock writes: “Most important of all was Nelson Bell’s discipline of devotional life. Early every morning he had a cup of coffee and went to his desk for about an hour of Bible study and prayer. He set himself to master the content and meaning of the Bible, devising such study schemes as looking up every Old Testament reference which occurs in the New Testament and typing it out. Then he turned to prayer, for friends, colleagues, and patients, praying especially for every patient listed for operation that day… This cycle of reading and prayer did not strike Nelson as formidable but vital.”[8] Ø
In the biography of the famous Christian
philanthropist, George Muller of Those are just a sampling of things that I observed as I read the stories of great men and women, and so it’s no wonder that my appreciation increased for the importance of the Quiet Time. And so, by God’s grace, this is a habit that I’ve maintained since 1971. I can’t say that I’ve never missed a day, because I have. Occasionally I still do. But by and large, I consider this the most important habit of my life and I frankly think I would collapse without it. It provides the daily nourishment for my soul just like food and water for the body. A Biblical Mandate Now we come to the second angle on this subject: What does the Bible say? A personal testimony is worthless unless it’s validated by the authority of Scripture. I’d like to show you several verses that speak to this very clearly. Let’s begin with the prophet Daniel where I want to show you seven very important words. Perhaps you’re familiar with the story of Daniel in the lion’s den. Daniel, at the time the incident occurred, was quite old, and everyone knew about his faithfulness to his daily devotions and to his prayer time. His political enemies schemed against him by persuading the king to issue a one-month prohibition against prayer. Look at Daniel 6:10 and notice especially the last seven words of the verse: Now when Daniel knew that the writing (the prohibition) was signed,
he went home. And in his upper
room, with his windows open toward As was his custom since early days! This was a lifelong habit. I suppose Daniel rose in the morning for his Quiet Time, then went to his office and worked through the morning before coming home at lunch where he also found a few minutes for prayer. And then at the close of day, his work behind him, he spent time with the Lord before going to bed. That was his lifelong habit. Now look at the example of one
greater than Daniel in Mark 1:35:
Now in the morning, having risen
a long while before daylight, (Jesus) went out and departed to a solitary
place; and there He prayed. And finally, look at Matthew 6:6: “But when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” The old versions say, “Go
into your closet.” I still
like that old translation. I
remember visiting in The actual Greek word Matthew
used was tameion. It occurs four times in the New Testament,
and it means a storage room, a pantry, a spare stable in the barn, a root
cellar. In those days, large
families tended to live together in rather small houses. There was very little privacy. The only room not inhabited would be
the storage room. Jesus was
advising us to find a quiet, private place and use it as a place to meet
secretly with the God of this universe.
That’s what the quiet time is. Now I need to say two words of warning. First, it’s important to realize that a daily Quiet Time does
not represent the totality of our fellowship with God. It doesn’t mean that we can meet
God in the morning and then leave Him there in the closet while we go into
the day. The Bible tells us to
pray without ceasing. In other
words, communion and fellowship with God is the constant privilege of the
Christian. Earlier I mentioned something Dr. Stephen Olford had said to me when
I was a college student. Well,
many decades later, just before he went home to be with the Lord, I met with
him again, and once again, I asked him about his daily Quiet Time habit. He said: “I have a very, very simple procedure. I read from Genesis to Revelation. When I reach Revelation I go back to Genesis. Even though I have read it over the years—over and over and over again—never a morning with God that He does not reveal something new to me. I read the passage three times: First time generally, second time expositionally, third time personally. I let the Lord speak to me, showing me in His Word a promise to keep, a prayer to echo, a command to obey, a sin to confess, etc. I personalize it entirely and write in that form. And then I like to take what I have written and loosely turn that into prayer so that my prayers are not mechanical. It is not a Chinese wheel I can just put on and watch TV while it plays. It is a prayer that comes right out of my quiet time before I go into thanksgiving, intercessions, etc.” Then I asked him if he kept a prayer list. He replied: “Yes. My prayer list is a very interesting
one. Monday-Missions. Tuesdays-Thanksgiving. Wednesday-Workers, staff, etc. Thursday-Tasks. Friday-Family. Saturday-Saints (so much of
Paul’s praying was for the saints). And Sunday-Sinners. On the list of sinners for this
present period of my life, one of them is a famous golfing figure that
I’m praying for earnestly, because I believe if he were converted it
would turn the youth world upside down.
Anyway, I do have a prayer list, and under those headings. Now, it isn’t the length of time
I spend in my quiet time, though I usually take an hour, but there is a
carry-over of the activity of prayer, the attitude of prayer, that marks the
rest of the day. I never pick up
a telephone without a prayer. I
never dictate a letter to my secretary without a prayer. I never let anybody into my study or
out of my study without a prayer, and as my beloved workers know, any time we
get together we say, ‘Let’s pray.’ And so, prayer is literally praying
without ceasing. At the drop of a
hat… and so I feel I live in that of perpetual prayer.” You see, the Quiet Time is not the totality of our fellowship or
communion with Christ. Instead,
it sets the stage for it all day long. Second, it’s also important to realize that a daily Quiet Time
is not simply a routine or a ritual.
It’s a relationship.
We meet Christ at the cross, and we call that conversion. We meet with Him in the closet, and we
call that conversation. At the
cross is where we come to know Christ, and in the closet is where we grow to
know Him better. Exodus 33:11 says that Moses met with the Lord face to face, as a man
speaks with His friend. If I may go back to my college days for just a moment, it was just as
I was learning this habit that Ralph Carmichael wrote a song about it that
was popular during those days. There is a Far from the rapid pace, Where God can soothe my troubled mind. Sheltered by tree and flow’r, There in my quiet hour, With Him, my cares are left behind. Whether a garden small Or on a mountain tall New strength and courage there I find; Then from this quiet place, I go prepared to face A new day with love for all mankind. A Practical Plan Now I’d like to devote the remainder of the message to some practical suggestions as to the daily Quiet Time. How do we do it? First, remember the purpose of the Quiet Time. It is essentially a conversation, a time of fellowship, a daily meeting or appointment with the Lord. It isn’t a complicated thing, and the simpler we can keep it the better. It isn’t even always necessary to have a Bible. Sometimes it’s nice just to go for a walk and spend some time meditating on some verse of Scripture and thinking it through, and then talking to the Lord about it and praying over the things that concern you. Usually, however, it’s very helpful to have a Bible, preferably a new translation. And remember that you aren’t reading your Bible to get through a certain amount of Scripture or to prepare a sermon or to develop a Sunday School or Bible Study lesson. You’re going to the Bible in order to find nourishment for your soul. Psalm 37:3-4 puts it very well when it says: “Feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord.” That’s a good definition of the Quiet Time. Second, have a procedure for your Quiet Time. I like to follow a two-step plan. First, I open God’s Word and, after a brief prayer asking for His blessing, I start reading where I left off the day before. I don’t try to read a certain number of verses or chapters; I just read until I find a verse that speaks to me. Right now I’m reading through the Gospel of John. It may take me a couple of weeks or a couple of months, but I’m in no hurry. I just begin reading today where I left off yesterday, and I look for that verse to underline as my verse for the day. Then I begin praying at the point of that verse, and move into a time of prayer. For example, my verse this morning was John 1:43: “Follow Me.” I began praying at that point and I said, “Lord, help me follow You more closely,” and then I prayed for my loved ones that they would follow the Lord, and from there I went into a time of prayer. So that’s the essence of it—a time of Bible reading and meditation followed by a time of prayer. It’s a conversation. The Lord speaks to me through His Word, then I speak to Him in prayer. And it’s through this sort of daily conversation that we get to know Him better. Third, use a pen. As I said earlier, I like to keep a little notebook. It’s divided into two parts. The first part is my journal. Every morning I come to my desk fairly early. I have a cup of coffee and my Bible, and I open my journal and put down the date. Then I might or might not write something about my day or how I’m feeling. Usually I make a little entry of some kind. But then I just put down the Scripture reference that I’m reading, and as I read through the passage I make notes. I find this an enormous help. For example, one day this week I came to the passage in John 1 in which John the Baptist introduced Jesus to the crowds at the River Jordan. I read the paragraph several times, but it just didn’t seem to register with me. I felt I was brain-dead. I just didn’t get much out of it. So I decided to make a little list of everything that John said on that occasion about Jesus, and, putting pen to paper, I developed a list of five things about Jesus that John articulated in introducing the Messiah to the world. I thought, “Wow, this is pretty neat!” One day I might convert that into a little five-point sermon (for I often find that my messages are best when they’re the overflow of my own devotions). The last half of my notebook is for my prayer lists. I have a daily list, for there are some things I want to pray about every day. Then I have a list for every day of the week. For example, if I want to pray for a particular missionary family on a weekly basis, I just take their prayer card, punch holes in it, and insert it under the Monday tab, or the Tuesday, or whatever. So I find a little notebook to be an incredible aid. However, a notebook isn’t necessary, and I’d like to give you a simpler alternative. Try using the margin of your Bible. Suppose, for example, you are reading through the Gospel of John. Beside John 1:1, put today’s day—11/7/04, for example. Then start there and read through the passage, marking anything that is of interest until you find just the verse that speaks to your soul for that day. Let’s say that it is verse 16: “From the fullness of His grace we have all received one blessing after another” (NIV). Circle that verse and end your reading there. The next day, put the new date—11/08/04—beside John 1:17 and read on until you find that day’s verse, then circle it. And so forth. For a prayer list, you can use the flyleaf of your Bible or a slip of paper in the back cover. Or you can just use a mental list. I’m not sure that our Lord took a paper list with Him when He rose early on that morning in Capernaum and retreated to the nearby mountains. Perhaps it would work better for you just to say, “Lord, guide me today to those things You want me to pray about.” Again, simplicity is the rule. The Word of God and prayer. Going into the closet and meeting with the Father in secret. A notebook works for me, but don’t feel like you have to do it the way I do. Find the method that works best for you. Fourth, have a place and a regular time. As I read through the Gospels, it seems to me that Jesus had two places that He used for His closet. When He was in the north of Israel, He would retreat into the mountains to be alone. We saw that in Mark 1, and we also see it later when He sent His disciples by boat to the other side of the lake while He Himself went up into the mountains to pray. But where would He go when He was in Jerusalem? It was much more difficult to be alone there. John 18:2 says that He would often go out of the city, across the Kidron Valley, and into an olive orchard which was apparently owned by a friend who gave Him access to it. I suppose the friend said, “Jesus, here’s the key to the gate. Feel free to relax there whenever you’d like. The place was called Gethsemane and Judas led the soldiers there to arrest Jesus, for He knew that Christ often went there late at night or perhaps early in the morning for His Quiet Time. For you it might be the kitchen table, or the front seat of your car, or your bedside at night. And that brings up another question. Does it have to be in the morning? No. If the evening is better for you, or the midnight hour, or the noon hour during your lunch break, that’s fine. We each need to find the routine that works for us. My suggestion is just that you have a regular time or place in order to make it habitual and regular and a part of the normal routine of your day. Some people say, “Can I have my Quiet Time at night?” Absolutely. In fact, in the Hebrew culture, the day began the night before. Here in our society, we think of the day beginning with sunrise; but the Jewish people thought of the day beginning at sunset. The Jewish Sabbath, for example, begins at sunset on Saturday night and extends into the next day. Genesis chapter 1 says, “The evening and the morning were the first day,” etc. They understood the fact that whatever you are thinking about when you go to sleep is what will reside on your subconscious mind all through the night hours and will determine our mental mood and makeup for the next day. So if it works for you to have your devotions at night, that’s perfectly all right. Now, whenever I speak on this subject, the question comes up—what about those times in life when our schedules are out of our control. Sometimes, despite our very best efforts, we go through periods of life in which we have a difficult time maintaining a habit such as I’ve described. This is especially true of mothers of preschoolers. In my reading, I was intrigued with the testimony of Rosalind Goforth, who was a mother and a busy missionary in China. She was very eager to maintain her Quiet Time habit, but she was greatly frustrated by the fact that no matter how early she got up and how quiet she tried to be, one or more of her children woke up, and the daily circus just started that much earlier. So she finally just kept a small Bible or testament with her all the time, and she learned to take those odd moments all through the day to memorize Scripture. That way, she had it available for meditation all day long, and she just turned each day into one long 24-hour Quiet Time. I’ve read several magazine articles by mothers who have done that very thing. One had five children between the ages of ten months and ten years, and finally she went out and bought a handful of small Bibles which she kept open at various places in the house. One was by the ironing board, one was by the bathroom vanity. One was by the kitchen sink. And all day she would catch a snitch of Scripture here and there. And when she bathed the baby, she would pray for that child. When she folded clothes, she prayed for the one to whom they belonged. She kept the radio on a Christian station so that day was filled with Christian music and Bible teaching. She just turned each day into an extended Quiet Time. My wife, Katrina, however, has a different idea about it. She was a stay-at-home mother with three small children; but she sat them down one day and had a talk with them and said something to this effect: “Now, girls, I want to be a good mother, and to be a good mother who is kind and patient, I need to spend time with the Lord each day. So every afternoon I’m going to have my quiet time, and that’s going to be your alone time in your rooms. You can sleep or nap or read or play quietly by yourselves, but you are not to come and interrupt me—and if you do I’ll break your necks.” I’m really not sure she said that last part, but whatever she said worked, and she was able to maintain her quiet time even during that phase of her life. So there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there’s more than one way to have your Quiet Time; but all things being equal, I still think a few minutes early in the morning with a Bible, notebook, and a cup of strong, hot coffee is the best way to start the day. Finally, exercise perseverance. Paderewski, one of the world’s greatest pianists, said: “When I miss a day of practice, I can always tell it. If I miss two days, the critics will pick it up. If I miss three days, the audience will notice it.”[10] I feel the same way about my Quiet Time. Harriet Beecher Stow, the famous 19th century novelist and author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was a dedicated Christian and a hymnist. She regularly rose early in the morning for her time with the Lord. One of her most famous poems speaks to this when she writes: Still, still with Thee, when purple
morning breaketh, When the bird waketh, and the shadows
flee; Fairer than morning, lovelier than
daylight, Dawns the sweet consciousness, I am with
Thee. __________________________________________ 1Isobel Kuhn, In the Arena (Singapore: OMF Books, 1995), pp. 30-32. 2Bertha Smith, Go Home and Tell (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers,
1995), p. 76. 3Thomas Watson, Gleanings from Thomas
Watson (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo
Gloria Publications, 1995, first published in London in 1915), p. 107. 4Iris Clinton, Young Man in a
Hurry: The Story of William Carey
(Fort Washington, PA:
Christian Literature Crusade, 1961, pp. 55-56. 5R. A. Torrey, How to Succeed in the
Christian Life (Chicago:
Moody Press, u.d.), p. 50. 6A. P. Fitt, The Life of D. L. Moody (Chicago: Moody Press, u.d.), p. 114. 7Jill Morgan, A Man of the Word: Life of G. Campbell Morgan (Grand
Rapids: Baker Book House, 1972),
p. 342. 8John C. Pollock, A Foreign Devil in
China (Minneapolis, Minnesota:
World Wide Publications, 1971), p. 52/ 9A. T. Pierson, George Muller of
Bristol (Old Tappen, NJ:
Fleming H. Revell Co., u.d.), pp. 163-164. 10Clipping in my notebooks. Copyright StatementWe grant permission for any edition of The Pocket Paper to be photocopied for use in a local congregation or classroom, provided no more than 1,000 copies are made, the material is distributed free, and the copies include the notice: "Copyright (year) The Donelson Fellowship."For any other use, advance permission must be obtained from The Donelson Fellowship church office. |
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[1] Isobel Kuhn, In the Arena (Singapore: OMF Books, 1995), pp. 30-32.
[2] Bertha Smith, Go Home and Tell (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995), p. 76.
[3] Thomas Watson, Gleanings from Thomas Watson (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1995, first published in London in 1915), p. 107.
[4] Iris Clinton, Young Man in a Hurry: The Story of William Carey (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1961, pp. 55-56.
[5] R. A. Torrey, How to Succeed in the Christian Life (Chicago: Moody Press, u.d.), p. 50.
[6] A. P. Fitt, The Life of D. L. Moody (Chicago: Moody Press, u.d.), p. 114.
[7] Jill Morgan, A Man of the Word: Life of G. Campbell Morgan (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1972), p. 342.
[8] John C. Pollock, A Foreign Devil in China (Minneapolis, Minnesota: World Wide Publications, 1971), p. 52/
[9] A. T. Pierson, George Muller of Bristol (Old Tappen, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., u.d.), pp. 163-164.
[10] Clipping in my notebooks.