Quiet Time or All the Time?

Every once in a while I think about planning/scheduling, but rarely do I ever stick with it. Actually, never. Or at least not long term. But I keep coming back to it for some reason. Don’t know why. I think because almost everywhere you look, productivity blogs and such tout it as some super great life hack to get a million and one things done in a week. I get that planning can be very beneficial for some, but maybe it’s just not for me. Or maybe I just need to figure out the method that works for me. Regardless, what planning got me thinking about was how we approach “quiet time” with God.

On a side note, I don’t like the term “quiet time”. It just bothers me. I’m not trying to attack people who do like it, or anything. If you like it go ahead and stick with it. I think it might be the whole idea/the approach we have to quiet time that bothers me. I did call quiet time “open and raw moments with God” for a bit though :)

I tried planning for a little bit ago, and I would put quiet time with God in. Because of course you have to put quiet time with God in, right? I mean, I’m a bad Christian if the very first thing I do in the morning isn’t spending time with God, right? Like how dare I do something else before God. Like peeing. And I don’t just meaning saying hi, or I love you, or something. It has to be sitting down, reading the Bible, doing my reading plan (if I have one). Never mind that I can barely make myself get out of bed in the morning.

So I put God Time on my plan for the day. But the idea didn’t sit well with me. Because then spending time with God slips into more of a thing-I-need-to-check-off. And God shouldn’t be a thing to check off. Not that I intended it that way, or that there’s anything wrong with leaving a chunk of time to spend with God. But for me, it was like God is allocated to this point in time, and then I go do my other things. But does God want that? Should we want that?

I don’t think God wants quiet time. At least not like that. Does he want to spend time with us? Of course. Does he want us to read the Bible? Definitely. Is he delighted when we journal prayers and insights and such? I’d like to think so. But does he want us to portion off a rigid section of time each day where we feel obligated to read our Bible, or do our devotion, or some other such thing in worship to him? I’m not so sure.

God is always with us. Always. All the time. As in, well, all the time. Once we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour, believe and trust in him for salvation, we’re given the Holy Spirit. God lives not just with us, but in us. So even when we do our most mundane tasks, God is with us. And I think that’s the problem with having a specific time to be with God. We can easily forget that all the time we can be with God. All the time we are with God. Even at this very moment.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to rain all over quiet times. If you have a quiet time routine that truly works for you and God, by all means stick to it, and keep going. I think it’s important to build a solid foundation of trust and love with God through being in relationship with him. I’m just saying, maybe we can go about quiet time the wrong way, or I can at least. And I’m guessing I’m not the only person in the world who has thought about this.

God doesn’t want a portion, or a section of your time. He wants it all. He wants all the time to be quiet time.

It makes me think of how we approach friendships now, versus when we were young. I think for most people when they’re young (like twelveish and under) they just called they’re friends and hung out with them. No planning required. But when people get older, they tend to get busier, and they don’t always call they’re friend just to hang out. They have to schedule a time to hang out and a place to go. And I’m just thinking about which kind of relationship God wants. The one where we just “hang out” with him all day, or say small prayers (or longer ones) throughout the day? Or the one where we feel the need to schedule a specific amount of time to spend with him? Which another thing. How would you feel if you spent an hour with your friend and things were going really well and your friend was just like:Well, it’s been an hour. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye. I get that people are busy, but for me it’s just like: Okay, God. You can have this amount of time. But then I’m going to go do the stuff that’s really important to me. Maybe instead, we can say something like: God, you know I have a million and one things to do this afternoon, why don’t you come with me and help me? 

Or maybe that’s too intimate for us.

Thoughts?