“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” — Matthew 6:6
Quiet Time
How quiet is your quiet time? We live in age of constant distraction. Aside from face-to-face interaction, our pocket is constantly lighting up and vibrating with calls, texts and news alerts. Everyone and everything is begging for our attention.
And when we try to break away and be with God, the sights and sounds potentially continue. I’m constantly guilty of keeping my phone next to me when going to read and pray, citing the claim “what if someone is trying to contact me and it’s an emergency?” or, “I’ll only check my notifications, I won’t actually open my phone.”
Even throwing on worship music in the background can be an excuse to not feel completely alone with God. Sometimes the silence scares us. But before you cry out, “So you’re saying listening to ‘How He Loves’ during my quiet time is bad for me!?” try and hear out my intention.
Worship music, sermon jams and any other background noise aren’t bad things, it’s just that we can all use them at times to not give any room for loneliness. But the quiet is where we can truly listen to God’s voice. Think about it – if you really wanted to focus on what a friend was trying to tell you, you wouldn’t pause them to crank up the Spotify volume or flip through your phone.
Regardless of the reasoning, the constant need to stay connected with the outside world inhibits our connection to God’s Heavenly world. Jesus would often ditch crowds of people to go alone to mountainsides to pray (Luke 5:16), so what makes us think we are too important or incapable of doing the same? We may not have a mountainside convenient to us, but your bedroom closet, porch or den will do just fine.
Let’s have quiet times that are truly quiet before the Lord. Jesus did. So can we.
— Chris Pennington
If you would like to submit a reader devotional, please email all submissions to jason@sportsspectrum.com.
