Time and Place 1

 Time and place are important factors.

Late at night,

lying in bed with our eyes shut, 

waiting on God to speak to us is not such a good idea. 

Maybe we will fall sleep with our last thought being about God which is wonderful, but probably our minds are not in their most alert states, and sleep may well overwhelm us before we have had time to hear what God would say.

Running, walking or exercising are also probably not the best place for these five minutes. Of course God can speak to us whatever our circumstances, and I have had some important times of hearing God's voice while in the midst of doing other things.

The point is our level of concentration.

 When we are physically active doing something, our minds are absorbing and processing huge amounts of external and internal information.

 We are not 'still' and 'stillness' is a key in this time of listening to God.

Yes we can multi task when talking with other humans, and we often do to the detriment of those personal conversations.

Imagine we on the phone with a precious friend, and they are telling us something that is very important in great detail. We listen intently to them, not wishing to miss any of the detail, so we can further communicate deeply about the situation.

I don't want to become flippant in my relationship with God.

He is holy and to be held in great respect, and I want His words to me to be hallowed in my sight.

The world has reduced Him through mockery to someone sidelined and insignificant in the minds of great numbers of people. 

May we not be in that place, but instead be ones who set aside time daily to be 'still' and listen to what God would say to us.

"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!" Psalm 46:10

Amen. Let it be so.

Daily discipline versus Grand gesture

 We love to make the grand gesture towards God. 

It makes us feel good about ourselves and our spiritual walk. We talk to ourselves (and possibly others) about how we long for the day when we have the opportunity to spend hours of uninterrupted time in God's presence waiting on Him.

Never going to happen!

Maybe 'never' is too strong a word. How about 'highly unlikely' or 'very infrequently'.

In my personal experience the likelihood of this sort of grand gesture actually happening is maybe a few times a year.

We prize the grand gesture over the daily discipline because it is something we can add into our minds' compendium of successful achievements. 

Five minutes a day sounds too small a time to give to God. We think we will wait until we have much more free time to give Him.

Like I said because of the myriad of our daily choices .....never going to happen.

God is so gracious. He knows how frail we are. 

Jesus said to Peter in the garden of Gethsemane, when He came to His disciples and found them sleeping, "What! Could you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." (Matthew 26:40-41)

One hour? They couldn't be available to be with Him one hour. I'm not judging. I'm just saying.

As with the disciples so it is with us. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The flesh would much rather use any free moment it has to scroll through whatever social media one likes, or watch or read something on an internet site, or answer vitally important correspondence with other humans.

Spending time daily with God takes discipline and our flesh would rather not, thank you very much.

So we get to choose who is going to be in charge; our flesh (mind and body) or our spirit?

God waits for us to listen to Him daily. 

Will we respond to Him today?

 

How busy are our minds?

 A few modern answers to the question, "How are you?"

 are "Busy!"  "So busy!" or  "Crazy busy!"

 We wear these verbal labels like a badge of honor as if being busy all the time is somehow meritorious; deserving praise, honor or reward. This is crazy talk, but so is much of the modern form of existence.

 When Jesus said that He had come "that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly" (John 10:10), He didn't mean that we were meant to be so busy with things that we couldn't spare five minutes to listen to Him speak to us by His Holy Spirit.

He didn't mean that our minds couldn't learn to be still for a few minutes each day, but were constantly needing to whirr with external information and thoughts about what we had just done, were doing or going to do.

When I began to attempt to spend five minutes with God in silence each day my mind would ramp up with thoughts of mundane things like hanging out the washing that couldn't possibly wait for a few more minutes, and then after I went to do that something equaling pressing would scream for attention, and I would not return to my time with God. 

You have to ask yourself, "Who is in charge?"

My body, my mind, or my spirit?

(Hint: Your spirit should be in charge of your mind, and then your mind should be in charge of your body!)

Our spirit should allow God's Spirit to be ultimately in charge, and how great it would be to practice this vital discipline by giving God's Holy Spirit the time (just five minutes) and opportunity to speak to us every single day.

Just saying....

Tonic Against Sin

 If we know that we are going to spend five minutes each day silent and actively listening to God how does it affect our behavior?

 Well can I encourage us if we are struggling with any sort of sin this might be the perfect opportunity for the Holy Spirit to be able to speak to us, and counsel us in how to walk out of what is trying to entrap us. 

Our default setting as humans is to hide from God when we sin. As Adam and Eve hid in the garden so we move away from God in shame rather than moving towards Him in repentance asking for His saving grace to set us free.

When we sin we can hide from God for a day, or a week, or a month which can sadly become a permanent attitude. 

Yet when we decide to spend five minutes each day before a holy and loving God suddenly the sin which seemed very appealing before now seems awkward and clunky, and we decide we would rather not ruin our day or our time with God. 

Try it and I know you will find it an amazing sin deterrent,

 a tonic against sin.

 This daily five minutes with God can be life changing for good. 

The Elusive Five Minutes

 How hard can it really be to spend five minutes in silence listening to God? Quite hard actually.

 It is a matter of priorities, and how we spend our time reflects what is important to us, and what takes precedence in our affections or our thoughts. 

Some people like to stay busy or distracted all the time, because we don't want to be left with our own thoughts. There are painful pathways that we would rather not walk down so spending five minutes in silence in any way can be threatening. Add to this that we are intending to actively listen to God during those five minutes, and the sense of threat may even increase.

 Am I acceptable to God to be consciously in His presence rather than hiding in the metaphorical garden of my life? 

Do you know that spending five minutes with God in silence each day is a wonderful tonic against sin in any of its myriad forms? But that subject is for another day.

I encourage you to press through your human defense systems, and spend five minutes listening to God today.