“Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.” (Matthew 6:6 MSG)
God isn’t going to speak to you if there’s a bunch of noise going on in your life. You’ve got to get alone, and you’ve got to get quiet. We call this a quiet time.
Jesus says it like this in Matthew 6:6:
“Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace”(MSG).
The key to hearing God speak and getting his vision for your life is this: God wants to meet with you.
You need to realize you’re not waiting on God; he’s waiting on you. God made you to have a relationship with him. He wants you to spend time with him on a daily basis. He wants you to schedule a date with him every day. God is waiting.
Getting alone in a quiet place is pretty difficult today. I don’t know if you realize how much noise there is in your life. You’ve always got the radio on in the car or you’ve got earbuds in or Bluetooth turned on. Every waiting room, grocery store, and elevator has music. There’s very little time in your life that’s absolutely quiet.
If you’ve got kids at home, it’s even more difficult! But let me give you some hope. Susanna Wesley, one of the great women of history, had 18 children. One of her sons, John, founded the Methodist church and spread Christianity across the western part of America with Methodist revival preachers, and another, Charles, wrote more than 6,000 hymns.
How do you find time alone when you have 18 children? In her biography, it says that Susanna Wesley would go and sit in her favorite rocker every afternoon, and she would throw her apron over her head for an hour. Her kids knew that Mom with apron over her head means, “No child bothers Mom or you die!”
Wesley said it was the prayers of his mom that shaped his life. You can find time alone if you are that desperate. Make time to be quiet and meet with the Lord.
Talk It Over
- How much of your day is spent in silence?
- What do you need to help your family understand so that they can support you in and not distract from your quiet time?
- What effect will your consistent quiet time have not only on you but on your family as well?
Prepared Blessings
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE:
"You prepare a table before me…"
Psalm 23:5, NIV
TODAY'S WORD:
When God laid out the plan for your life, He lined up the right people, the right breaks and the right opportunities. He has blessings that have your name on them. If you will stay in faith and keep honoring God, one day you will come in to what already belongs to you. It's a prepared blessing!
Think about Adam and Eve in the garden. God took the first five days and created the heavens, the earth, the sky, the land and the water. He planted a garden. He put in it beautiful flowers and luscious fruit. He designed rivers to flow through it. He put precious treasures in the ground: onyx, gold and silver. Then scripture says, “He took Adam, whom He had just breathed life into, and put him in the garden.” Notice Adam came into a prepared blessing, something that God had already finished for him.
In the same way, God has some prepared blessings in store for you. He is working behind the scenes, arranging things in your favor, getting it all perfectly in place. You couldn’t make it happen on your own. It's just the goodness of God bringing you into a prepared blessing!
PRAYER FOR TODAY:
Father, thank You for preparing a place of blessing for me. I choose to trust You and Your timing, knowing that You are working behind the scenes on my behalf in Jesus’ name! Amen.
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