You know I know of no better way to start my day Slowly and calmly than with a quiet time with God if I start rushed I'm going to stay rushed If I start my day in a hurry, I'm gonna spend my day in a hurry, but if I start my day with God I'm gonna spend my day with God. I have a choice to make if I start my day with God He stays in the front of my mind all day. It's like a continuing conversation That gets started it lets God set the agenda It lets him set the the pace it puts God in control if I start just by giving the first part of my day To him somebody once said that God is your commander-in-chief So don't forget your daily briefing Meditation is the most important aspect of Prayer Most of you never meditate Never You talk too much in prayer You never hear from God while you're talking And 99% of your prayer is you talking And when you finish talking as far as your concerned the exercise is over so you leave Let me tell you your dream is never revealed to you while you're talking We think prayer is talking When you go to prayer again, please pray 10 minutes and sit for 60 And just listen you'll be amazed how loud he speaks.
Finally he gets to talk Prayer is you talking Meditation is you listening Suppose you, and I have a conversation You come to see me ask for some things you tell me everything and then don't wait for me to even tell you what I want to do you just leave That's stupid isn't it we do it to God all the time God gonna say wait, don't go. I didn't answer you yet. Were you going and you're gone You think you already did your prayer time, see And you keep asking God, how come I'm not hearing from you How come I'm not getting any direction from you God saying because you don't wait for the directions You give me instructions A forest is not a head of the seed It's in the seed.
Your future is in you been there all along but there's too much noise Soon as you get home click remote on. In the car boom, boom , boom God is saying man, this is a lot of noise for the last 50 years. I can't even get to this person How did God talk to Abraham.
God said leave your home Let's talk in the mountain See the reason why you can't discover your even your what your born to do is because You don't even make time to discover it Because it is not so important what we say to God as it is what God says to us Sometimes I think there's so much noise around us that we cannot hear God And how can we walk with a God that we cannot hear? We must hear from him He's our navigational system The way the Navigational system operates in the car. That's the way God wants to operate in your life What I love about my system is even when you do something dumb and make a wrong turn it recalibrates and says turn Around make a u-turn and go back Sometimes we need God to tell us when we've made a wrong turn Now how to make a u-turn and get back on track and go where we need to go but how can he talk to us when the first thing we do is grab the telephone and we start talking all kinds of people about what we're going through and what's happening in our lives and what's going on with Our children and what's going on with our marriage and we're watching TV and we're listen to music and all the while God is saying if you cut all that stuff off for a minute.
I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you. I want to speak to you.
I want to show you how to get through this season in your life This moment in your destiny this present danger that you face. He said I can navigate you through it just like that Time with God quiet time Is actually God's idea Because if God didn't want to speak to you Then he wouldn't have given us his word He wouldn't have given us the Bible. If God didn't want to hear from you.
Then he wouldn't invite you to pray. I mean, why would God invite you to come into his presence if he didn't want to be in yours He loves you And He's very communicative. God is a chatterbox He wants to talk to you He has something to say to you every day in his word and he wants to hear from you every day in prayer He's highly relational So if I'm gonna set time aside in the morning to have my quiet time with God just a few minutes Well, what does that look like?
How do I actually do a quiet time? The first rule in this setting time aside for a quiet time Is slow down slow down and that probably sounds obvious, but sometimes Obvious things are not so obvious. You have to slow down because God is never in a hurry And you can't hear God's voice if you're just rushing all the time You have to slow down to hear what he wants to say to you That's why you have to get up a little bit earlier So you're not just rushing into your day and you don't have time so you just find a quiet place You grab your Bible maybe a journal get a cup of coffee Or tea or whatever you want in the morning and just go spend a few minutes with the Lord Here's what Jesus said about it in Matthew 6.
He said here's what I want you to do Just find a quiet secluded place So you won't be tempted to roleplay before God. You're not gonna try to put on airs or impress anybody He says just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage and the focus will shift from you to God And you will begin to sense his grace now Since a quiet time is a conversation with God Then you should probably let God start the conversation because this may be news to some of you. He is God and you are not So you probably ought to start by letting him start the conversation.
You don't start with an hour of prayer You don't start by telling him what's on your mind Start with just a moment of prayer A simple moment that says Lord here I am I'm ready. I want to hear from you today. Would you just open my eyes Open my ears Open my heart to whatever it is you want to say.
See everybody thinks that hearing God's voice is this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it's this every once in a while He only talks you in special occasions. That's not true. He's talking to you every day He wants to talk to you every single day.
Look at the scripture in Isaiah 50 says this he awakens me morning by morning. He awakens my ear to listen as a disciple God's trying to talk to you every single day You just have to listen You just have to listen either you don't know his voice Or you are too busy to listen See don't let the busy of your day drowned out the voice of your God Let me tell you some are busy. BUSY.
Being under Satan's yoke Busy busyness will rob you of the ability to hear your God Because we like to fill up our day with all these things to do and before you know it you go days weeks sometimes even months and years without hearing God's voice and the enemy will use busy to keep you from God doing God's will and hearing his voice See margin is the opposite of busy Margin says I'm gonna value my quiet time with God. It's the most important part of my day. So that's where I'm gonna Invest my time You want to start your day off with quiet time, but let's be a little honest some of us aren't morning people Some of us ain't morning people.
Okay, I get it I'm not really a morning person either so some of us has to get real creative about our quiet time for some Maybe it's just turning off the radio on the way to work so you can spend a few time a few minutes of silence with God Maybe it's the first 15 minutes of your workday before you do anything else. I'm gonna spend time just listening and praying or maybe at lunchtime you eat your food a little bit faster for 15 minutes and spend the rest of your time with God Or maybe at night instead of binge watching six episodes on Netflix You watch five and use that last hour to spend some time with God Whatever it is, that's not the point. The point is make sure you value margin enough to protect your quiet time with God Because God absolutely wants to speak to you.
