Create Quality Time

Jordan McKinney

This week I had another one of those “what are you doing” moments with Jesus. Don’t you both love and hate those moments. You love them because God is speaking to you and He does it in such a loving way, but you also hate them because you realize how much you missed the mark.

For this moment, I will need to fill you in on what I have been doing. I love reading and one of my favorite genres is fantasy. I have been in a book series for a long time, and I am on the 14th and final book in the series. Needless to say I am excited to see how the story ends. I also like to get the books digitally on my phone so I can always have it with me when I am on the go. I can also have my phone read my books to me when I am driving in the car, or when I am doing chores around the house. I have been listening to and reading my books almost non-stop. Every free moment I have had, I have been in this book trying to finish up this series.

Well, this past weekend I had been trying to get my Bible app to read to me while doing the dishes. Thoughts while doing the dishes kept distracting me and I found myself not listening to my Bible “devotion” time… I think you can see where this is going. I finally had a quiet moment without my phone or anyone nearby, and God took this moment to talk to me. God really wanted to talk with me about two different things that go together.

First was that I had been filling up so much of my free time with “noise” that I never took a quiet moment of stillness. I never let my mind settle down and let it decompress. There are thousands of studies out there that talk about the benefits of quite meditation and reflection. So much so that I do not need to mention all that here. Nevertheless, since I was filling up every free moment, when it came time for devotions my mind was trying to highjack that time to decompress my passive thoughts distracting me.

Second was that I had unintentionally shifted my time with God to when I was trying to multitask. Can you imagine if the only quality time you spent with your spouse was when they were trying to do something else? They would only talk to you while doing the dishes or folding the laundry and when they were done they just moved on because they spent “quality time” with you. Well, God let me know that is exactly what I did to him.

Here is what God wanted me to learn and know, and I think it can help us all. First is that quality time with God is like any other relationship. We have to be focused, attentive and not distracted. We can’t listen and engage otherwise. The second was a reminder of how God likes to communicate to his people. I was brought back to the story of Elijah meeting God on the mountain in 1 Kings 19. God does not speak in the “noise” of life and stuff we fill our time with. God speaks in a whisper, and we need to be still and quiet in order to hear him speak. Just like the old song says, “In the secret. In the quiet place. In the stillness you are there.”

I want you to take up the same challenge I am. First, spend more time in quiet moments throughout the day. This lets my mind decompress and get through all the random thoughts that we will normally have every time we aren’t being distracted. This will let me do the second thing, which is to make sure that my quality time with God is distraction-free. No multitasking, and if I have been getting those quiet moments in throughout the day, then my brain won’t be distracted either. Create some quiet, quality time each and every day and hear God as he speaks to you in the quiet, still moments.