This video explores the concept and importance of a “quiet time” for Christians, debunking the idea that it requires fancy materials and focusing on the importance of consistent Bible study and prayer for intimacy with God.
Referenced in this episode:
⦿ Bible Study Resources: https://phyliciamasonheimer.com/our-books/
⦿ Stop Calling Me Beautiful: https://phyliciamasonheimer.com/product/stop-calling-me-beautiful-paperback/
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Transcription
There has kind of become a trend of creating a materialistic quiet time. We need all of this stuff to meet God. We need a really fancy Bible, or we need a bunch of highlighters. Maybe we need stickers and a cute living room. And by the time we’re done, we have this magnificent Instagram set of how to study the Bible. And we’ve actually missed the entire point. Welcome back to Verity podcast. I’m Phylicia Masonheimer, your host, the founder of Every Woman A Theologian, and this is the beginner believer series of Verity.
In this series, we are talking about all of the basics of the Christian life, understanding the gospel, sanctification, how to hear God’s voice and walk by the Holy Spirit. And today, we’re going to talk about something called a quiet time. What is it? Why do we need it? Does it matter? And, honestly, the name is a little bit maybe weird. So if you’ve never heard of it before, it’s okay. You’re not alone. It’s a very American westernized concept. However, there is a form of it found throughout church history in many different cultures and times. And so we’re going to talk about what the core idea is in this concept of a quiet time and what it means for you as a believer in Christ.
So let’s talk about what a quiet time is today. Most people, when they’re talking about their faith in Christ, if they mention a quiet time, what they mean is bible study time, prayer time, a time of intimate reflection and meditation with God. Now how that looks will differ person to person. Not everybody is going to seek God in the exact same way in terms of what they’re studying in their bible or how they pray or, you know, how reflective they are or how intellectual they are in their quiet time with god. But there’s usually some basic elements that are a part of a quiet time, and that’s bible study, prayer, scripture memorization, and maybe some journaling or writing out what you learn. What has happened though in at least America I know not all of you are American who are watching this. But in America, there has kind of become a trend of creating a materialistic quiet time. And what I mean by that is we need all of this stuff to meet god.
We need a really fancy bible or we need a bunch of highlighters and fancy pens. Maybe we need cool bookmarks or we need journaling materials. Maybe we need stickers or coffee and music and a cute living room. And by the time we’re done, we have this magnificent Instagram set of how to study the Bible, and we’ve actually missed the entire point. So at least in America, I want to encourage those of you who’ve seen this on Instagram or have seen this from influencers to just remember that a quiet time, number 1, doesn’t have to be quiet and we’ll talk more about that in a minute. But number 2, it does not have to have all of these trappings to be effective and to draw you closer to god. The goal of a quiet time should be intimacy with the savior of your soul. That’s it.
And the elements that make that possible are the word of God and prayer. The Holy Spirit moves through the word of God in prayer, sanctifying us, and giving wisdom, renewing our minds, and leading us closer to God. For most of church history, people only had scripture and prayer. And in fact, for the first 1500 years of church history, many Christians didn’t even have a personal copy of the scriptures themselves. They would memorize scripture in community and have it orally transmitted to them. As in people were reciting scripture and teaching scripture and it was being memorized and that’s how you were able to take it into your daily life because there was no printing press and scrolls and codexes were too expensive for individual Christians to own. And so the very first Bible was the audio Bible because that was how people were learning the scriptures. They were memorizing it and they were putting it away in their heart and bringing that into their prayer time.
So today, we have the amazing privilege. Thanks to the printing press. Thanks to the translation of the Bible into English and to into other languages to have the Bible for ourselves. And that’s a privilege we should never take for granted. At the same time, we should not take on these materialistic trappings that say we need to have all of this stuff in order to approach god. When we do that, we’re actually adding works back onto the gospel and taking away from the freedom of approaching god in this way. Bible study is a privilege. We should be practicing it, but we don’t need all of these extra things.
Now if they help you, then awesome. I use highlighters. I use pens. I journal in my Bible. I’ve had the same Bible for 10 years, the CSV note takers Bible, and I love it. However, even if you don’t have a fancy Bible or you don’t have room to take notes in the margins or all you have is a little bit of lined college ruled paper and a pencil, that counts because a quiet time is about approaching God, studying his word, and letting his word change us. So knowing that what we need is the word and what we need is prayer, why is it so hard to actually show up and spend time in a quiet time? Well, there’s a lot of things. The number one thing I think is distraction.
Distraction makes us want to avoid anything that requires the commitment of sitting down and focusing. We wanna go to this quick task or quick check that email on our phone. And by the time it’s over, we’ve wasted 25 minutes and that was all the time we had to study the Bible. But this must be our first priority, and that’s why many people throughout the ages did their quiet time in the morning. In fact, the first time we see this term quiet time appear is in the 19 fifties. Before that, people referred to their quiet time as a morning watch and it tended to be very prayer focused. As the time went on, we kind of developed a shift in how people practice their devotional life. In the 1800, in the early 1900 with the rise of the missionary movement, many people were spending a lot of their time on intercession, so praying for other people.
And this lines up with the impact of the 2nd great awakening, which was very socially motivated. Christians who experienced the revival of the 2nd Great Awakening wanted to change the world and they did. Much of what happened out of that great revival was the abolition of slavery in America, the rights of women to vote, which had a huge role to play in the prohibition of alcohol, also motivated by many Christians. So through these socially motivated movements, there was a lot of intercession happening in the morning watch. But as time went on and as we moved into what we might call the 3rd great awakening in Billy Graham, there was a shift and it became more of a meditative, reflective, more individual focused practice. Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. You know, there’s nothing bad about personally approaching scripture and personally praying, but what kind of shifted from previous generations was a shift from an outward focus to a more inward focus. In a healthy Christian life, we need both and the morning watch or the quiet time accomplishes that when we keep that balance.
The pendulum has now swung away from that intercessory kind of approach to the quiet time to now be more individually focused and there are some ramifications of that. Now, we might sit down to the scriptures and think, well, I don’t wanna do this if it doesn’t have an immediate impact for me, an immediate application. So we only read books of the Bible that feel super practical. So we might memorize lists of virtues from Romans or we might only read the epistles like Ephesians and Galatians or the Gospels. Maybe we’ll read a little bit of history in the Old Testament, but we sure aren’t reading those minor prophet books that are so confusing and we definitely don’t want anything to do with Leviticus because we can’t apply it right away. We forget that the whole Bible, the whole counsel of God is so important to help us understand him and to help us grow into people who can walk with him all of our days and know who he is based on what he’s revealed in scripture, that he does not change age to age. We need the old testament to understand the new testament, the new covenant in Jesus. We need to know revelation as well as Genesis.
And so the danger of this very pragmatic practical approach, this individualistic approach to quiet times, is we miss out on the fullness of who God is. Our understanding of him has big holes in it because we haven’t read through the Bible. We don’t know the whole story. And so I would just encourage you to push back on what has become normative in Western culture of this quick, super aesthetic, quiet time routine And to instead ask yourself, do I see this as a time to get to know the god who saved me, or do I see this as something to check off my list? Do I see this as something that I need to get a quick takeaway to apply? Because it’s the holy spirit who applies the word. It’s the holy spirit who sanctifies us, not our own willpower. So we don’t need to be looking for a quick takeaway. What we need is to expose ourselves to the word of god so that he can implant that in us and he can develop it into the character that bears fruit. So knowing what we know about the history of the quiet time, knowing that things have changed a lot, and knowing that we need to focus on the core issue of the word of God and intimacy God with God and prayer, what are some things the Bible says about spending time with God? What does the Bible say about quiet times? Matthew 6:33 says this, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.
In context, Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is talking about all of the things that we need, clothes and food and provision. And he says, seek the kingdom and these other things will be taken care of. And I think about this a lot because I try to make sure my quiet time’s in the morning. It doesn’t always happen and I’ll just bump it to the evening if I miss a morning. But having it in the morning really sets my mind to know, seek first the kingdom and everything else that happens today, it falls in line after that. And, historically, this is when most Christians would meet God is in the morning and where they would spend time praying because they’re about to start their day. Many people throughout the medieval era would pray 3 times a day. They would have morning, noon, and evening or even more 6 times a day in the monasteries where they would have alarms that would go off at certain times every 3 hours and it would call them to prayer.
And this is something I’ve even practiced, have little alarms on my phone so that I can remind myself to pray at those specific times of day. Now for some people, this would strike them as maybe legalistic or ritualistic and you can pray anytime. But I find that I need reminders to put God first. And that’s where spiritual disciplines like seeking god first in the morning, praying throughout the day at set times, helps us to keep him at the forefront of our mind. Now, Matthew 6:6, a little earlier in this chapter, Jesus is talking about how to pray and he kind of describes this quiet time concept. He says, 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. This is a little bit of an affront to Instagram quiet time culture. Now I fully confess on my Instagram, I do sometimes show myself doing my Bible study and doing my quiet Instagram, I do sometimes show myself doing my Bible study and doing my quiet times.
And I do that mainly to encourage you to do it as well, to encourage you that you’re not alone in having a quiet time that maybe isn’t quiet. I get interrupted by my kids almost every single morning when I’m studying the Bible, and I would rather them see me doing that than them not see me doing that. It’s okay to be interrupted. A quiet time doesn’t have to be quiet. However, here Jesus is saying, don’t advertise what you’re doing to get accolades and to get people to think that you’re so much wiser and so much stronger of a Christian than other people, which is what the Pharisees were doing. He’s saying what matters is that your father sees you’re seeking him. So prioritize that. Go in your room, shut the door and pray.
Seek God and he will speak to you. In Psalm 119, it says that God’s word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. When we prioritize God’s word, when we seek his face, what we’re doing is we’re allowing him to light the way, to light the path. So if you’re wondering what direction do I go? How do I proceed? Prayer and being in the word. That’s where it begins. That’s where it begins. Even if you don’t have that quick takeaway, the lord is working that in your heart and he will give you the wisdom you need in due time. But this is a walk of faith, showing up to the word when you don’t feel like it, showing up to the word when it’s inconvenient, making god the center of your life by prioritizing him each day.
Now I wanna talk to you perfectionists. When I say each day, you might think great. Okay, time to check off the calendar. Let’s check off the list. I get it. I like a perfect streak too. But if you reduce your bible time to getting a checklist of 30 days, you’ve missed the point. Again, this is about intimacy with god, and it would be better for you to miss 3 days a week and show up 4 days and then do another 4 days the next week than for you to show up for 7 days and then not seek god for a month.
I would rather you do 4 days of study a week and not get a perfect streak than to have you seeking God really well for 2 weeks and then completely falling off the map for months or years. What matters is your relationship with God and taking care of that relationship, tending that relationship, and that happens through consistency, not perfectionism. God is interested in consistent exposure because that is how he changes us. And when we put our own opinions, perfectionism above relationship with God, that’s when we run into trouble. The last verse I want to read you is James 4:8. It says, draw near to god and he will draw near to you. This should be such a comfort to us. When you draw near to god through his word and prayer, however that looks for you, whether that’s in the morning or the evening, whether that’s with a journaling Bible and highlighters or just the Bible your grandma gave you and a college ruled piece of paper, what matters is that you’re seeking God.
And when you draw near to him, he draws near to you. If you don’t know where to start or you feel like I open the Bible, I read the Bible and I’m still so confused, I don’t understand what I’m reading, we have so many amazing resources to help you on this path. We have Bible study basics in the Every Woman A Theologian shop, a 6 dollar little booklet. We also have a $3 ebook that walks you through the basics of how to study the Bible on your own. If you want to do a Bible study, we do verse by verse studies like our new one on Galatians, Who the Son Sets Free, all about coming out of legalism, and coming out of bondage, and walking in the love and grace of God. Or maybe you don’t have as much time and you want to do something that’s a little bit lighter, you could try out our Gospel of John Not-so-quiet-time guide. This uses art and poetry and discussion questions to take you deeper into the text of the gospel of John. However you choose to do it, what matters is that you prioritize seeking God’s face.
Whether that’s reading through the Psalms and taking a few notes, praying that throughout your day, and then taking it with you into the evening. God delights when you draw near to him. Don’t over complicate it. Keep it simple. And if you need resources or you need help, you can always reach out to us at phylicia@phyliciamasonheimer.com or you can check out our resources at phyliciamasonheimer.com/shop. I will see you next time on Verity podcast.