Time with God

I have been learning a few things recently...yesterday, I was reading the book Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World and the chapter I was reading was talking about spending time with God and this has changed my perspective.

Joanna Weaver used the example in which Robert Boyd Munger describes how he showed Christ around the house of his heart and described each room.  The drawing room was a place Christ seemed pleased with and suggested that they met there often and had fellowship there and promised that each morning he would be there and they would start the day together.  Munger describes that morning after morning he would come down stairs and spend time reading the bible together and that Christ would tell him of its riches and unfold to him its truths and that they were wonderful hours spent together.  But...little by little the time got shortened and he began to miss a day and then began to miss it two days in a row or more.  Then, one morning he walked past the drawing room and saw that the door was ajar and he saw the Lord sitting there and asked if he had been there all the mornings he had missed.  Christ replied that he had had been there and told him he had said he would be there every morning.  Munger describes that he felt even more ashamed since He had been faithful in spite of his faithlessness and asked for His forgiveness.  The part that really spoke to me was this:

"He said, "The trouble with you is this:  You have been thinking of the quiet time, of the Bible study and prayer time, as a factor in your own spiritual progress, but you have forgotten that this hour means something to Me also.""

I have learnt that not only do I need to spend time with God for me to grow spiritually but also that God wants to spend time with me and the time I spend with him means something to him too.

I have also been reading about spending time with God in my daily readings this week.  On Wednesday it was talking about worship as a way of life, focussing on Romans 12:1:

"Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering." (The Message). 

The Word 4u 2day explains that you love someone by spending quality time with them, by taking an interest, by sharing secrets, desires, ups and downs and that falling in love with God is the same.  Then , on Thursday, it talks about how Jesus managed to keep his cool during the stresses and strains of life and quotes Mark 1:35:

"Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed."

It states that Jesus lived in solitude as much as he did in the limelight and suggests that spending time alone with God is an essential prescription against stress.

I have realised recently that I am not very good at spending time alone with God but the combination of everything I have read this week has made me realise how important it is to ensure that I have space in my everyday life to spend time talking with God about anything and everything...not only is he concerned about any big decisions I have to make but also in the little things that I might think are insignificant.

Over the next two weeks, I have been challenged to spend some time meditating on a bible verse that relates to my barriers to intimacy with God and hope that doing this will develop in to a more regular time that I spend with God.