Why I Have a Quiet Time Each Morning
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
I have not always had a regular daily quiet time with the Lord. It actually did not happen until I was in my mid-fifties. Though I have been a Christian since I was seven years old, I would spend little time in the Word of God. Usually I would only open the Bible during weekly Bible studies, or later when preparing to teach a Sunday school lesson on Saturday night.
I grew up in the church and knew no other way of life. It just seemed natural that I would love God and try to obey His commands.
But then in my fifties when I was going through some life changes, I began to listen to voices that turned out not to be from God. Those voices eventually resulted in a divorce in my marriage. When I met my wife, who I have been married to for twelve beautiful years, I decided I was not going to let those voices from our enemy, Satan, confuse me any longer. That is when I decided I needed to be able to listen to God’s voice and not the world’s or Satan’s voice. I began to claim Psalm 119:105, “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path”.
For the first time, I began to daily read the Bible, a chapter a day. Then I would just spend a little time each morning to pray and meditate on God. I began to experience a new freshness in my relationship with God. He seemed so much more personal to me. I began to feel He really knew me, and I began to feel as if I understood His heart as well.
Each morning, I felt I was sitting with God in the same room and having a conversation with Him. I began to experience a release of the guilt I had carried for my past sins. I began to feel if I was truly worthy to be called His son, His child. I began to feel I was usable to Him and that He loved me and had a wonderful plan for my life.
Once I began a regular quiet time, I felt God was guiding my thoughts, speech, and action each day. If I missed a day, I could feel the pull of the world’s troubles affecting me. When I was not in His Word, my reactions to circumstances, my thought patterns, were less than what I would have wanted them to be. I began to realize that when I started my day in quiet time with the Lord, I lived out my days better, behaved better, responded to others better, and made much better decisions.
Today, after getting my wife off to work, I cherish sitting down at the kitchen counter to spend a little time in reading God’s word and prayer. I dare not leave the house without getting my frame of mind on God and His Word. I now use the daily Living Waters devotionals and I find it so refreshing.
It is just as important to do my quiet time as it is getting dressed or brushing my teeth and combing my hair. He lights my path daily, and gives me a lamp to keep my feet from stumbling. I have never felt more intimate with Jesus or have ever loved Him more than since I have routinely kept my faithful commitment to a daily quiet time with God.