How To Have An Effective Quiet Time

Having a Quiet Time is one of the best things you can do to get closer to God every day but many people may not know how to have an effective quiet time.

What Is A Quiet Time

One of the most beneficial things you can do to grow in your walk with God and to get closer to God is to have a quiet time.

A quiet time is basically a place you go to every day to spend some quality time with God praying, reading scripture, meditating, worshipping etc. It is a time of you allowing yourself to get to know God better.

If you follow the life of Jesus you would see that he regularly met with his Father when he was on earth. He would separate himself from people and go and spend time with God.

That is a very important thing that we need to learn to do. Making time for God. In this article you will be learn how to have an effective quiet time.

Same way how you value your friends and you would call them and talk to them on the phone, the same way you would want to speak to God and value your time with him.

It builds the relationship.

It is always possible to know God better than we do. Paul prays for the Ephesian church that God “may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better” (Eph 1:17).

We need to press on. Having a quiet time is an essential way to do that.

When To Have A quiet Time

If you ask a lot of Religious people when you should have a quiet time, the majority of them would tell you that you need to do this in the morning. 

If you deviate from the morning then you are not behaving like Jesus. 

Now I would admit that morning is the best time and it was the time that Jesus met with the Father but for many of us, it is not practical to have your quiet time in the morning. 

The reason why it is the best time is that, during the early morning when everyone is asleep, there is nobody there to disturb you. 

There are no calls coming in or no messages to disturb you. 

However there is no law stating you need to meet with God first thing in the Morning. 

A lot of you I am sure due to work commitments and other commitments may not be free during the morning and that is okay. 

Whatever time seems best to you, do it during that time. 

If afternoon is freeing for you then do it in the Afternoon. 

If in the evening then do it in the evening. 

It’s not about when you do it but that you do it. 

Gary Thomas on Quiet Times

I was listening to Gary Thomas who shared his experience where he believed that the only time to have your quiet time was to have it in the morning but one day he fell in love with this girl who would one day be his wife. 

He noticed that she had a deep relationship with God but just did not have her quiet time during the morning. 

He asked her about that and he made her feel like she wasn’t doing it corrrectly. 

One day she knocked on his door and showed him the scripture.

Acts 10:9 ⁹ About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray.

Notice the time of day when Peter went to pray. It was noon. It was not morning time.

When Gary saw that, he realised he needed to stop saying that everyone ought to be like him and have it in the morning. You can have it and the best time that is most appropriate for you.

The Benefits of A Quiet Time

So now that you know a lot about what a Quiet time and when you should be having one, let us go a little bit into the benefits of a quiet time. 

Later on you will learn how to have an effective quiet time.

What are some of the benefits of having a Quiet time? 

Keeps your Soul in Check 

When you have your time with God you begin to speak to God and to allow him to speak to you which helps to keep you from going astray. Amidst all the madness and all the turmoil that goes on around you.

J. I. Packer writes, “The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know God.

Disregard the study of God and you sentence yourself to stumble through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you.

This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.”

Grow in Your Knowledge of God 

Our aims as Christians is not just to make God known but for us to know God more.  Paul said in Philippians 3:10 I want to know Christ–yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.

When we spend time with God we get to know him more as we spend time in his Word and speaking to him. 

As you Grow in Your Knowledge of God it helps to keep your Christian perspective on the Word around you

Helps You to Know Yourself Even More 

The lintel above the ancient Greek oracle in Delphi bore the words “Know Thyself.”

A quiet time helps me do that.

When I practice the discipline of a quiet time, I can look beneath my own surface. Who am I? What forces have shaped me? What needs, desires and fears direct me? Is God really at work within?

Following a Quiet Time Pattern

How do you have an effective Quiet time? Let us consider these 3 factors.

CONSISTENT TIME 

You should try your best to have Your quiet time at the same time every day. 

This helps you to block out that period of time every day so you know what you ought to be doing during that time. 

Like I said before don’t make this legalistic. You can change it if you want to.

CONSISTENT PLACE

Another thing is to meet in the same place every day. 

You should try to have somewhere where you feel is the best place where you can meet with God.

It can be your bedroom if that is where you feel it best to meet with him. 

You should try to get a place where you have quiet and you will not be disturbed.  

CONSISTENT PLAN 

You should know ahead of time what you plan to do in your quiet time.

You shouldn’t go into your time and then have no idea what you going to talk to God about or what you plan to read in your Bible or what you plan to do.

In the next section, I will suggest some things that you can do that you can incorporate into your quiet time.

If this is new to you then start small eg 10 minutes. 

The main thing is to try to develop this into a Spiritual habit.  

Quiet Time Pattern

So hear are some practical things you can do during your quiet time. 

Two of the Main components of a quiet time are Prayer and Bible Reading. 

You should spend time talking to God and spend time hearing from him. 

Communication is a 2 way street. 

You ought to hear and listen when you are with a friend and it is the same way with God.

Quiet Time Best Practices

Bible Reading

You should pick a Book of Scripture that you would want to read through in due time. One good way of doing this is to follow a Bible Reading Plan.

Once you follow a Bible Reading plan it will help you to know what you ought to be reading. There are many Bible Reading plans online. Just choose 1. 

After reading a portion of Scripture you should do the SOAP method that I suggested here.

Prayer 

After you do this you should talk to God about what you just read. Tell him your fears, your concerns, what you need to change in your life etc.

You can also pray to him about needs in your life or your friends’ lives or in your country etc. God wants to hear from you.

It is helpful to use a list when we pray. “Aim at nothing and you are sure to hit it,” the old saying goes. If we don’t have a list, our prayers will probably be wandering, unfocused and haphazard.

A prayer list can be as sophisticated as index cards with pictures of people you pray for, or it can be jottings on a sheet of paper.

Other Practices

These are the 2 main things you ought to do but you can mix it up and include other things so It doesn’t turn into a boring ritual you keep doing each day. 

Here are some other things you can do. 

Study the Bible 

Pick a small portion of the Bible and do a more in-depth study. Read the Bible in a few other translations which can be found online at Bible Gateway. 

Observe the differeences in the words they used. 

Write down any questions you may have concerning what you just read. 

Try to get some answers to the questions by using a Study Bible or a Commentary. 

If you still have questions ask someone you trust. 

Meditating

Another thing you can do is Meditating on God’s Word. This involves spending some time and thinking about what you just read about God in his Word.

Just be quiet and think about it and write down what you learn during this time. 

J. I. Packer describes meditation as “an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communication with God.

Its purpose is to clear one’s mental and spiritual vision of God and let his truth make its full and proper impact on one’s mind and heart.

There are many other things that people do such as spending time in Worship, spending time Journaling and Being Quiet before God.

Don’t Make It Legalistic

One Word of Warning about Quiet times is that we don’t allow ourselves to become Legalistic about it. 

Many times this quiet time can turn into a duty and not a delight. 

It becomes a legalistic duty that we do every day and when it becomes legalistic we don’t get much value from it. It becomes a burden instead of a blessing.

Here is what what Pastor Adrian Rogers has to say about that.

“Do it for the right reason. Do not become devoted to the habit, but to the Savior. Do it not because other people are doing it—not as a spiritless duty every morning, not merely as an end in itself, but because God has granted the priceless privilege of fellowship with Himself.”

Another person who has a lot of say on how to have an effective quiet time is Bryan Chappell. 

He said we need to know the difference between a Good idea and a scriptual command. 

Many times we tend to take a Good idea and make it into a Scriptual command. 

Chappel states, Good ideas are suggestions, mandates are commands, and typically, the church goes to war when the preacher takes a good idea and tries to make it a mandate.

Simple example—if we tell people they must regularly feed or meditate on the Word of God, that’s a command.

But if we say to people, “You must have a 20-minute quiet time every morning, studying and meditating upon God’s Word,” that’s a good suggestion, and many people in many organizations have that suggestion for people.

But to take the suggestion that a 20-minute quiet time is good and healthy and then say, “Now, God’s Word requires that you have a morning meditation of 20 minutes in length,” that has now become a legalism.

That has now become a suggestion. Once it was good, but once we convert it to a command, saying the Scriptures teach precisely that thing, then people have every right to object to what we’re saying.

A quiet time is not a mandate in scripture but it is a very good suggestion that we encourage you to put into practice.

Putting It All Together

I hope you enjoyed this article that teaches how to have an effective quiet time.

How long does such a quiet time last? As long as an hour or more, or as little as twenty minutes. The goal is balance.

You probably won’t include all elements every day. You may spend most of your quiet time settling in and reading Scripture on one day and meditating through a passage and praying on the next.

The main thing is that you do it every day and you should start small with maybe 10 to 15 minutes to build the habit in your life.

QUESTION: What do you plan to do in your quiet time and for how long. Let us know in the comments below what you thought about having an effective quiet time?