Sunday evening during my Run for God group Bible study, the discussion arose about how providing rest for your body is just as important as giving your body exercise to strengthen it for the road ahead. The example was given about lifting weights. When you are working your muscles in weight training, it is often suggested you work different body parts on different days to give the muscles time to rebuild and recover. For instance, if I work my arms, chest, and back on Monday, I might work out my legs and abs on Tuesday, alternating those two schedules for the rest of the week to allow each muscle group a 48 hour rest period.
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| Photo by DrGBB |
All this got me to thinking, why do we not do this with our spiritual walk as well? It is often recommended that we have a quiet time every day, of which I totally agree because how else do you get to know someone if you don’t spend time with them? Yet, with so many spiritual disciplines (read your Bible, meditate on the Word, pray, memorize scripture, worship, etc.), it often becomes overwhelming for one day’s accomplishment. I do good having 30 minutes of quiet time to myself each morning on the days I’m fortunate enough to have children who don’t get up at 4:30 a.m. That said, 30 minutes is not long enough to properly devote one’s time to all of these disciplines. You could spend hours of time with God practicing each one.
So….why not provide your spiritual muscles a chance to recover too? You could read and meditate on the Word one day and write down a passage of scripture to memorize from the day’s reading for day two’s schedule. The next day could be a focused time of scripture memorization (on the scripture chosen from day one), worship and prayer. This schedule could then be rotated every-other-day for an ever fresh look at the Word and more devoted time of conversation with God.
While I’ve never really heard about this way of study in regards to one’s daily quiet time, what do you think? Do you think one should try to do EVERY discipline every day? Alternate? What do you do for your quiet time?
