Spending time with God!

"Spend time with God" So many people say this is the way to have a relationship with Jesus. What do you hear when someone says spend time with God?

"I don't have an hour to spend in a room, at a table reading my bible with a highlighter and commentary, so I guess I won't be able to have a relationship with God."

I hear this all the time. It dawns on me that kids today don't know how to spend time with God. They hear that if they don't spend hours sitting in one spot reading half the bible and memorizing 100 verses that they are not spending time with God. Wrong!! I believe that we think that if we spend 10 or 15 minutes that we aren't good Christians because we can't sit still with God. What we don't know is that when we take those 10 or 15 minutes with God that he can stretch them into 30minutes or an hour.

This happened to me. When I hear someone say that they spent hours in prayer time with God, I think, " Wow! I must be a terrible Christian for not being able to spend this much time with God." Then I decided to do what I could, so I made a plan to spend at least 15 minutes a day in solitude, with my bible, alone with God. Before I knew it I was spending a half hour with God, then an hour with God. Just the other day I was doing a bible study and reading Gods word and praying, that when I looked up at the time I had been spending over 2 hours with God. How amazing is that!

I recently told one of the middle school girls I mentor that spending time with God will reap such wonderful blessings on her life. I told her to start out making a habit of spending 15 minutes a day with God in solitude. That means put the cellphone away, turn off the tv, go away to a quiet place you can be alone, and be with God. Start out with a verse. Read the verse, then read the chapter that the verse is in. Take time to summarize this verse in your own words. What does this verse mean to you? How can you apply it to you life? Pray that God will teach you something through this verse this week. Meditate on this verse.

She came back to me later and said that she not only spent 15 minutes with God, but actually spent 45 minutes with God. God met her there in her quiet time with him.

My heart soared for her. How great our God is that he meets us in our quiet time with him. He does want to have a relationship with us.

I couldn't think of a better lesson for her. She learned first hand why we need to spend time with God and how we start.

Prayer is the number one way to have a deeper relationship with God. When we spend time with God in his word and talking to him, he uses his word to speak to us. More times than I can count, God has used a verse to teach me about how to live or act at a certain moment in my life. It's through my quiet time and bible study, that I'm able to recognize God's voice.

I was recently given a visual reminder that we are only on this earth a short time. On average we will live on this earth about 80 years. We have about 80 years to make a difference for God. Our purpose in this life is to bring God glory in everything we do. In order to be in God's will, we have to know what God's will is for us. In order to know what God's will for us is, we need to be in relationship with God. He will show us his will for today. I know so many of us, me included, want to know God's plan for our future. I'm learning that God is only going to reveal enough of his plan for us to get through today. And you know that is really all we can handle. His ways are so much higher than our ways. We can't handle the entire picture. So, we must stay in relationship with him so we can see his plan for us and to be able to give God glory.

So, there you go. The secret to what your purpose is on this earth. The mysterious question that has been asked for centuries has now been answered. Now, are you going to seek a relationship with God and fulfill your purpose?  

Ephesians 2:8-10
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of your works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

In Christ's love,
~Tina Foster~