Renewing Your Friendship with God through a Daily Quiet Time

Hey, BFMC Family.

I've been meaning to write for a while now - especially because I promised to share with those interested how to have a daily quiet time with the Lord.  I'm sorry I haven't posted sooner!!

Before I share my thoughts on a quiet time, there are many people smarter than me who have written extensively on this subject.  One book that has helped me a lot is called Invitation to a Journey by M. Robert Mulholland Jr.  (He has another book called Shaped by the Word that is good, too.)  Another is The Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster.  All are worth your time to read.

But you don't need to read them or any other book to start your quiet time.  All you really need is a desire to meet with God, your Bible and a plan.  I'll assume if you're reading this that you have the first two.  I want to help you the last one.

If you're going to have consistently meaningful time with God, you need a plan - but it doesn't need to be an extensive, complicated plan.  I try to keep it simple following these guidelines:

• Why: This is the point of a quiet time.  Quiet time isn't a religious duty to check off of a list; quiet time is about your relationship with God and meeting with him.  Quiet time isn't about reading the Bible for information; it's about letting the word of God shape you and form you - not inform you.  There's nothing wrong with studying the Bible and learning more from it and about it.  But quiet time is allowing God to transform you through the renewing of your mind and the changing of your heart.  It takes time for a mighty oak tree to grow from an acorn.  The same is true for you.
• What: I know I'm going to spend time listening for God while reading the Bible and praying, but what part of the Bible should I read?  What should I pray about?
• Start with Prayer.  I start with a short prayer and say, "Hi" to God, thank him for the day, and ask him to help me hear him.
• Read the Bible.  I use a Bible for my quiet time that is set up in a reading plan that has an Old Testament and a New Testament reading for each day.  But you don't have to go out and buy one like that.  You just need to follow some sort of plan that takes you through scripture.  Here are several links to plans (YouVersion, BiblePlan, BibleGateway, Heartlight).  You can print or download these plans. Some of them you can even get emailed to you daily.  Just choose a plan and try it. If it's not working for you, try another one.  And make sure you are reading a Bible translation that you can understand!
• Finish with Prayer.  I try to end my conversation with God by asking him to help me practice what he spoke to me about.  I bring things, situations and people to him that are on my heart and mind.
• When:  Spend your time with God whenever you can - but don't be casual about making the time for him.  If you don't plan on meeting with him, then you won't meet with him.  I prefer to meet with him first thing in the morning, but that doesn't always happen.  So I have a commitment to meet with him sometime before I go to bed - even if it's the last thing I do before I go to bed.  Find a time that works best for you.  Are you a night person?  Have your quiet time at night.  Are you a morning person?  Have your quiet time in the morning.  Is your best time the afternoon?  Then have your quiet time then.
• Where: To me, the main requirement for where you meet with God is somewhere that allows you to get alone with him.  Go somewhere quiet, i.e., somewhere away from distractions; somewhere away from the noise of life.
• How: As you read, be asking God what he's trying to tell you through the passage.  If you get to the end of the reading and don't feel like you heard anything, go back and read it again.  Don't approach your quiet time as something to cross off your list.  Look at it as spending time with a close friend over a cup of coffee or a meal.  Read slowly, lingering in God's presence and meditating (thinking on over and over again) on what he's saying.  Take your time through the reading, listening for God's voice.  If you choose a plan that is supposed to take you through the Bible in one year, don't feel like you have to read it all in one year.  Remember: the point is to meet with God and to let him shape you into his likeness.  So there's no need to rush or get through a certain amount of scripture by a certain amount of time.  Let the Spirit lead you and transform you in his time and at his pace.

If you want to get some practical experience with a quiet time and other spiritual disciplines like meditation, prayer and solitude, you might want to sign up for Pastor Dave Miller's Saturday morning LIFE Group.  This small group will be examining the purposes for these spiritual disciplines and putting them into practice as a group on an individual level.


I hope all of you who long to renew your friendship with God have found this helpful.  Let me know how it's going for you by commenting on this blog, by emailing me (ray.hammond@brockportfm.org), or at church on Sunday.

- Pastor Ray

Windy Days [part 2]

Hey, BFMC Family!

Yesterday, I posted some thoughts about Matthew 14:22-23, and I'd like to wrap those thoughts up today. Here again are the verses:

22 Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side, while he dispersed the crowds. 23 And after he sent the crowds away, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.

When I read that Jesus made the disciples get into the boat, I can't help but wonder why? Why didn't he just have them wait at the bottom of the mountain for him? Or why didn't he invite them to pray with him?

I suppose he didn't ask them to come with him because he really needed to be alone with the Father. He didn't need 12 guys distracting him, asking him questions about what just happened and perhaps encouraging him to consider what the people had wanted to do - i.e., make him king.

But I think the primary reason Jesus made them get into the boat was because he had an object lesson for them that required they be out in the middle of the lake in the boat in the very early morning. He had something to teach them about himself, about themselves and about faith - and they had to be in the boat to learn it. So Jesus made them get into the boat.

This reminds me of something very important: sometimes God will lead me into a difficult thing to test my faith and teach me something about myself and about him.

I actually wonder if it's more than 'sometimes.' I wonder if God's preferred manner of teaching me things about himself, myself and our faith relationship is to lead me into things that on my own power, ability and intellect are difficult so that I learn to stay dependent on him. And I wonder if he isn't trying to do this way more than I realize because I'm too busy trying to figure it out on my own.

Which means I should always be looking for what God might be trying to teach me in any given situation. The disciples were in a rather normal situation out there on the lake. Due to the surrounding geography, it wasn't uncommon for the wind to come up on the Sea of Galilee and make it difficult to get where you wanted to go. They weren't in a storm; it was just the wind. But the wind was making them work hard - and they were tired and wet after rowing all night.

I think life is the same for us. We do get into storms, but most of the time it's just the wind blowing. Sometimes the wind is refreshing, filling our sails and pushing us forward. But sometimes it is just stirring up stuff in our life that we have to deal with: stress, busyness, dishwashers breaking, cars getting flats, computers dying, cell phones taking a swim, kids getting sick, assignments piling up, etc.

Usually, this stuff gets on our nerves, causes frustrations and makes us irritable. But what if instead of letting it bother us we looked for what God was trying to teach us? What if we remembered that God needs to test our faith, to take a step or two that we haven't taken before so that we grow more into the person he's designed us to be in Christ?

So often when testing comes, we're surprised, like when the teacher announces, "Pop quiz!" I suppose that happens because we don't see the wind coming until it starts blowing in our life and stirring everything up around us. But it is clear from the Bible and the history of the church that tests and trials of all kinds come to Christians. So why are we surprised when they come? Why don't we expect them, looking to God to help us exercise our faith to get through them when they come?

It's not possible to know precisely when the wind will blow into our life. But we can anticipate it, and because we can expect it to come, we can prepare for it.

I'm trying to be more prepared for the wind by walking as closely to God as I can, spending as much time as I can reading and reflecting on his Word, the Bible, and in prayer. And I'm trying to be prepared by changing the way I look at the wind. I used to get pretty annoyed when it would blow everything around in my life. But now, I'm trying to remember that God let the wind come (maybe even made it come) and that he wants to teach me something, to take a step of faith. I still have a ways to go, but I'm beginning to like windy days. :)

- Pastor Ray

Windy Days [part 1]

Hey, BFMC Family!

I hope you all stayed dry and warm yesterday; what a miserably wet, windy and rainy day! But hey, at least it didn't snow. My parents, who live in Pennsylvania, were to get nearly 2 inches.

In my message last week, we looked at Matthew 14 together. There are many things we could've talked about, but we focused on the idea that in every situation, God wants us to walk by faith, and he gives use he courage to take the first step.

Well, something else in this story that stands out to me is in the first two verses of the passage. It says:

22 Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side, while he dispersed the crowds. 23 And after he sent the crowds away, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.

(Matthew 14:22-23, NET)

Two words jump out at me: 'immediately' and 'made.' At first, it seems strange that Jesus would make the disciples get into the boat and do so immediately. The reason being, earlier in the story they had gone across the lake to try and get to an isolated place for some rest. But as they pulled into shore, they realized that thousands of people had gone on ahead and were waiting for them. At that point, Jesus had compassion on them and began to teach them and heal their sick. His time with them ended when he took a boy's lunch of five loaves of bread and two fish and fed the over 5,000 people there. And this is where verse 22 picks up. They never got to rest as they had planned to, so why would Jesus immediately make them go away?

Something must have happened to not just delay their plans but change them altogether - and it did. In John's telling of the story in John, chapter 6, it says that when the people saw Jesus feed all those people with a basically a Happy Meal, they intended to make him king by force (Jn. 6:14-15). Jesus immediately recognized the dangerous temptation this posed. He is the King of kings and Lord of lords, and when he returns to this earth, there won't be anyone anywhere who won't know this as every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. So what was wrong with them wanting to make him king if he is the King anyway? Well, it would've circumvented the plan for Jesus to come this first time as a servant, humbling himself and serving in obedience all the way to the cross.

Therefore, Jesus knew that he had to get away from the people, get away even from the disciples, and get alone with God. And he spends all night on the mountain, alone with God in prayer.

So that takes care of the word 'immediately,' but why did he make them get into the boat? Why didn't he just have them wait at the bottom of the mountain for him? Or why didn't he invite them to pray with him? More on that tomorrow.

- Pastor Ray

Hey BFMC Family! We had a great time @ RWC's Church Connection meeting college students. Hopefully you will get to meet some of them this Sunday!

Just Say

Hey, BFMC Family!

So I've been listening a lot to Brothers McClurg's new EP "Alive" - and yes, that's a shameless plug for Chris Hoisington's band, and here's a link to their site. :)

Seriously though, as I've been listening to it on repeat, I've been thinking about this past Sunday's message every time the song "Just Say" comes on. The reason why is because it illustrates an aspect of what I was talking about when bad things, trials, and sufferings happen to us - you know, when we get squeezed like a grape.

As Anthony said on Sunday, the song comes from the story of the Roman Centurion who came to Jesus, asking him for help. The Book of Matthew, chapter 8 tells the story:

5 When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him asking for help: 6 “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible anguish.” 7 Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.” 8 But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Instead, just say the word an my servant will be healed.

"Just say the word and my servant will be healed." This man believed Jesus could heal him, and he acted upon that faith with a step of faith, asking him to heal him. And Matthew tells us that the man was healed (8:13).

This isn't the only healing story in chapter 8; in fact, the first 17 verses tell three different healing stories that occurred after Jesus finished teaching on the mountainside. And these are just a few of the instances where Jesus took something bad that was happening to someone and changed it.

So why not now? Why not for you? I don't know. Surprised I'd be that honest?

On Sunday, I didn't talk about why God doesn't choose to change things when suffering, trials and difficulties come into our lives because only he can answer that question. Sure, we can look at why things happen; I mean, sometimes it's because of choices we or others make. Sometimes it's because we live in a broken world, a world broken by sin. When Adam and Eve believed the awful lie that Satan told and disobeyed God (the story is in Genesis, chapter 3), the entire universe and everything in it was affected. The result was a broken world, a world that doesn't work the way God intended it to work. Thankfully, God is in the business of restoring people and the world in which they live. That's why Jesus came - and the restoration process will be complete when Jesus comes back again.

But like I said on Sunday, knowing why doesn't always help us get through wondering why God doesn't change things. And I don't think anyone other than God will ever be able to explain why he changes things for some people and not others. I mean, I can't explain why

• some people are healed of their cancer and others aren't
• some infertile couples become pregnant while others never do
• some people's finances recover while other's don't
• some marriages are restored while others stay broken

or why anything else happens the way it does or for what purposes. All I know is that we have a choice to make: trust him or not trust him. Will I choose to trust him to see me through and to use this for my good, or not? And remember: your good doesn't mean your comfort; it has to do with your character. God is interested most in you becoming a spiritual grown-up: a complete, mature follower of Christ.

I've been reading in the Psalms for a while now, and earlier this week, I was reading through Psalm 119. As I read, I was reminded of how God's word, the Bible, is a source of comfort, strength and encouragement in our times of troubles. Listen to these words from Psalm 119:

92 If I had not found encouragement in your law, I would have died in my sorrow. 93 I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have revived me.

107 I am suffering terribly. O Lord, revive me with your word!

143 Distress and hardship confront me, yet I find delight in your commands.

So as I sign off for now, make sure to be spending time with God in his word, finding strength, encouragement and comfort no matter what you face.

- Pastor Ray

Until

Hey, BFMC Family!

In my message last Sunday, I stated that prayer might not change your situation but it will change your perspective. Then I challenged you with a couple of next steps that I know can be hard to take: 1) pray until either your situation or your perspective changes, and 2) choose to trust God even if your situation doesn't change. These two steps often go hand-in-hand, and I mentioned I know how hard they can be to take. I'd like to share with you a time when I took those steps.

In 2007, Lisa and I had been trying to start a family for almost three years. After one year of trying, the medical community considers you to be infertile. After considering our options for a few months, we started seeing a fertility specialist, and by this time had been undergoing treatments for about 18 months. There's a standard regimen of fertility treatments, and we'd been working our way through those when we'd discovered that Lisa has endometriosis, which contributes to infertility by causing scarring and cysts. She had had surgery to clear up the scar tissue, but it hadn't helped with our infertility.

That spring, Lisa had an appointment scheduled with our doctor. I usually went with Lisa to the those appointments, but she told me that the upcoming appointment was just to figure out the plan for treatments that month, so I didn't need to go. As a part of those appointments, an ultrasound is done, and this time the ultrasound showed endometriomas (cysts caused by endometriosis) in her ovaries. Our doctor told Lisa that we had to stop the fertility treatments because the hormones would make the cysts larger. Her counsel to Lisa was either to do in vitro, get pregnant and then deal with the cysts, or to stop trying to get pregnant altogether. We had decided before we started fertility treatments that in vitro wasn't for us, so when our doctor told Lisa our options, Lisa knew that our dream of conceiving a child was being shattered.

She called me crying and tried to explain to me what the doctor had just told her. I was at a loss and didn't know what to say, but I knew I needed to be with her as soon as possible. So I told her I'd meet her at a McDonald's halfway between our house and the doctor's office.

As I drove over there, I wondered what I would say to her. I also wondered what it all meant and what God was doing. Throughout the three years we'd been trying to start a family, we'd been praying, asking God to change our situation. We had wondered together “what if” from time to time, but we believed he would do it, that he would help us conceive. Now, though, we were being faced with the reality that God wasn't going to change our situation. Could I trust him?

We actually never went into McDonald's; we just sat in the car and talked. I don't remember much of what we said except for something I said near the end: “Well, maybe God just has more children out there for us to adopt. Maybe his plan is for us to adopt all of our children instead of one or two.”

You see, before Lisa and I had ever met, we had both wanted to adopt children. It was one of the things that made us click with each other. Our Plan A had always been to have children biologically and through adoption. We figured we'd have children biologically first and then adopt, but adoption was never a Plan B for us. The timing of our plan just changed; instead of adopting later, we'd adopt now.

We prayed together, telling God that even though we grieved the loss of having children biologically, we trusted his plan for our family and were excited to start adopting now rather than later. At the end of the day what we wanted most was God's will for us, so we surrendered our plan to his plan. Lisa remembers that from that moment on having a peace from God and a trust in him that wouldn't waver.

As most of our BFMC family knows, in 2008, God blessed us with our son, who we adopted from Ethiopia, and in 2009, God surprised us with his plan to have us conceive a child, blessing us with a little girl in 2010. But don't think for a moment that because we had a biological child that it lessens our choice to trust God in 2007. We didn't secretly hope we'd get pregnant sometime in the future or make any deals with God that if he did this for us, then we'd do something for him. We didn't foresee our situation changing. But even though we didn't think we would ever have children biologically, we celebrated the fact that God had chosen us to be parents through adoption. We chose to trust God and were excited for his will for us.

So as you face that same choice in your life to trust God when your situation doesn't change, I hope you'll learn to pray like Jesus did in that garden over 2,000 years ago, when he said, “Yet not what I will, but what you will,” and surrender yourself and your situation to God. Choose to trust him; he is worthy of your trust.

Pastor Ray

What Matters Most

Hey, BFMC Family!

So how are you doing on your next steps from last weekend's message?

• Have you memorized Psalm 115:1?
• Have you been praying first in everything?
• Have you started each day asking God to help you glorify him?
• Have you been asking God to give you a heart for lost people?

I hope whatever next step you made that you've been able to follow through and do God's will in your life.

I wanted to share with you something that's encouraged me as I seek to glorify God each day with my life. My biblical reading plan has me in the book of Acts right now, and what's been going on in Paul's life in chapters 20 & 21 has really grabbed me.

In chapter 20 he's meeting with the Ephesian elders (the pastors of the church in Ephesus), and he's encouraging them to stay true to their Master, Jesus, and his calling in their life to serve and lead his church. As he's speaking to them, he reminds them of how he poured himself into them and how he urged Jews and Greeks to trust in Jesus. And then he says this:

"But there is another urgency before me now. I feel compelled to go to Jerusalem. I'm completely in the dark about what will happen when I get there. I do know that it won't be any picnic, for the Holy Spirit has let me know repeatedly and clearly that there are hard times and imprisonment ahead. But that matters little. What matters most to me is to finish what God started: the job the Master Jesus gave me of letting everyone I meet know all about this incredibly extravagant generosity of God,"

(Acts 20:22-24, MSG; emphasis added).

Paul isn't sure exactly what's going to happen when he gets to Jerusalem, but he knows he's going to face hardship and even be put in prison. Every time he tells fellow believers about this, they beg him not to continue to Jerusalem. But Paul won't let them change his mind; he refuses to avoid whatever is ahead.

Is he crazy? Is he stupid? A combination of the two? Nope. He's just focused on obeying God and honoring God with his life - even if that means he has to go through hard times. What matters most to Paul is that he finishes what God gave him to do: telling everyone about the incredibly extravagant generosity of God through Jesus Christ. It sounds like Paul had come to a point in his life where he said, "Father, whatever will happen; what matters is that I bring glory to you so that others can know you."

I'd like to think I respond in the same way as Paul did, but I'm thinking I'd probably be worrying about the hard times and imprisonment-thing. I just don't know how I'd not be thinking about that. Maybe Paul was, too; in fact, he probably was. I mean, he's human. How could he not think about it and wonder what would happen to him and how he would hold up? It must have been running around in his mind, causing him to lose sleep and to wonder about what would happen.

And yet that stuff that I'd probably be focusing on, Paul says matters little. Wow. He knew it was going to be tough, that it wasn't going to be any picnic. He's completely in the dark about what will happen. And yet he says what matters most to him is to tell everyone he meets about the Father's incredibly extravagant generosity through Jesus Christ.

As we consider our day and the years ahead of us, we're really in the dark about what will happen. Sure, we've got plans and ideas, but we don't really know what's going to happen – even what will ultimately happen today.

Personally, I'm not facing any tough stuff or know of any tough stuff on the horizon; nevertheless, I could still worry about what's going to happen. Or I could be like Paul and focus on what's most important, viz., bringing the Father glory so others will know him. What about you?

As Paul continued to Jerusalem, it became more evident that he would face hardships there. Those who loved him didn't want him to go through it and begged him not to go. But like Jesus, who was resolute in his facing of the cross, Paul was determined to bear his cross and go to Jerusalem. In Acts 21:12-13, he says to them:

"Why do you insist on making a scene and making it harder for me? You're looking at this backward. The issue in Jerusalem is not what they do to me, whether arrest or murder, but what the Master Jesus does through my obedience. Can you see that?"

Hmm...the issue is what Jesus does through my obedience. Can I live like that? I want to. I want God to find me usable and obedient. But I've got to be willing to go through the tough things. Can I do that? Can you?

"Father, I'm not sure I want to go through stuff like Paul did. But Father, I do want to be faithful and obedient. So when the tough stuff comes, help me to face it like Paul faced it, like Jesus faced it. I can do it with your help, and I must. Because what matters most is that you're glorified and that others know you. Amen."

- Pastor Ray