Intimacy Breakers In Your Time With God
I’ve been a Christian since the fall of 1983. That’s over four decades. And one constant has been my lack of consistency in carving out undistracted time to spend with God.
At one point I actually purchased a pretty pricey 3-ring notebook filled with day-by-day, step-by-step patterns for growing in Christ. I started out gangbusters. A time of worship. Reading scripture. Meditating on what I had read. Making notes in the nicely formatted notebook pages of what I believed God was showing me. Praying through that day’s scripture and how it had connected with my heart. I was amazing!
That was for about ten days or so. Then I allowed IT to creep in. If you don’t know who IT is, maybe you’ve never really attempted to go against your natural bents in order to achiever an important goal or objective. But for those who are familiar with IT, you know exactly what I’m talking about
Difficulty focusing just on your time with God
I had difficulty focusing on anything for long periods of time long before ADD was invented. My mind seemed to always jump to something – anything – that seemed more desirable than what I was currently involved in. If I was talking to someone on the phone, I would get antsy thinking of all the other things I could be doing. If I sat down to read a “relaxing” book , it was ridiculous how all the sudden I would become worn out — literally exhausted — and would lay the book down. My time with God is and was no exception to this “thorn in my flesh.”
Boredom with the mundaneness of the daily discipline
To be entirely honest, I would often get bored with the mundaneness of the daily QUIET time alone with God. I’m not sure if it was because or the discipline required. Or maybe the fact that I was alone. Or that the room was so quiet I could hartly stand it. But more times than you might imagine, I would just short circuit my time with God in favor of something that was “more important.”
Taking shortcuts
Don’t judge, but I’ve been a shortcut taker most of my life. I’m not sure if I’m lazy., uninspired, or what. I’ve just had a bad habit of trying to take the shortest (easiest) route to the goal. Even though I have a PhD degree today, I literally made it through high school by reading the Cliff’s Notes for any class I could find them. It seemed good enough for me. Why read the entire book when I could just read the overview and summary and still get a good grade. Another shortcut I took was to never — literally never — take a foreign language. I was told I could not graduate high school without taking a foreign language. But I found a loophole. I could take two additional elective classes and that would suffice for my language requirement. Undergrad school. Grad school. Even my doctoral work. I must admit there were times I would settle for less than the best that comes from reading, studying, and learning. I had mastered a way to condense all three of those into a very effective (and successful) method of getting to the destination. Disclaimer: When it came to the courses in my doctoral work that were critical to my calling, I did (believe it or not) buckle down and do it the right way.
My point
The point of all of my rambling is to say that I allowed myself to settle for the Cliff’s Notes version of Christianity. Settling for the Cliff’s Notes approach. When I reached forty years old, God (and a crisis season in my life) made it apparent that my methods didn’t and wouldn’t ever have the depth and richness needed to make a difference in this world for Christ — or even in just one person. I had been a pretender. A shortcut taker. God has rocked my world to where I now savor my time alone with Him. Those times are the richest most meaningful part of my days.
A word of caution — be careful to just skim the surface in your Christianity. Don’t be a mere pretender. Be an authentic, fully -committed follower of Jesus Christ. If we can help you with this in your life, our compassionate, skilled Christian counselors are always accessible to come alongside you on your journey.