I think one of the biggest obstacles I usually face when it comes to maintaining my relationship with the Lord is that I often have way higher standards for my spiritual life than He does.
That sounds strange, right? How could we possibly have higher standards for our spiritual life than God Himself?
But I think it happens all the time.
Every time I think about sitting down and spending some time with the Lord, I can start talking myself out of it almost immediately. I realize I only have twenty minutes. I only have this small window. And then I start imagining what a “real” quiet time should look like.
I should spend a long time in prayer for the people I care about. I should spend a long time praising Him for who He is. I should spend a long time searching my heart and confessing every sin before I even open the Bible. I should dive deeply into every passage and make totally sure I understand exactly what is happening.
By the time I finish building that picture in my head, I have created a devotional routine that would take an hour and a half.
And because I do not have an hour and a half, I do nothing.
That is one of the most common and most damaging misconceptions we fall into when it comes to our relationship with the Lord:
If it is not a perfect quiet time, it does not really count.
If I sit down to pray but have trouble focusing, it must have been a failure.
If I read Scripture but do not feel like I got much out of it, it must have been a failure.
If I do not feel some swell of emotion, passion, gratitude, or awe, it must have been a failure.
If it is not perfect, it does not count.
And so we end up talking ourselves out of spending any time with the Lord because we do not think we can spend enough time with the Lord.
We talk ourselves out of studying Scripture because we do not think we can study it deeply enough.
We talk ourselves out of praying because we do not think we can pray as much as we should.
And the actual result of all those high standards is not excellence.
It is nothing.
If you are anything like me, there is a good chance you get stuck in that cycle too.
But there is a way out of it, and it starts with remembering something simple:
God is an actual person who meets us where we are in a relationship where we bring our real selves to a real God.
That truth breaks down so many of the roadblocks we build between ourselves and our Father.
Because if God is an actual person, then what is a quiet time?
It is simply time spent with this actual person who is also the God of the universe.
If God meets us where we are, then a quiet time is simply time spent pouring our hearts out to Him and listening for His guidance through the Scriptures He has given us.
If our relationship with Him is about bringing our real selves to a real God, then a quiet time is simply time spent letting Him work on us in whatever condition we are in today, in whatever way He sees fit.
In other words:
Your quiet time is whatever time you can spend with just you and the Lord in a given day.
The only time it becomes more complicated than that is when we make it more complicated than that.
I love the way the Psalms describe this simple pursuit.
“When you said, ‘Seek my face,’ my heart said to you, ‘I will seek your face, Yahweh.’” (Psalm 27:8)
“God, you are my God. I will earnestly seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh longs for you, in a dry and weary land, where there is no water.” (Psalm 63:1)
“Cause me to hear your loving kindness in the morning, for I trust in you. Cause me to know the way in which I should walk, for I lift up my soul to you.” (Psalm 143:8)
These people are not describing something complicated. They are describing the simple joy of being with Someone they delight in.
But it is an even deeper joy than that.
It is not first the joy of loving God, though they clearly do love Him.
It is the joy of being loved by God.
One of the first ways the Psalms start to rewrite the way we think about our spiritual life is this:
At the most basic level, spending time with the Lord is about letting the Lord love us.
Listen to Psalm 36:
“How precious is your loving kindness, God! The children of men take refuge under the shadow of your wings. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the abundance of your house. You will make them drink of the river of your pleasures.” (Psalm 36:7–8)
That is not the language of a performance review.
That is the language of refuge, satisfaction, safety, abundance, delight.
The defining reality of your relationship with the Lord is not the fact that you love Him.
It is the fact that He loves you.
His love for you is the center of your identity, not your love for Him.
His love for you is the ground your daily spiritual life is built on, not your love for Him.
Because when you wake up in the morning, your love for Him may be anywhere on the spectrum.
Some days you feel warm and eager.
Some days you feel distracted.
Some days you feel numb.
Some days you feel dry.
Some days you feel ashamed.
But His love for you does not move.
Your heart may need to be stirred up again and again. His does not.
He does not need anything to keep the flames of His love for you burning.
And that means what is happening when you sit down to spend time with Him is not that you are holding the relationship together by bringing enough love to Him that day.
It is that He is holding you together with His unchanging love for you.
That changes everything.
The beginning of spiritual renewal is not figuring out the perfect routine.
It is not mastering a system.
It is not producing the right emotions.
It is not proving your seriousness.
The beginning of renewal is letting the Lord love you.
Just sitting in His love for you.
That is the place to start.
So if you have been waiting until you can do it perfectly, stop waiting.
If you have been waiting until you feel more spiritual, stop waiting.
If you have been waiting until you have more time, stop waiting.
Sit down today with the minutes you actually have.
Open the Scriptures.
Speak honestly to your Father.
Bring Him the real version of you.
And let the Lord love you.
Mount Zion Baptist Church - Louisburg, NC 
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