Reflections

"I Don't feel Like A Quiet Time!"

We need to develop a healthy spiritual appetite, through daily prayer and the reading of God's Word - the Bible. However the question to consider is this: Do we have to wait until we want to pray and read God's Word, or do we do it whether we feel like it or not? The answer is - we do it whether we feel like it or not.  

 The Christian life is not simply a belief in certain doctrines but a discipline in which we move beyond creeds - to deeds. The deed is really the creed - the thing we really believe in enough to put into practise. We do not believe in what we do not  practise. Those who go from week to week without establishing  a daily discipline of prayer and Bible reading are severing themselves from the very life by which they grow.

"But how," you ask, "do we go about changing our feelings so that we want to pray and read the Bible?" Firstly, examine your heart and see if there is anything in your life that needs to be corrected? Is there some sin or spiritual violation that needs to be put right? If there is, then attend to it at once. The old saying that "sin will keep you from prayer, but prayer will keep you from sin" is right. Secondly, recognise, that there is nothing you can do to change your feelings.  You cannot, for example, say to your heart - "feel happy", for the power to change your feelings lies beyond your will. What you can do, however, is to exert your will so that you keep your Quiet Time, and as you expose your thoughts to God in prayer and through the reading of the Word then your thoughts, opened up to God, will soon bring about a change in your feelings.