Spend One Minute with God
Welcome to a great article by GUEST BLOGGER, author/speaker Kathi Lipp: www.kathilipp.com
One Minute Can Change Everything
May 20, 2012 By kathilipp 7 Comments
One minute can change everything.
What is the number one reason you don’t have your time with God in the morning?
I know the obvious answer is time, but I think there is a different reason: It’s our overwhelming need to do it “right”.
I feel like if I can’t have a “good” quiet time – one with prayer, meditation, Bible reading and reading a devotional, then why bother? So I let my overwhelming need for perfection keep me from having a meaningful relationship with God. If I can’t take the time to do it right, then I guess I won’t do it at all.
I kept thinking that I would have a chunk of time to really do the kind of devotion I wanted. But that chunk of time never magically happened. And my quiet time suffered. Or didn’t happen.
One of the things I’ve learned in other areas of my life is the principle of 85%: Doing something 85% well is about the best we can hope for or expect. It takes the perfectionistic spirit out of things, while still giving me something to strive for. My quiet time had become like cleaning my kid’s bathroom: if I couldn’t do it perfectly, I wouldn’t even start.
So I started to apply the principle to my time with God. I would start off with 10% and work my way up. I figured one minute was better than nothing.
What I didn’t expect was the subtle way that my heart changed during the 10%. I would grit it out, and force myself to do more and more as time went on.
As I started to spend time with God again after a dry period, just that little bit of time – even one minute, I wanted more. I would tell myself I was just going to spend a minute or two reading Jesus Calling, or praying, or reading in First John, I wanted to linger a little. I wanted to go a little deeper.
Eventually, it became 15 minutes. 15 minutes was a good amount of time: enough to spend some time with God and get my morning right, but short enough that I felt that it was manageable. Often, I spend much more time than that. But I don’t skip it because it’s “too much”.
If you are wrestling with quite time, could I talk you into a one-minute quite time? Does it feel like it would be cheating God? Can I be the one to give you permission to be OK with just getting started. God longs to be with you. One minute, that will turn into 15.
Q4U: If you have a regular quiet time, can you tell us one tip that helps you stay consistent.
If you are struggling with your quiet time, and are willing to do a one minute devotional, tell me that in the comments below, and i will pray for you as you get started.