Time With God

Time with God does not really happen in response to duty.  Duty speaks of time with God by measuring the minutes.  Duty only understands obligation and seeks to satisfy its demands.  Duty is not about relationship.  And strange as it may seem at first glance, time with God does not automatically happen in response to religious ritual.  Time with God can be replaced by time with religious ritual.  It is an easy thing for the ritual which points us to God to become such an end in itself that it become a substitute for God.

 

Time with God is far more likely to be experienced when the heart is broken and the spirit is filled with deep desperation.  When the soul has been deprived of spiritual food and the spirit has been weakened to the point of being emptied of everything but hunger and thirst and longing for God, we will be drawn toward time with God as surely as dry arid lands looks toward the heavens for water.  When Jesus spoke of the poor in spirit being blessed, he was speaking of those who know that only God Himself can satisfy the spiritual deprivation of a heart broken  longing for Him.

 

Time with God is not something which can be stored up in a spiritual rain barrel to replenish the dry places in times of spiritual drought.  Like the manna it can only come in a single day supply.  Each day it is necessary to go and gather once again that spiritual bread which brings life for the day.  Only a desperate soul who is hungry to the point of spiritual death can understand how important it is to experience time with God each day.  Time with God is about a relationship that gives life and hope and a promise of a new day to come as surely as the old one passes into the night.