The Quiet Hour

It’s said that when the human body goes into starvation mode, it begins getting the nutrients it needs from anyplace it can find it. So it begins to break down the muscle and tissue and turns it into energy–the muscle that perhaps was built over many long periods of training in a gym, or was the efforts of strenuous, productive labor.

When it comes to the spiritual person, the same is true. If we starve or neglect that which breathes life into our spiritual bodies each day, we put ourselves on a collision course toward real danger. If we neglect prayer and devotional time with Jesus each day, we begin taking steps backward. I’ve heard people talk about storing up devotion time like it was a bank account, and making withdrawals from time to time when the busy seasons of life or just plain laziness sets in–talking as if it was a normal practice–like it was no big deal. But nothing could be further from the truth. If a spiritual withdrawal could happen, it would do nothing to advance yourself in godliness. Godliness comes as a result of time with Jesus. It comes from doing the hard work of being on your face and knees before God. The busyness of ministry does nothing to propel us toward godliness.

My pastor recently quoted Vance Havner in a message. Havner says, “There is no work more likely to crowd out the quiet hour, than the very work that draws its strength from the quiet hour.” The truth is that our busyness does not equal godliness.

I was convicted by this truth again in reading Spurgeon’s thoughts for today, July 3:

“My days of sloth have ruinously destroyed all that I had achieved in times of zealous industry; my seasons of coldness have frozen all the genial glow of my periods of fervency and enthusiasm; and my fits of worldliness have thrown me back from my advances in the divine life. I had need to beware of lean prayers, lean praises, lean duties, and lean experiences, for these will eat up the fat of my comfort and peace. If I neglect prayer for never so short a time, I lose all the spirituality to which I had attained; if I draw no fresh supplies from heaven, the old corn in my granary is soon consumed by the famine which rages in my soul. When the caterpillars of indifference, the cankerworms of worldliness, and the palmerworms of self-indulgence, lay my heart completely desolate, and make my soul to languish, all my former fruitfulness and growth in grace avails me nothing whatever. How anxious should I be to have no lean-fleshed days, no ill-favoured hours! If every day I journeyed towards the goal of my desires I should soon reach it, but backsliding leaves me still far off from the prize of my high calling, and robs me of the advances which I had so laboriously made.”

Don’t believe the lie that taking a “day off” from time with Jesus will not effect you. It could be more devastating than you ever imagined.