Be Still: A Simple Guide to Quiet TimesSample

Be Still: Into the world

It is often said that as we get older, we start to look more like our parents!

In a similar way, the relationship we are developing with God in our quiet time, in the quiet place, will have an impact on how we live our lives.

In other words, what happens in the garden, shouldn’t stay in the garden—it should be visible in how we live. The more time we spend with God, the more we become like him; to some extent we become a reflection of him.

In the quiet time, we breathe God in; we connect with the divine. We allow his heart to touch our hearts and we become attuned to him. As we become aligned to God’s heart and desires in the quiet time, he expands our focus beyond ourselves and those most directly connected to us.

Then having breathed in, we must also breathe out. Think of it in a natural sense—we can’t just keep breathing in without also breathing out. We are healthy, we are alive, when we do both!

Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision, once said, “Lord break my heart with what breaks yours.” When we are truly connecting to the heart of God in our quiet times, he will break our hearts for his world. As God touches our hearts, he may lead us to people or situations we could hardly have envisaged.

The commission given to the disciples in Matthew 28 was to go and make more disciples. Yet, the first thing they did after Jesus ascended to heaven was to go to a secluded room and pray. The Spirit of God came powerfully, they were propelled out of the secret room, out of the quiet place, into the crowd where they proclaimed the good news of Jesus.

The church was born that day.

This became a continuous rhythm; they didn’t pray and encounter the Holy Spirit just once, it happened again and again. This is mission, that we share the love we have found.

A natural overflow of the quiet time will be that you will seek to make more disciples; surely this love we experience is too much to be kept to ourselves? This is both exciting and daunting; at times we could just want to stay in our garden, comfortably enjoying the presence of Jesus, being his disciple, learning from him.

Prayer is prayer; it is not fuel for mission or even a strategy for mission. But it is always the birthplace of mission.

How can you share Christ’s love today?

How can you reflect your heavenly Father to others?

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