Hello everyone. When life speeds up, we need to slow down. We need to learn to have a quiet space in our lives when we simply listen to Jesus. Today we’re returning to the home of Martha and the city of Bethany just outside of Jerusalem.
Let’s look at the story in Luke 10:38-42:
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, He came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
I read something about trees the other day that I’d never heard before—trees never stop growing. As they as they live, they keep getting taller, and they keep adding branches and leaves, and they keep adding rings of bark around their trunks. The wonderful thing about love is that it never reaches any limitations. Our love for people—for our spouse and children and friends—should be stronger and deeper and richer with every passing year.
Our love for the Lord Jesus is like that. To the best of my ability to know my own heart, I think I love the Lord Jesus now more than I ever have. I think many believers can say that. What a wonderful life—to be submissive to His will and to be devoted to Him.
But the primary purpose in Luke 10 of Mary’s sitting at Jesus’ feet was communion—to listen to Him. Look again at the way Mark puts it: “She (Martha) had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what He said.”
She was having her quiet time. She was having her Bible study. She was in the prayer closet. She was feeding on her morning manna.
Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wrote a book about this and said her first exposure to the Quiet Time was from her dad. She wrote, “Early in my Christian life, I learned about one of the most essential ingredients in nurturing a relationship with God, as I became aware that my father began each day with a practice that he called his ‘devotions.’
“A businessman with many demands on his time, and active in ministry of many kinds, my father was not one to spend time frivolously. Yet somehow, in the midst of an extremely active and busy household, and with incessant demands of travel and meetings, there was one constant in his life – he never got started into the business of the day without first having spent an hour or more alone with the Lord.
“I don’t recall ever actually being with him during those times – though I frequently did see him reading his Bible – but somehow we all knew that his time in the Word and prayer was more important to him than any other activity of his day. As I got older, I learned something of how this had come to be such an indispensable part of her of his life.”
Nancy said that during his teenage and young adult years, her father had become addicted to gambling, and he moved from one gambling spot to another. This destroyed his values and brought heartache to his parents. Then one night in his mid-twenties, having made a mess of his life, he heard and responded to the Gospel.
“Early in his Christian life, he was challenged to give the first part of every day to the Lord and the word and in prayer period from that day until the day he went to heaven twenty-eight years later, he never missed one single day of this devotional practice.”
He learned how to sit at Jesus’ feet.
It must be true for all of us. The best way to be fresh and refreshing to others is to learn to sit at the Lord’s feet with an open Bible in front of us, and to meet with Him personally every day so that He can give us a word for our own hearts.
Many of us are like Martha—distracting, doubting, feeling sorry for ourselves, worried, and upset. Jesus says to us, “One thing is needful—to sit at My feet in submission, devotion, and communion.”
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
Come unto Me and rest.
Lay down, thou weary one, lay down,
Thy head upon my breast.
I came to Jesus as I was
Weary, worn, and said.
I found in Him a resting place,
And He hath made me glad.
In the Bible college I attended, the administration and faculty placed enormous emphasis on teaching us to have our “Quiet Time.” I’d never heard that term before. Perhaps you haven’t either. It’s a practice that, on one level, goes all the way back to the earliest eras of Biblical history—in fact, all the way back to the Garden of Eden. There God spoke with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day, fellowshipping with them.
On another level, the practice of the Quiet Time is sometimes traced back to the 1870s, “when American evangelicals merged two previously separate Puritan devotional practices: private prayer and private Bible Study.”
In 1877, G. H. Wilkinson’s wrote a little book called, Instructions in the Devotional Life. He said, “Set apart a certain time for this work every day. For beginners, a quarter of an hour is enough. Choose the most quiet time. The morning is best; it is more difficult to fix our attention later in the day. Thank God if you can secure a quiet time—a quiet place….”
Howard went on to divide this quiet time into six parts: (1) Read a passage of Scripture; (2) Kneel down reverently and realize you are in God’s presence; (3) Submit your will and put yourself in God’s hands; (4) Picture the scene you read about in the Bible. Meditate on that passage before the Lord. Think about what you have read; (5) Seek one lesson for your life from the passage. (6) Speak to God for the rest of the time in prayer.
The term “Quiet Time” became widespread in the 1940s when InterVarsity published a little booklet entitled Quiet Time.
Well, I’ve been having my Quiet Time since I was nineteen years old, and my wife Katrina was also committed to having her daily devotions. Every morning she would go to her desk and I’d go to mine. I wrote about this in my book, Mastering Life Before It’s Too Late:
My morning devotions are vital to my state of mind as I prepare for the day. Everyone’s schedule is different; our obligations in life vary from person to person. Your “morning devotions” might happen during the lunch hour, at bedtime, or at some other regular spot on your daily agenda….
The Bible says, “Blessed are those who listen to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway” (Proverbs 8:34). Isaiah said, “In the morning my spirit longs for you… Be our strength every morning… The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught” (Isaiah 26:9; 33:2; 50:4).
Between the covers of our Bibles we have access to a document more accurate and life altering than any prepared for a Head of State. It’s more relevant to our needs than any summary of the news, and more encouraging than any top-secret file. It provides more wisdom than any intelligence report…. As we sit at the kitchen table and pour over God’s Word, the Lord Himself comes to meet with us. This is a prime opportunity to “practice the presence of God.”
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
My morning Appointment has been the anchor to my every day. We all need our diversions, but we need our devotions more. If I miss my Divine Appointment with the Lord, I go through the day feeling something is missing; so I try to never miss a morning, and certainly to never miss two in a row. Whether at home or traveling, whether working or on vacation, I don’t want to neglect my regular meeting with the Lord. I agree with the old Puritan, Stephen Charnock, who said that even if the foundations of the world were ripped up and the heavens clatter and collapse, we can maintain stability in our lives because our durability doesn’t depend on the changeableness of the times but on the unchangeable rock of the truth of God.
In its essence, our daily devotions represent a personal Appointment with our Father and Friend, in which we converse with Him—talking to Him in prayer and listening to Him by reading and meditating on His Word. The core of daily devotions is a living friendship with Almighty God, which Christ provided through His death and resurrection.
In terms of technique, everyone develops their daily devotional habits a little differently just as all our friendships have their own unique patterns. For the sake of practicality, I’ll tell you how I go about it, but you’ll enjoy developing your own patterns. We’re all different, but here’s what I do. Each morning, after I rise and shower and have a light breakfast, I sit down at the walnut desk my Uncle Tom Morgan, a woodcrafter, made for me when I was a child. On the adjacent windowsill are a couple of study Bibles, a hymnbook, and a small selection of devotional books….
I usually begin the Appointment with some simple journaling, jotting the date, a few notes about the day before or the one just beginning, and listing the passage I’m coming to in my daily Bible reading. Offering a quick prayer asking the Lord to speak to me in His Word, I open my Bible to where I left off the day before. I’m in no hurry to rush through a passage, so I may spend several days in the same paragraph. On other days I might read several chapters. My goal is finding some spiritual nourishment for the day, some verse that speaks to me. I’ll often make a few notes in my journal, or copy the verse into my notebook, or turn the passage into a prayer I jot down.
Sometimes I spend the time memorizing the passage…. When we memorize passages, the Word of God sinks into our unconscious and subconscious thoughts and allows the Holy Spirit to work around the clock in the deepest regions of our hearts and minds.
Occasionally I’ve worked through the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, but usually I just choose a book at a time…
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Having spent time – typically between ten to thirty minutes—meditating on God’s Word, I turn my focus to prayer. It helps to visualize the Lord Jesus close at hand, and to talk to Him as if He were really there—which, of course, He is….
I do find prayer lists helpful. I have a number of them in my journal—for personal needs, for family members, for missionaries, for prodigals, for any number of other things. I don’t cover every item every day, but I talk with the Lord about what’s most on my heart, using my lists to keep me from forgetting to pray often for those things that represent my “daily bread.” In time, these prayer lists become praise lists and serve as an ongoing record of answered prayer.
Having spent time in the Word and in conversing with the Lord, I often conclude my Appointment by reading from an inspirational book or by singing or reading the words to a hymn….
At the end of the day, my work behind me, I frequently repeat the process in briefer fashion, and often recite the Lord’s Prayer before falling asleep. Prayer truly is, as it’s been said, the key to the morning and the bolt of the evening….
[There is one other thing I do each morning during my Quiet Time]. The Bible says, “Do not be in a hurry to leave the king’s presence” (Ecclesiastes 8:3)… Before I leave the conscious presence of God at the end of my morning Quiet Time, I take a few moments to prayerfully look at my lists of obligations and my calendar. Taking a little four-by-six card, I scratch out a plan. You can do this on an electronic device, of course. I use a card because I stick it in my pocket and carry it with me all day.
After briefly considering my priorities and agenda, I jot at the top of that card the [things] I most need to accomplish that day. That becomes my plan for the day.
In just two or three minutes, or five or ten at most, at the end of our Morning Devotions as we segue from the mountaintop to the workplace or classroom, so to speak, we can devise a plan for our day that will serve as a blueprint for the hours before us. This is harkening back to a verse I mentioned earlier—Psalm 143:8: “Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go.”
I’m Martha by nature, but my daily Quiet Time is when I put on my Mary profile. We need Martha’s diligence combined with Mary’s devotion. We need time at the Master’s feet, especially now because of the acceleration of the busyness of life. So remember, When the demands of life increase, what you most need is quiet time with the Lord. Thank you for pouring into the riches of the Bible with me!