Finding Time for God

Intimacy is a feeling. Though we can’t base our assurance of salvation on emotions, feeling close to God is important.
— Wayne Gordon

Our church had met in a storefront for five years when we decided we needed more room. For several years, we had eyed the property across the street, a building that needed major remodeling. We offered $25,000 and finally settled on a price of $35,000.

Any mortgage would seriously tax our church budget, and the cost of remodeling still lay ahead. We needed to paint inside and out, erect walls for office space and classrooms, fix the roof, and lay new carpet. To save money I served as general contractor and carpenter. We were anxious to move in, so the remodeling was a high priority for the church and my daily schedule. After a quick morning devotion — a fast reading of a psalm and a “Bless me today, Lord!” — I rushed to the job site, where I hammered nails, called subcontractors, took estimates, and directed volunteers, often until eight o’clock at night.

Only after that, when I was done with the building project for the day, did I start my pastoral work: writing sermons, visiting in homes and at the hospital, and phoning leaders to plan services.

After a few weeks of this schedule, I paid the price. I wasn’t just tired; my body screamed for rest. I felt emotionally distant from my wife and children, and they were obviously unhappy about not getting more of my time. Worst of all, I felt as though God was a star system away.

But I felt I had to finish the project soon. To reach the neighborhood as we had envisioned, with a medical clinic, gym, and larger facilities for Sunday services, we had to sacrifice. I kept telling myself, I have to pay the price. So I kept pushing.

Around that time, I bought Ordering Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald. (I didn’t have the time to read, but I knew I needed help!) The book stopped me in my tracks. As I read one page in his book, I was sure MacDonald had been looking over my shoulder for the past several months:

“A driven person is usually caught in the uncontrolled pursuit of expansion. Driven people like to be a part of something that is getting bigger and more successful.… They rarely have any time to appreciate the achievements to date.…

“Driven people are usually abnormally busy. They are usually too busy for the pursuit of ordinary relationships in marriage, family, or friendship … not to speak of one with God.”

The scales fell from my eyes. I had pursued the building project like someone who was driven not called. But that was only the symptom of a deeper problem.

I realized that I knew a lot about God — I had graduated from Wheaton College with a master’s degree in Bible — but I didn’t know God intimately. Like stars and planets in the night sky that I only occasionally lifted my head to wonder at, God was distant. I wasn’t content with that. So in 1985, I launched out on a journey, a journey toward a deeper walk with God.

The Ways to Intimacy

Elder Christian statesmen like John Stott and John Perkins inspire me because they show that intimacy with God can keep growing throughout our lives, that greater intimacy is indeed a journey. Since that fall of 1985, I have gradually discovered a deepening sense of closeness with the Lord. Perhaps some of what I have learned can help you.

• Follow your feelings. Of course, pastors often must tell Christians not to follow their emotions (they are the caboose, and all that). But intimacy is a feeling. Though we can’t base our assurance of salvation on emotions, feeling close to God is important. It makes our relationship with God fulfilling, and our faith, contagious.

What helps me feel closer to God? For years the mainstay of my daily devotions was Bible study. Although vital to true knowledge of God, Bible study doesn’t normally foster intimacy for me. The key for me is waiting quietly on God until I sense his presence.

• Get born again. Bill Leslie, pastor of LaSalle Street Church in Chicago for several decades, felt burned out at one point in his ministry, so he went to a Catholic retreat center. He talked to a nun about how he felt. She listened patiently, and then she said, “What you need is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”

Ouch! Bill was a card-carrying evangelical. That experience jarred him and convinced him he needed to deepen his relationship with the Savior.

Ministry is more than constructing buildings and leading people to Christ. It is knowing God and being the person he wants me to be. Out of that flows ministry. When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus didn’t begin, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Rather, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” I wasn’t exempt from this command just because I was doing ministry. I needed to make first things first.

• Follow the cycle of intimacy. Knowing God is a process that can no more be exhausted than the exploration of the universe. There is always another blazing, star-saturated galaxy to discover in God.

John 14:21 describes the stages in the cycle: “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.” Stage one: if we love God, we obey his commands. Stage two: if we obey his commands, he reveals himself to us. Stage three: when he reveals himself to us, we know him better and love him more. Then the cycle repeats itself, with our love and knowledge of God growing ever deeper and stronger.

Unless accompanied by obedience, prayer and Bible reading cannot bring intimacy. At one point in their history, the Israelites rigorously practiced spiritual disciplines. They were fasting, worshiping in the Temple, seeking the Lord. But God told them, in Isaiah 58, that he had another kind of fasting in mind. They needed to follow the spiritual discipline of obedience: to stop oppressing their workers, to feed the hungry and set prisoners free. God promised to come near those who obeyed him.

Of course, no one obeys perfectly, but deliberate, ongoing disobedience breaks the cycle of intimacy as surely as eating the apple sent Adam and Eve packing from the garden of Eden.

• Journal first thoughts of the morning. I am not a natural writer. Journaling is the last spiritual discipline I naturally gravitate toward. But a number of writers I had been reading recommended the practice, so I decided to try it.

I’ve never stopped. Ten years later I’m still journaling nearly every day. While the street lights are still shining bright on Ogden Avenue, I wake up, walk the cracked and vaulted sidewalks to church, crank up the footrest on my easy chair, and sloppily write in a spiral notebook things (unlike John Wesley) I never want anyone to read.

The thoughts I have when I wake, shower, and shave are the first thing I record in my journal. Early morning thoughts are significant. Worries, anger, new ideas, plans — they cluster at dawn, before the press of daily events, and in my journal I process them. My journal is the one place where I can be completely honest with God.

Where I journal, pray, and read Scripture is important. On Saturdays I have tried to wake up early and journal at home, but even though I’m up before my family, it doesn’t work. I don’t get the same settled feeling in my spirit. I’m restless. Just as seeing a deep-space supernova is more likely if an astronomer is 7,200 feet above sea level at the Cerro Tololo observatory in Chile, so my best times with God come when I’m at my right place: my office.

• Think twice about spiritual disciplines that upset family rhythms. For one six-month period, I fasted one day a week. My family eats together every night, and so on fasting days I sat at the table and talked, but that was awkward. So I tried cloistering myself in the bedroom to read and pray during meals. “For a while I’m not going to eat with everyone on Mondays,” I explained to the kids (trying not to sound super-spiritual). “While you’re eating, I’m going to be alone with God because I want to know God better.” My spiritual quarantine upset everyone. My wife was frustrated at having to handle the meal and children alone, and the kids wanted to see me.

After six months the fasting hadn’t helped me feel significantly closer to God, but it had increased family stress. That spiritual discipline finally went out the window.

I still believe in the benefits of fasting (which I have since concluded benefits me most when I fast in three-to five-day stretches). Fasting over important decisions helps me stay focused. I have never come down from Mount Sinai with tablets in my hands, but I usually get a deep, settled peace.

I also fast about specific needs. When I taught high school, I met with another coach in the athletic equipment room during lunch hour; instead of eating, we prayed for the troubled marriage of a friend. After nine months, that marriage recovered.

My most refreshing spiritual discipline is keeping an agreement made with my wife years ago. We have promised each other to take a week away together every year with no children, no agenda; we want to simply enjoy each other. We pray and read the Bible together, rest, and play tennis. It is the highlight of our marriage and my spiritual life.

• Get quiet and make time. To have intimacy with God in my quiet time, I can’t do without two things: (1) quiet, and (2) time.

As a student at Wheaton College, I was a fellowship fanatic. I love being with people. One year I went on a wilderness retreat. Retreat organizers told us to bring only three things beside our clothes and toiletries: a Bible, a notebook, and a pen. For three days they required that participants spend their time alone with God. I had never spent half a day away from people and alone with God! I quickly learned how dependent my relationship with God was on others. I also learned that spending quantity time with God enhances intimacy, and that I could enjoy the quiet and the luxury of time with God alone.

There is no substitute for time. I can’t rush intimacy. When I have been away from my wife for several days, five minutes of conversation at the dinner table does not restore our sense of closeness. We need one or two hours together. What we discuss isn’t as important as spending the time with each other.

I have a friend who talks about how much he enjoys “wasting time” with God, that is, spending unstructured, unhurried periods with the Lord. Although I often use a prayer list, I also like following no agenda, just as one of my favorite activities with family and friends is just hanging out together. Fellowship with God isn’t rocket science. It has to be led by the Spirit and by the concerns and feelings on my heart at the moment.

In some of the most intimate moments my wife and I have shared, we haven’t said anything; we sit or lie together holding hands or arm in arm, enjoying each other’s presence. So it is with the Lord. “Be still, and know that I am God” is a verse that shapes my time with God as much as any other. Such stillness energizes me. Along with journaling, my greatest sense of closeness to God comes when sitting in silence before him until I feel his presence.

A Pastor’s Disciplines Are Different

Bringing up the subject of “spiritual disciplines” usually brings up guilt in people. We all feel we could do more in this area. In addition, pastors are often troubled because they feel that the pressures of pastoral life encourage them to cheat God.

I believe, however, that we need to accept that our practice of spiritual disciplines will be different than the practice of our parishioners. In particular, there are three areas that trouble us, but here’s how I deal with them.

First, I’ve come to accept that pastoral life is a ride on the Screaming Eagle. One day I’m ministering to a young man in prison for murdering a storekeeper; the next day I perform a wedding; the next day, a funeral. We can talk about balance and order, but pastoral life isn’t balanced or ordered!

That means I’ve decided I’m not going to feel guilty when I have to miss a day of devotions. If I don’t do them before 7 a.m., they don’t happen, or at least they don’t have the same benefit. When I can’t fit in my quiet time, I feel cheated. I miss my time with the Lord. But if I am legalistic about spiritual disciplines, they no longer are spiritual disciplines for me, just mere duty.

Second, I merge daily devotions with sermon preparation. I know some consider that a problem, but it works well for me. I often read and meditate daily on my preaching text for the coming Sunday. My best preaching is a reflection of how I’m growing and what God shows me in my times with him.

Third, I allow myself to think about church during my quiet time. For some, this becomes a temptation to refuse to get personal with God, to keep playing pastor even in his presence. But I am a pastor, and so much of what I do is pastoral. Often as I wait in God’s presence, ideas come like a meteor shower in my mind, and many are from the Lord: program ideas, insights into church problems, people to call. I write them down in full when the inspirations come and sometimes act on them immediately.

Recently as I was praying, the name of one woman in our church came to me. I wasn’t sure why, but I sensed I was supposed to call her. When I did phone, she told me she had been struggling for several days. She desperately needed someone to talk to. She was shocked that I called just when I did.

Locking the Door

It’s no surprise that my spiritual lows come when I’m busy, preoccupied, focusing my attention on everything but God, and my spiritual highs come on “sabbath” days of rest and relaxation. God instituted sabbath not only because the human body needs physical rest, but more so because human activity frustrates intimacy with the Creator.

That means that at times I’ve had to take forceful steps to make this happen.

As a people-person and activist, I’ve prided myself on having an open-door policy. So for years, people regularly interrupted my devotions, but it didn’t bother me much. When I started my journey of knowing God, I knew something had to change; I had to find uninterrupted time with God. So I started coming to church earlier for my morning devotions.

Then people who wanted to see me learned a good time to catch me was early in the morning. Still, I kept my door open and kept coming in earlier and earlier to be alone.

One early morning as I was in my office praying, a drug addict named John, to whom I had been ministering for months, came to my door and said, “I don’t have any money for the train. Can you give me a ride to work?”

“I’ll give you some money,” I said.

“I’ll be late for work. I need you to give me a ride.”

He pressed his plea, and so finally I drove him. When I returned to the office, I never was able to resume my devotions.

I woke early the next morning looking forward to my devotions. I settled into my chair at the office and began reading the Bible. Minutes later John showed up again at my door. Same request. Again I refused. He begged me, and once again I grudgingly interrupted my time with the Lord to drive him to work. Once again I couldn’t resume my devotions later in the day.

The next morning, John reappeared at my open door. “I’m not driving you to work,” I said firmly. “I have a commitment.”

“Coach, you have to! I’ll be fired if I don’t get there on time.”

“That’s too bad. I have a commitment.”

John pleaded and pleaded with me. Finally I said, “Okay, okay, I’ll drive you to work, but if you come to my door tomorrow, I’m not driving you. You’ll just have to lose your job.”

The next morning I was not surprised when John stuck his head in my office (with that kind of persistence how could he not succeed in life!). But this time I held firm. Angrily he rushed out to take the train, and he didn’t lose his job.

That experience seven years ago was a turning point for me. Though contrary to my nature, I started saying no to people to guard my time with the Lord. I now close and lock my outer office door during devotions. When someone knocks, I don’t answer, nor do I answer my phone. I have told the congregation, “If you come knocking on my door early in the morning, I’m not going to answer. I need to be alone with God. I don’t want to know about God, I want to know God.”

Just a couple of years ago, I found myself deeply discouraged about the work at the church. Frankly, I debated quitting ministry at Lawndale. So, feeling like the despondent Elijah when Jezebel had designs on his prophetic skin, I went off by myself to a retreat. I fasted, prayed, and waited for three days to hear from God.

There were no temblors or bolts of lightning, but when the three days were up, the tide had come back in. I sensed God saying, Be still. Know that I am God. You don’t have to solve all of Lawndale’s problems or save everyone you meet. Love me, and we’ll work together. Just keep going.

Returning home, I talked it over with my wife, and we decided to stay. We are now in our twentieth year of ministry at Lawndale Community Church. My eight-year journey in pursuit of intimacy with God is what enabled me to work through that dark night of my ministry. Often it is difficult to find time for God in the midst of church life, but closeness with God is the basis for lasting ministry.