“…yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” – Luke 18:5, NRSV

A voice.  Many times I have lacked one.

We are conditioned to forfeit our voice.  Simple greetings solicit forgettable, verbal status updates.  Often, if I say too much, I grow ashamed of my voice.  I hope, secretly, that the cashier doesn’t think that I am too lonely.

Some days I do not fit into 140 characters.

To the disappointment of the world, perhaps, many words are heavy in my mind.

My words are heavy in His mind, too.

When I am alone with God, rules of verbal limitation are struck down with thunder bolts and rained upon with fire.  Alone with Him, each letter is suspended and every name is held in consideration.

By some miracle, this same voice that complains about drivers and grocery store lines rises past the skyscrapers and mountains, beyond the jet streams and clouds.  My words do not stop until the find the throne room.  The same plea rises, over and over, supernaturally transforming to incense before my God.

So, I speak. I ask, again and again.

If, I catch myself.  If I become conscious that I am speaking into an empty room.  If I think that I should be quiet, that I should rest the ear of God, He persists even more.

He does not want me to leave until every sigh, every smile, every tear, every petition and every concern has escaped the vault of my heart.  Even when I am silent with Him, I know that He only wants more of me.  What I cannot give in words, He takes in emotion.  He draws everything out, makes me look at it, and then replaces it with precious truths that deserve purer lips then mine.

He wants my voice.  He wants more and more of it.

That is what I did not believe about quiet times…before.

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Click to read, Quiet Times: What I Did Not Believe About Them – Part 1.

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ​ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through​​ his Spirit that dwells in you. – Romans 8:11, NRSV

Why don’t people want to do quiet times?

Is it really because we don’t have time?  No.  We have time for the things we prefer to do.

Is it because we get distracted?  No.  Perhaps, it is that I lack self-discipline but it is not because I am distracted.

Is it because it is boring?  No.  Have you met some of the people in the bible?  Wow.

There was a time, in my Christian walk, when I did not read the bible.  I did not have an aversion to it, I just did not have an attraction to it.  I was certain of its relevancy, in a non-intrusive way.

I was simply comfortable, until I heard this.

The Spirit. That raised Christ from the dead. Lives in me.

The Spirit. That raised Christ from the dead. Lives in me.

The bible told me that.

Living in me there is a Spirit so powerful, so unstoppable, that it took a man who had been dead and buried for three days and raised Him up, to walk out of His burial tomb.  Never before, and never since, has anything like that ever happened.  It is a deep mystery.

By contrast, I am insignificant.  I am a wife, a daughter, a sister.  I sit in my small house, on my small block, making small decisions every day.  That is what you see through my windows.

But, violently advancing in gentleness and quietude within my soul is one who brings the power to raise the dead.

I cannot access that, without time alone with the Father.  I cannot ask Him how His Spirit, fearsome yet controlled, is destined to collide with my life.  I cannot plead with Him to use that same Spirit to intervene in this world around me.

Now, I have to know Him, more.  I have to explore the unimaginable resources of heaven that are a whisper from reality.

I have to be quiet with Him.

This is what I did not believe about quiet times…before.

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