Quiet Time

I think many people often have a misconception of how and what a quiet time is supposed to be. Without a doubt, I am one such person.

I used to think that Quiet Time means to sit down and pour through the bible.. passages after passages or just to get over the ‘Passage for the Day’. So it used to be that I would just do it just to get it over with.. more often than not, I find myself wondering what I’m really doing it for. It started to become meaningless.. I merely wanted to ‘finish the bible in a year’.

And then the revelation came to me that a quiet time is really meant to be A Quiet Time. A time where you quieten yourself down and allow God to speak to you.. where you spend quality time with yourself, and pull yourself away from all the distractions that would otherwise be drawing your mind to it..

To me, the best moments come from the alone time I get when I’m in the woods. The time spent with myself. Just me, myself, and Him. Where I would be constantly reminded of all the goodness that has been showered upon me, and ultimately, leave feeling refreshed.

I’ve never really talked much about it but one of the most awesome and powerful encounters I had was not in an Extended Praise Service; singing praises for hours, neither was it at some church camp/retreat where we’d spend all day and night attending services and workshops at some resort/hotel away from Singapore. Instead, it was found in the humbleness and quietness, in the serenity and solitude that I experienced in Brunei. The 5 days that I spent alone in the woods, with no one else beside me but Him, brought me closer to Him and let me experience His presence in a way that no other retreats/camps/services allowed me to do so. It was truly a Quiet Time.

I took a run around campus last night and again, it was one such experience.. in the quietness of the night, with only my footsteps thumping in the background, I was remembered of the countless times that He has never failed me.. “For every door I close, I’ll open a window. If I actually showed you a door and then closed it, you can be sure that it’s not something that I’d want you to go through. I have every good intention for you after all you know.. persevere, hang in there and just do your best” that was my takeaway from my run last night.. my Quiet Time as it were.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you should chuck your bible aside.. I’m just saying that so many times, we get distracted by these ‘rules and methods’ that were set out really as mere guidelines for us to get started.. we get so distracted that we often overlook the main point of a quiet time. At least I did.

This post is probably one of the more personal posts that I’ve made so far.. significantly different from the usual wacky stuff.. but I just felt like it’s something I should mention about..

So what is your personal Quiet Time like?