Seek Him and He Will Be Found
After you accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of your life, you may have heard about “quiet times.” You might have wondered what it is exactly, why we as believers should have them, how, when, where, and what the results of having them are. I would like to take you through what the Bible says about spending time with the Lord as well as share some of my experience.
What is it? Quiet time is a time of the day we purposefully set apart for nothing other than meeting with the Lord. It is a time when we choose to still ourselves before God so He may speak to us through His word and we to Him by prayer, thereby building our relationship with Him.
Deuteronomy 8 says, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Just as the Israelites daily looked for the manna the Lord gave them while they were in the desert, so we also depend on the Lord to give us our daily bread, His word which is food for our spirits. I got insight into this verse during my first year of medical student, after seeing my first cadaver. It dawned on me that the life of a man did not come from his body. Everything was materially on the table, but the man was not, his soul and spirit. His body had only been a temporary tent for the man who had left this world to be judged by the Lord. I was convicted of the truth of the verse: “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing” (John 6).
I saw it is even more important to take care of our spirits than our flesh; just as we eat to take care of our bodies, we meet with God to take care of our spirits.
“I have found that it makes a big difference whether I start the day off with God or not.”
Why do we have them? Some may wonder why we need such times. They may ask, “Isn’t being saved enough??” To answer that question, we may consider why Jesus died for us. He died, yes, to take away our sins, but not just for that. He died so that by removing our sins from us, we may have a relationship with Him and the Father. If we stop having that relationship, then we miss the whole point of salvation.
Jesus says to His people, “Here am I…. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3). The Lord did everything He did so we could be near Him. If we do not continue to spend that time with the Lord, we miss out on the main reason for our salvation.
How do we approach the Lord? We can approach the throne of God not by our righteousness but by Jesus’, who was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet never sinned. Therefore we can approach God with confidence, and get help in our time of need. And if there are specific sins in our lives, we don’t have to stay away from God, but we can change our minds on that point and agree with God and ask for forgiveness on the basis of His promise, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins” (1 John 1). Then we can return to having fellowship with God.
I remember many times when I felt “too sinful” to go to the Lord, and yet I chose to believe the above verses. Surely enough, I received that forgiveness and restoration from the Lord and was able to go on with Him.
When do we have quiet times? The Psalmist in Psalm 5 may give an example, “In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice, in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.” I have found that it makes a big difference whether I start the day off with God or not. When I see the Lord as He is each morning, it sets the tone for the rest of my day. It determines so much of what I think in those free moments during the day, what I expect from the Lord, my attitude toward work and people. When you take time with the Lord, He orders your steps for the day and often things fall into place in ways you could not have planned.
Often, though, “I don’t feel like having quiet time” for what could be various reasons. I remember many “cloudy” days when it seemed nothing was going right, within and without. I readily identified with the writer of Psalm 42, who wrote, “My soul is downcast within me.” And yet I found that I could also say, “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”
Though in my soul I did not feel like praising the Lord, in my spirit I decided to praise God in songs both old and new. At first I didn’t feel any different, but later, I knew the victory that came by believing and declaring to myself and the foe that Jesus is on the throne.
If I based my relationship with God on feeling rather than the fact of His promises, I wouldn’t go to Him half the time. But we can always worship the Lord on the basis of the facts.
Where? Jesus went to the mountainside to pray. It was on mountains Jesus revealed Himself to his disciples and where God spoke to Moses. We can look for “mountainsides”—a place where we won’t be distracted by other people or cares and can attend to God so that we may hear and see Him. While at Yale, I would spend time with the Lord in my dorm room or when that wasn’t possible in any empty classroom in WLH, CCL cubicles, Sterling courtyard, and even the stacks at times—anywhere I could give my attention solely to the Lord.
What can you expect as results of your quiet times? We can expect to know more of God and His ways as we spend time with Him. God has promised, “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know” (Jeremiah 33), and “I will put my law in their minds and write in it on their hearts…. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest” (Jeremiah 31).
I can remember special moments of insight into God, when very familiar passages would suddenly come alive to me and speak right to my heart, right to my situation. Recently I had been praying about a seemingly impossible situation. One night the Lord gave me Mark 6:4-6, where Jesus could not do any miracles in his home town except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. This was “all” Jesus could do!
He showed me that for Him it is a small thing to heal the sick, though in my mind it seems like such a hard thing. I had read those verses before, but this time the Lord handed words to my heart, and they took on added meaning.
We can expect such times as we read His word, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4). We can ask in prayer for His word in a particular situation for ourselves and others.
By getting to know God through taking time with Him, we start living the eternal life now as Jesus says, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17). Let us begin living that eternal life today.
Jesus, being the vine, and we the branches, promises, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples” (John 15).
“‘You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 29).
Paulina Kim, Ezra Stiles ‘95