One on One Time With the Lord

One on one time with the Lord is incredibly important for all believers. I find it a critical element in my walk to maintain a time for study and prayer. As a teacher and a church leader, I find myself in God’s word regularly and in prayer regularly for various people in various settings. But, this cannot replace regular time with God. It is very easy for me to put one on one time with God on the backburner. I’ve made it a habit to spend some time, even if it is short, every morning.

At the same time, I find it important to not be too legalistic about it. In the past I would refuse to read anything out of a book I was studying for another purpose. For instance, I am teaching “Mark” on Thursday nights and 1 Corinthians on Sunday morning. So, if I come to one of these books in my personal reading, I would skip it. But, I’ve recently found that my one on one time can coincide with my teaching preparation. For the last two weeks I have been reading 1 Corinthians over and over. It is incredible how much clearer God’s word becomes when you saturate yourself in scripture in this way. I find my personal walk to be much better and my teaching much more effective.

One area that I default in is prayer. I tend to be a spontaneous prayer, which I think can be good. When someone needs prayer, I tend to stop what I’m doing and pray for them. (That actually just happened as I was writing this because someone came into my office.) This practice makes one on one time difficult sometimes. If there were one area of my one on one time that I would say needs improvement it would be this.

One observation I have made is that diligence in study of God’s word and efforts in prayer make it much easier to allow the Sprit to lead and not the flesh. I find myself less in sin and find that God can use me much more effectively.

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