‘I’m Not Feeling It Today’

I love spontaneity. I treasure unplanned, unexpected moments of joy with my family, with colleagues at work, with fellow pastors and members at our church, even with friends at the ballfield. Most of all, I cherish the sweet moments of surprising joy, with my Bible open, in communing with God.

I’ve come to learn over the years that spontaneity is often misunderstood. I myself have misunderstood it. But the hard knocks of stubborn reality can be a good teacher. By nature, I’m not someone who values discipline and routine. I despise dead ritual and lifeless liturgy. But my love for spontaneity has steadily drawn me over time to recognize, and appreciate, how the power of habit can serve spontaneous joy rather than replace or suffocate it.

Here’s the hard truth for those of us who love spontaneity: We will experience very few, if any, precious moments of spontaneity with our children or spouse if we have not made a habit of being together. These special, unplanned quality moments emerge in the space of planned, arranged-for quantity time together. The same is true with colleagues at work and fellow Christians in our church. If we don’t have planned, scheduled times of being together, we will not experience the joys of deep communion.

The same is true in seeking to have soul-feeding, heart-warming daily communion with the living God.

Planned Spontaneity with God

Joy in God’s presence disappears when I don’t make a habit of pursuing his presence. Daily communion with the living God doesn’t just happen as we go about our daily lives. Setting our minds on things above doesn’t just happen. God means for us to take some initiative and put in a little effort to do the mind-setting and heart-calibrating, and in those arrangements God loves to bless his people with surprising showers of his grace that have all the joy of the best spontaneity.

To get practical, consider five simple aspects of how you might orient, and make arrangements, for the joys of daily communion with God.

1. Have a Plan

It was no accident that Jesus rose early. Through the centuries, the general testimony of faithful saints has been that the quiet of the morning is far and away the best time to enjoy focused time with God. One way I think about it is that I want God’s voice, in his word, to be the first voice I hear each day. Most will find out over time that it is worth it to get off your screen the night before, get to bed on time, and get up early to meet with the living God.

A good plan includes not only a time but a place, which I mean in two senses: in the world and in the word.

• In the world means the physical location in which you’ll open your Bible and pray. For me, I want an uncluttered desk or table.
• In the word means a planned place to read in the Bible day after day.

“To know Jesus is to know God. To enjoy him is to enjoy God. To feed your soul on him is to have true life.”

I do not recommend opening the Bible at random, or just bouncing around each day to whatever feels interesting in the moment. That kind of spontaneity will prove crippling, not life-giving. Having some kind of Bible-reading plan helps to bring balance in the long term and clarity about where to go each morning. Find a time-tested reading plan, and take each day’s assigned readings as God’s gift to you that morning for his feeding of your soul.

2. Find the Pace

I suspect many mornings of Bible reading are ruined by rushing and impatience. Modern life can be so hurried. We have endless options of things to do and still just 24 hours in the day. So, we hurry. We hurry through meals, hurry on the roads, hurry to scroll through our feeds, hurry when we read articles and books, often just skimming, because we feel like we’re always running out of time. But hurry ruins Bible reading.

Let your daily season in God’s word be your first stance against the tides of hurry. Slow down when you open the Bible. Find the pace that accords with nourishing your soul for the day. God’s word is not fast food. For me, this means I need enough time to lose track of time. I need to find the pace that frees me to follow rabbit trails and check cross-references and have space to try to understand Scripture in the world of Scripture. What previous and later scriptures sound like this one, or use the same categories and language and terms and images?

3. Remember to Pause

Here I want to highlight the importance of not just reading but meditating. As you read slowly, find some place to pause and linger over some striking truth, some unexpected ray of God’s goodness, some glimpse of his majesty.

In meditation, you pause and ponder a truth, roll it around on the tongue of your soul, seeking to not only understand it but enjoy it, or feel the weight of it. Which leads, then, to addressing God (in prayer) as his word has addressed us and gone deep in us in meditation.

4. Polish with Prayer

Meditation is a bridge between Bible reading and prayer. Instead of doing your Bible reading over here, and then pivoting to pray lists over there, let your Bible reading lead to meditation, and meditation then lead to prayer. My general arc each morning is to (1) begin with Bible, (2) move to meditation, and (3) polish with prayer.

To meet with God is not only to hear his words in the Bible, but also to speak back to him, in response to his word, in prayer. It’s a relationship. We call it communion. First, God speaks in his word, and we listen deeply and take it all the way in through meditation. Then, amazingly, God wants to hear back from us. In Christ, we have his ear. He means for us now, in light of what he says in his word, to address him in praise, thanks, confession, and supplication.

5. Enjoy a Person

Fifth and finally is the person, whose name is Jesus. Meeting with God, in his word, is no mere task or activity. It’s not mainly an exercise in learning. It is meeting with a person, who is not only God but also man like us. To see Jesus — by the Spirit, through the word — is to see the Father. To know him is to know God. To enjoy him is to enjoy God. To feed your soul on him is to have true life.

Bible reading and meditation and prayer are means to an end. They are God’s means of grace to the great end of knowing and enjoying Jesus as the Pearl of Great Price (Matthew 13:45–46), as the great Treasure hidden in a field and found in joy (Matthew 13:44), as the Surpassing Value worth counting all as loss to have (Philippians 3:8).

Your most pressing need is not to master the Bible but to be mastered by God in Christ, through his word, day after day, for a lifetime.