“God, are you avoiding me? Where are you when I need you?” (Psalm 10:1 MSG)We all hit walls at times in our relationship with God. They’re simply a part of the package. Even David, whom the Lord calls “a man after God’s own heart” had times when God seemed very distant. David once prayed to God, “God, are you avoiding me? Where are you when I need you?” (Psalm 10:1 MSG)

Yesterday, I started sharing about the four major problems that tend to derail our time alone with God. I started with the problem of discipline. Today, we’ll look at theproblem of dry spells. I call this one the “battle of the blahs”!

We simply can’t judge our quiet times by emotions. Why? Emotions lie. Feelings come and go. Some days it’ll feel like heaven just opened up for you, and you have a great time with God. Then there are other days your quiet time will seem ordinary and bland. Don't expect to have great and glorious experiences every single morning. The issue is consistency.

Yet, if you are having a long period of dryness in your quiet time, you might look at one of these possible causes:

• Unconfessed Sin: God isn’t going to show you anything new until you do what he has already shown you.
• Physically Unprepared: If you’re tired or stressed, it can be hard to have a fresh quiet time.
• Trying Too Much: Pick chunks of Scripture that are too large, and you’ll rush your time with God. You never want to put yourself in a situation where you hurry God.
• Routine: If you do the same thing every time, your quiet time will turn legalistic. Experiment with some fresh ideas. Mix up your quiet time.
• Not Sharing Your Insights: If you’re not putting into practice what God is teaching you, your spiritual life is bound to grow stale.

Spiritual dryness may be common, but it doesn’t have to be incurable. Ask God where your dryness comes from, and let him help you turn things around.

Talk About It

• How can you better prepare for your quiet time so that you are not tired or stressed when you are trying to focus on God’s Word?

• What are some of the methods or ideas that you’ve learned from the last week of these devotionals that might help you mix things up in your quiet time?

"For lack of discipline they will die, led astray by their own great folly." (Proverbs 5:23 NIV)How have you been doing with your quiet time? If you’re like most people, you struggle with making time for a quiet time. That’s normal. As soon as you start trying to build the habit of a quiet time into your life, you’ll encounter all kinds of roadblocks. Satan will fight you to keep you from meeting with the Lord daily. In fact, there are four very common roadblocks to having a consistent quiet time. Over the next few devotionals, I’ll share with you a different roadblock each day and a few ways you can overcome the roadblock.

By far, the most common roadblock that Satan puts in our way is the problem of discipline. I call this the battle of the blankets! To win the battle of the blankets, you have to get out of bed in the morning even though you’re tired. That’s not easy! The devil will exaggerate how tired you are. This lack of discipline can have disastrous effects. The Bible says in Proverbs, “For lack of discipline they will die, led astray by their own great folly” (Proverbs 5:23 NIV). To overcome the battle of the blankets:

• Get up immediately! The battle is won or lost in the first few minutes.
• Be aware of time robbers. For you, these could be surfing the Web or watching TV — whatever you’re doing instead of your quiet time.
• Go to bed with Scripture on your mind. Read a piece of Scripture you read in the morning so that you go to bed and wake up with God’s Word on your mind.

You can do this! Tomorrow morning you can win the battle of the blankets!

Talk About It

• What are the time robbers that Satan is using to distract you from your quiet time with God? What adjustments will you make today to give that time to God?

• Consider ways to keep Scripture on your mind, like writing verses on an index card and taping it to your bathroom mirror.

“But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.” (James 1:22 NLT)As I’ve taught over the last few weeks, Christian meditation means thinking about Scripture. You meditate on Scripture in the same way a cow chews her cud: by chewing on it and chewing on it and chewing on it.

The “probe-it” method of Bible study is a great way to do that. When you use that method, you probe the text with questions, almost like a jackhammer. To help you do that, I’ll share with you one of the strangest acrostics I’ve ever used: SPACEPETS. Each letter in the phrase is the first letter of a key word of a question you ask of God’s Word.

1. Is there a SIN to confess? Does God’s Word make me aware of something I need to make right with God?
2. Is there a PROMISE to claim? There are more than 7,000 promises in God’s Word. Ask yourself if the passage you’ve read contains a universal promise. Ask whether you’ve met all the conditions of the promise. Every promise has a premise!
3. Is there an ATTITUDE to change? Is there something about which I need to think differently? Do I need to work on a negative attitude, worry, guilt, fear, loneliness, bitterness, pride, apathy, or ego?
4. Is there a COMMAND to obey? Is there a command I need to obey no matter how I feel?
5. Is there an EXAMPLE to follow? Are there positive examples to follow or negative examples to avoid?
6. Is there a PRAYER to pray? Paul, David, Solomon, Elijah, and Isaiah, among others, pray in the Bible. You can use their prayers and know that they’ll be answered because they’re in the Bible and in God’s will.
7. Is there an ERROR to avoid? It’s wise to learn from experience, and it’s even wiser to learn from the experience of others! We don’t have time to make all the mistakes ourselves. So what can I learn from the mistakes of those in Scripture?
8. Is there a TRUTH to believe? Often, we’ll read something in Scripture that we can’t do anything about. We simply have to believe what it says about God the Father, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the past, the future, Heaven, Hell, or other topics in the Bible.
9. Is there SOMETHING for which to praise God? You can always find something in a passage you can be grateful to God for, like something God has done or protected you from.

Every question in this list has a verb in it. There is something you can do associated with them. Write them in your Bible or put them on a note card you keep with your Bible. They’ll help you be “doers of the Word” every time you meditate on the Bible.

Talk About It

• After reading about the probe-it method, go back to the Scripture you read yesterday for your quiet time and apply this method to that passage. What new truths do you discover?

• What promise from God are you leaning on today?

“I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit.” (Ephesians 3:16 NLT)

Applying Scripture to our lives isn’t easy. If it were easy, more people would be doing it. Most people who read the Bible don’t really apply what they read to their lives. Why?

It’s hard work! But what makes applying God’s Word so hard? Here are three reasons it’s hard for you and me to apply Scripture to our lives.

• Application requires serious thought. It takes long periods of concentrated prayer and thought before you can apply the Scripture you’re learning. You won’t always understand the application immediately. You have to think about what you’ve read. You have to meditate on it. That takes time most people often don’t want to give.
• Satan fights application. He fights it viciously. The devil's strongest attacks are going to come in your quiet time when you’re trying to apply what you've studied. Satan knows that as long as you’re content with merely hearing the Word or reading the Word, you are not much of a threat to his plans. But as soon as you get serious about making changes in your life, he's going to fight you tooth and nail because he hates doers of the Word.
• We naturally resist change.  It’s human nature; no one likes to change. But that’s God’s main purpose with his Word. He wants it to change our lives. He wants to make us more like Jesus. The key to making us more like Jesus is applying God’s Word. That’s why most churches focus on interpreting Scripture and learning about the Bible’s background. Most people are happy to do that. You can learn all about the people of the Bible, the background of the Bible, and the doctrines of the Bible, and still live carnally. We’re happy to apply God’s Word to other people, but we don’t like doing it to ourselves.

We grow spiritually and become mature Christians by applying God’s Word to our lives. You and I need to ask the Holy Spirit to give us the strength, because we don't have the strength on our own to obey. The Bible calls us to ask God to empower us through his Spirit: “I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit” (Ephesians 3:16 NLT). These obstacles will get in our way every time in our own power. But God has “unlimited resources” to help us apply his Word to our lives. We just have to ask him.

Talk About It

• What are the distractions today that are keeping you from deeper meditation on God’s Word?

• When you pray for strength, God may use people in your life to provide the support you need. Do you have people in your life with whom you share your struggles and who will hold you accountable to grow spiritually?

"Does the LORD really want sacrifices and offerings? No! He doesn't want your sacrifices. He wants you to obey him.” (1 Samuel 15:22b CEV)

If you aren’t experienced in applying God’s Word to your life, you might be frustrated. How do you do it? Today I want to give you three questions you can ask of any passage that will help you apply the Bible to your life. Here are the three questions:

• What did this Scripture mean when it was written?
• What is the timeless truth behind what God is saying?
• How does it apply now to me?

We call this the application bridge. We’re building a bridge between the world of the Bible and our world. Let’s try to build this bridge when applying what Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 8 about eating the food sacrificed to idols. Read 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, and then ask yourself the questions above.

1. What did this Scripture mean when it was written? There were people in the church of Corinth who knew that idols meant nothing and the food offered to them had no magic power. It was just hamburger or a good steak. There was no harm in eating it because the idols to which they were sacrificed weren't real. So this group would eat freely but with no regard to what other people might think. Yet there were also new believers who were offended by that practice. They didn’t think that believers should eat food sacrificed to gods of other religions. Paul tells the mature believers not to allow their freedom in Christ to offend their brothers.

2. What is the timeless truth behind what God is saying? Don't use your freedom in Christ to offend others. Freedom must be used in love.

3. How does it apply to me now? It's not very common to come into contact with food being offered to idols where I live in Southern California. I’m guessing it doesn’t happen in your area either. So does that mean it’s irrelevant for us? Of course not! If the timeless truth is: “Don’t use your freedom to offend others. Freedom must be used in love,” I need to be sensitive to people around me, because that’s how you demonstrate love. Ask yourself, “Lord, is there anything I'm doing out of selfishness, arrogance, or deliberate insensitivity to other people that could be causing a fellow brother or sister to stumble? Am I being puffed up by my own knowledge of freedom, or am I building up others in love?”

Talk About It

• Think of a Bible story with which you have been familiar for a while. When you re-read the passage and use the three questions above, what new truths or applications do you discover about the story?

• Do you believe that God intended for you to use the Bible as a guide for life? Do you believe that its truths are timeless, that the messages and applications are still relevant today?

“Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” (Matthew 7:24 NIV)Did you know studying the Bible can be dangerous? In fact, the results of Bible study could
be disastrous.

Sounds strange, I know. But God intended for us to apply the Bible to our lives, not just read
it. The Bible is about transformation, not just information. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matthew 7:24, NIV). Applying God’s Word is vitally important.

So why is it important that we apply God’s Word to our lives?

• Knowledge produces pride if we don’t apply truth to our lives. 1 Corinthians 8:1 says, “Knowledge puffs up but love builds up” (NIV). We’ve all seen people who know the Bible backward and forward, but they’ve never let it seep into their lives. They use the Bible has a hammer to pound on other people. We can be the most cantankerous, evil, mean-spirited, cranky, critical, judgmental people we’ll ever meet — if we never take the extra step and apply the Bible to our lives.
  
  Knowledge without application produces pride. It’ll “puff” you up without a love-based application. It’ll cause harm, not help.
• Knowledge requires action. James 1:22 says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (NIV). What a person knows should find expression in what he or she does. We’re deceiving ourselves if we think we're growing simply by taking notes on a Bible study. God's commands are not optional.
• Knowledge increases responsibility.  James 4:17 says,” Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it” (NLT). With a deeper knowledge of Scripture comes a stronger judgment if we fail to apply what God shows us. When we start studying the Bible, God begins to show us areas of our lives that need to be changed, and he calls us to greater and greater responsibility as he does that.

Talk About It

• What do you do with your sermon notes once you leave church or with your Bible study notes once your quiet time is finished?

• Think about your words and actions of the last hour. Do they reflect what God has been teaching you lately from his Word?

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us ...” (John  1:14a NIV)A few days ago I shared a method of Bible meditation that requires very few tools, the pronounce-it method of Bible meditation. You can do it with just a pencil or pen and a Bible. 

Today’s method is equally simple. You only need a Bible, pencil, and some creativity.

The picture-it method of Bible meditation is useful because the Bible is full of stories. In this method, you put yourself into the scene of a biblical story as if you’re an active participant. Then you ask yourself, “How would I feel if I were involved in this situation? What would I say? What would I do?”

When you do this, God’s Word becomes “flesh” in your life, and it’ll change your life.

Let’s try one example: the story in Mark 2 about the four guys who help their paralyzed friend get to Jesus. The man can’t get to Jesus on his own. The four friends put the man on a mat, each of them take a corner, and they carry the man to Jesus. When the men get to the house where Jesus is, it’s too crowded. They can’t get in, but they’re pretty resourceful.

They climb up on the roof of the house, tear the tiles off, and lower their paralyzed friend down through the roof. Then, Jesus heals their friend.

This is a passage you could easily picture in your time of Scripture meditation. Picture yourself as the man on the mat. Imagine yourself looking up at the crowded room after your friends have led you down through the roof. Dust is still coming down. Imagine yourself looking at the four faces of the friends who’ve been helping you. What expressions do you see on their faces? Ponder that a bit.

Then imagine looking into Jesus' eyes as you've just interrupted him. But instead of him being angry, he's looking lovingly at you. He already knew you were going to show up because he's God. What are you thinking as he looks at you? What's the crowd thinking? What are you thinking as Jesus says, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home” (Mark 2:11).

Now apply the Scripture to your life. That’s the whole point of picturing the passage. Are you paralyzed by something — like fear, doubt, or stress — and you can’t get to Jesus on your own? You’ve put yourself in the shoes of the paralyzed man in the story. Maybe you need to realize that Jesus wants to heal you, too. He wants you to get up and walk again. Maybe you, too, need to ask some friends to carry you to Jesus.

That’s a truth you can apply today — all because you stepped into the words of Scripture and let it become “flesh” in your life. You can do this with any character in the story or any story in the Bible.

It’ll change how you read your Bible.

Talk About It

• Do you see Scripture as “stories” or just “text”?

• Consider your favorite childhood Bible stories. Were they more real to you because your imagination created memorable images of the story? How do you apply the truth of those stories to your life today?

“The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.” (Proverbs 21:5 ESV)Having a quiet time is like many other activities you might do in life — in at least one respect. To be successful, it helps to have a plan. The Bible says, “The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty” (Proverbs 21:5, ESV).

If you’ve never had a quiet time before, you may not have a good, simple plan for doing one. Simplicity is important with any plan you develop. If you make it complicated, you’re more likely to get off track. All you really need for an effective quiet time is a Bible, notebook, and maybe a hymn or songbook.

So what does a daily quiet time look like?

First, be quiet before the Lord. The Bible calls it waiting on God. You start by simply sitting down and shutting up. As you do this, you’ll find yourself revving your engine down and calming yourself. 

Second, pray briefly. Start off with a short opening prayer. Ask God to open your mind and guide you. Ask him to cleanse your mind.

Read a portion of Scripture slowly. This is where your conversation with God begins. He starts speaking to you through his Word, and then you speak back to him through prayer. Read the Bible slowly. Don’t try to read too quickly or too much. The more slowly you read Scripture, the more you’re forced to think about what you’re reading.

Meditate on the Word. Spend some time chewing on what God is saying. Chew on the Word like cows chew on cud. Ponder and wrestle with it in your mind. There are lots of great methods for meditating on the Word. You can find specific ideas on how to meditate on the Bible in my book Rick Warren’s Bible Study Methods.

Write down what you discover. When God speaks to you through his Word, care enough about what he is saying to write it down. Writing enables us to remember what God has said to us and record our discoveries.

Pray again. Be quiet. Ask God to show you his Word. Talk to God about what he has said to you. Tell him what you’re thinking about what he is saying. Talk to him about anything else that’s on your mind.

There’s not just one way to have a quiet time, but following a plan similar to this can get you started on a rewarding devotional journey.

Talk About It

• Have you ever thought about your quiet time as an intimate conversation with God?

• What distractions do you need to eliminate in order to “be quiet”?

“The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7b NIV)You can have a quiet time anywhere, but it all starts with a great attitude. God wants to know that your heart is in the right place. The Bible says in 1 Samuel 16:7, “The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7, NIV).

What is the right attitude to have during your quiet time?

1. Come with expectancy. Be eager to come before God’s presence. You’re meeting with God — the creator of the universe! You should expect to have a good time of fellowship with him and receive a blessing.

2.  Come with reverence. You’re going to meet God, so don’t rush into his presence. Prepare your heart by being still before him. If you were going to meet with the president of the United States or the queen of England, you’d get there early. You'd look your best. How much more reverence should we have when we come into the presence of the creator of the universe?

3. Come with alertness. Get yourself wide-awake before you meet with God. Again, you’re meeting the creator of the universe. Don’t have your quiet time in bed. You’ll probably fall asleep. In fact, the best time to prepare for your quiet time is the night before. Go to bed 15 minutes earlier if you need to. Be in good shape when you meet with God. He deserves your full attention.

4. Come with the willingness to obey. Don’t start your quiet time with the idea that you’ll hear from God and then decide whether or not to obey. Instead, tell the Lord you’ve already decided you’re going to say “yes.”

Have a good attitude before you start your quiet time, and you can expect a good result from your quiet time. Come before the Lord with the wrong attitude, and it’ll be just the opposite.

Talk About It

• What specific ways will you change the way you do your quiet time once you consider your attitude toward your time with God?

• How do you think your attitude would change if you had a sense of expectation about what God is going to do in your heart during your quiet time and not if he will work in you?

“You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” (Psalm 16:11 NLT)I mentioned yesterday that it’s quite a privilege to have a quiet time. We get to have an audience with the king of the universe, the creator of everything.

What makes our quiet times such a privilege that we wouldn’t want to consider missing it? Here are four miraculous things that happen when we spend time with God.

1. You get to give God your devotion. “Look at me. I stand at the door. I knock. If you hear me call and open the door, I'll come right in and sit down to supper with you” (Revelation 3:20, MSG). He’s your creator, redeemer, provider, sustainer, counselor, and comforter. God deserves our worship. We’d have nothing without God. Better yet, God wants your devotion, too! He wants to spend time with you.

2. God gives you direction. “Show me your ways, LORD, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long” (Psalm 25:4-5 NIV). You and I need direction on a daily basis. God wants to give that direction to you, but to get the direction you must spend time with him. Your quiet time gives you an opportunity to get a daily mid-course correction in your life.

3. You gain delight in God. “You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand” (Psalm 16:11 NLT). Spending time with God will actually make you happier. Your quiet time is when you enjoy God. Knowing God is the secret to joy.

4. You grow to be more like God. The more time you spend with God, the godlier you become. Spend time watching television, and your character will be shaped by the people you’re watching. Spend time studying God’s Word and with him in prayer, and your character will be shaped by the character of Christ.

Are you spending time with God every day? Do it, and it will be the best decision you’ve ever made.

Talk About It

• In what area will you ask God for direction today?

• Have you noticed that your day goes differently if you start it in the Word and in a quiet time with God?