Hey friends! Today’s episode is the last part of your spiritual checkup, all about how time plays a vital role in your relationship with God. What does it look like when we spend quality time with God vs just time with God?
Welcome to a community of women who strive to Let Him In.
You are listening to episode 6, titled Your Spiritual Checkup, Part Four
Hey you guys! This is Kelsie Millet and I am your host here on the Let Him In Podcast, where
my intent is to have these episodes full of thoughts, impressions and ways for you to easily let God into your every day.
Today we are wrapping up your spiritual checkup where we have been diving into different parts of our relationship with God and giving them a quick evaluation.
The topic for today is time. If you are familiar with the 7 love languages you will know that time is one of the most common ones for people. To me this is no surprise because it only makes sense that time needs to be spent with someone in order for that relationship to grow.
As I was thinking about this topic I brought it up with my husband and as we were chatting he made such a good point. He always likes to reference our own relationship with our kids and then relate it to our relationship with God, which always makes so much sense to me.
So while we were chatting he brought up how we spend a lot of time with our kids, specifically me. I have super young kids so we all obviously live together and most of them are home all day with me and night and all the things. So yes, we spend a lot of time together. BUT what Erick, my husband brought up and asked me was, how much of that time is intentional quality time vs. just being in the same room together.
My two oldest kids are 8 and 6 and they have come to absolutely love cooking and baking. It has been such a blast. It is by far my favorite thing to do with them. It’s hands on, and we turn on music and it is always a good time.
I think of that type of situation versus having my same two kids sitting at the table working on homework while I am cleaning up in the kitchen. We are the same people, maybe spending the same amount of time as we would cooking, we are in the same room. But it is a night and day difference of how we are using that time and how that is growing or not growing our relationship. Right?
It was such an aha moment for me to think about this in the context of our relationship with our Heavenly Father. I mean, how much time are we maybe in the same room as God vs. How much time are we spending with Him, that is quality time.
I am just picturing the experience of being in church while really not being in church. I mean this kind of just comes with having little kids. You are sitting on the bench, trying to listen to the speaker, but kids are fighting. Cereal is spilled everywhere, everyone wants the same crayon. Can you relate to this?
I want to make it clear that the effort of showing up and at least being in the same room as Him, is that worth continuing. 100% YES. But, how different is that type of experience versus when we decide to wake up early and spend 10 intentional quality minutes with God uninterrupted? These small moments add up. It might only be two minutes in the car before your kids hop in from school. And then maybe it’s another 5 minutes you get when you lay in bed at night before going to sleep. Whatever it looks like for you and however many minutes it may or may not be to me I truly believe doesn’t matter. It’s not necessarily how much time, but the quality of time during those minutes.
“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). In the part one episode of Your Spiritual Checkup, I referenced this image of Christ standing at the door, with no door knob, and I had to bring it up again because to me it so cleary shows how God and our Savior are always right there. They are willing, and wanting to be a part of each our lives. But it is our job to decide to let them in. That is our own free agency and it is a choice that we each individually have to make every single day.
We have to decide that we want to Let Him In. That we want to give up 5 minutes of scrolling on our phones before bed to instead have 5 minutes of time with our Heavenly Father to talk about our day. Or to quickly write a gratitude list and thank God for our blessings.
This quality time I think looks different for all of us, just like quality time looks different in our own earthy relationships. But, at the end of the day I really don’t think it matters what that quality time looks like as long as it is there. Intentionally there and with intentional purpose.
You guys I know that as we add this quality time into our day no matter what the quantity looks like, our Heavenly Father is going to draw closer to us.
Ok, that is all I have. To wrap up this spiritual checkup I just want to say that I know by focusing and strengthening these 4 different areas communication, love, service, and time, we will strengthen our relationship with God. And not just strengthen our relationship, but it will also help us in getting to know him better. How can we hear Him if we don’t know Him, or recognize Him?
I want to bring up one last point. I know there are always things that we can do to improve and be better. And sometimes that list can get long and overwhelming really fast. So over the last 4 days as we have done this little mini evaluation on your relationship with God. I really hope that you take a minute and only focus on what you need at this moment, and come back for the rest.
We have time to grow, and we don’t need to rush and feel like we have to do and improve and change everything this second. I feel like its during those times that we add a whole bunch of new changes and habits to our day that we can get buried really quickly.
There is a quote by Yung Pueblo that say-
Next time you feel agitated because you are falling back into past patterns, remember that simply being aware that you are repeating the past is a sign of progress.
Today’s Thought is: In which area of my relationship with God am I going to focus on now? Communication, Love, Service, or time.
If you enjoyed going through this spiritual checkup or have been inspired by anything in the podcast so far, would you do me a favor and write me a review and leave a rating? By you doing this it truly helps in getting the podcast out there and having it easier for others to find and enjoy.
I love you guys.
Leaving you today with hopefully a little more stillness, an open mind and a desire to connect with God.
Talks Referenced:
https://gewatkins.net/sermon-on-spiritual-growth-spiritual-growth-is-a-choice/
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