Five Minutes a Day
Who do you talk to every single day?
Verse of the Day
“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”
Today’s Devotional
I read something in a devotional recently that stuck out to me. It pointed out how people who spend a great deal of time together tend to become more and more similar. Which made me think. My husband and I have many more of the same likes and dislikes than we did in the beginning of our marriage. The same is true of my really close friends. Perhaps this is the reason that we are told in 1 Corinthians 15:33 that “Bad company corrupts good character.” If we spend time with people who make ungodly choices, we will likely begin to rationalize making those choices ourselves. God knows this about us. (It’s like He made us, or something…)
As I think about the fact that humans will become like the people they are consistently around, it made me realize the importance of the habit of meditation. The more time I spend with God, the more like Him I may become. In meditation, the hope is that He will do the talking instead of me. And is He talks and I listen, or as we simply spend time in each other’s presence, I will slowly become the person He created me to be.
Think about someone you talk to every single day. For me, that’s my husband. Now think about what that relationship would be like if only one of you ever did any talking. If I spend five minutes every day with my husband but I never gave him the opportunity to speak, it would be a lopsided relationship.
Please hear me: I am not suggesting that we only need to spend five minutes each day with God. I AM suggesting that as a spiritual discipline, spending at least five minutes each day learning to LISTEN to God, meditation is an avenue to make my relationship with God less “all about me”. My guess is that some days our conversations will take longer. Some days it will feel like a necessary “check-in”, which is still valuable simply because the relationship is valuable. Some days one of us will have more words than the Other. Hopefully, some days God will do all the talking and I will be willing and able to listen.
So why am I bringing up meditation as we begin our focus on gratitude? For one simple reason: I feel like God is inviting me to sit with Him with a heart posture of gratitude. Over the next few days and weeks, as we look at the MANY things we have to be grateful for, what if we wrote down our gratitude for that day and then sat quietly before the Lord in a silent offering of thanks? What if we came before Him to “be still and know” that He is God after we have intentionally written or spoken the good things that God has graciously given us?
Let’s choose to meditate on the goodness of God. Let’s intentionally sit quietly before the Giver and learn to appreciate Him as much as we appreciate His good gifts.
Journal Prompts
Answer only the questions that seem relevant to you today.
How do you feel when someone always does all of the talking? Do you do that with God?
How good are you at hearing from God?
Are you willing to take the time today to practice listening to God?
How often do you sit before God in awe and gratitude?