“Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives.
Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery! Replace the evil years with good.
Let us, your servants, see you work again; let our children see your glory.
And may the Lord our God show us his approval and make our efforts successful.
Yes, make our efforts successful!” Psalm 90:14-17 NLT

I need to see God’s unfailing love each morning, and let it replace my many weaknesses so I can do the best I can possibly do that day. Rather than being proud, I need to be humble. Rather than trying to please others, I need to do what’s right. Rather than being lazy, I need to act. Now.

I need to be happy about what I’m going through now, and look forward to what’s to come, rather than let the past and it’s many problems weigh me down. If I let the past dictate the future, my life will go nowhere and at the end of it I’ll wonder why I wasted all my time. I can’t put the future into the same sized box as my past.

And I want to see God work through what he has me do today, to show his approval of it, and to make what I do successful.

For today and for this year, I know I’m going to achieve great things, I’m going to be challenged, and I’m going to have a lot of fun.

Happy new year.

To non-Christians this usually looks like a boring “religious duty”. It’s not boring, but sometimes I feel like it is a duty, because it can be hard to do it. But then when I actually get into it, I wonder why I don’t do it more often!

The days that I start by spending time with God always turn out better than those when I don’t. I feel more awake, more motivated, more confident and more at peace. The days when I don’t, I often end up lazing around and I don’t do all the things I have to do. I’m often more tired, more insecure, and I worry a lot more.

I’d like to say that throughout my Christian life (of the last five years or so) I’ve spent more mornings with God than without Him – but really, although I haven’t kept count, I know it’s the other way around. Looking then, at what I achieve on the ‘good days’ verses the ‘bad days’, I do wonder how much more I could have achieved in the last five years if I had been faithful every morning.

Last week I skipped a couple of days in a row. At the end of those two days, after reflecting on them, I realised that a couple of interactions with people didn’t go very well at all. I let pride get the best of me in a couple of interactions with people that I don’t know very well but will be working with more and more as time goes on – so I can only hope that what was very much a ‘first impression’ won’t stick. Deep down, I have a lot of pride, but on the days when I am connected with God, he often replaces most of it with humility.

Quiet times are incredibly important to me, but as I mentioned, they can be very hard to stick to – to a point where it feels like a duty that you don’t want to do. Bob Gass, in his Word for Today radio segment on 1WAY FM here in Canberra and also on almost every other Christian radio station in Australia, recently did a series of days on ‘Your quiet time with God’. I want to share several things from some of the points he made (out of the hundred or so that could be gleaned from his six short segments).

Bob suggested going to bed early the night before – fantastic idea! Obvious idea too – one so easy to implement, yet so rarely actually implemented. I find myself staying up to the late hours even though I’m incredibly tired, and then waking up tired with no thought or intention whatsoever of saying good morning to God. But, I’ve found when I do get to bed early, and wake up early enough to give myself time to spend time with God without rushing it, time to get ready, and time to get to wherever I have to be on time, I feel a whole lot better – and less rushed.

This takes discipline – which some of the time I’m pretty good at, but certainly not all the time. Bob also says that ‘the devil will exaggerate how tired you are’. That’s something to remember on the mornings when you wake up after having been to bed late the night before. Of course you’re tired, but there’s someone who doesn’t want you to start the morning right, and he’ll exaggerate that to try to put you off course. Bob refers to Dr Robert G Lee – “if you wake up in the morning and don’t meet the devil face on, it means you’re headed in the same direction!” I find that all this needs is some effort to say “No, I’m going to meet with God anyway” and to realise that you’re probably not as tired as you seem. Ask God for the strength.

It can be easy to be sceptical and say “the devil isn’t making me tired, I really am tired”. That could be true. But simply denying that the devil is actively working against you isn’t going to get you anywhere – you need to realise that the enemy really does exist before you can start to fight him. How about the fact that when you start a quiet time you suddenly “remember” all the things you need to do? The garbage needs to go out, you have to remember to call someone today, you can’t forget to take your lunch in the fridge…. Bob gave a very useful tip: use a memo pad, write down these things that you suddenly “remember”, then forget them and go back to your quiet time. Afterwards, peruse the list and do what you have to do.

Bob’s segments were full of practical tips. For a three minute per day radio segment it’s amazing what he can fit in! “Get up as soon as you wake up” was another one. Again, it seems obvious, but unfortunately it has to be said! If you don’t even think about getting up, and just do it, then that’s that battle already won! The night before, Bob also suggests, leave your Bible open at the passage you intend to read. Go to bed with thoughts of God – “see you in the morning”. Don’t make an exception for any reason. Don’t be distracted by work, tensions with others, tiredness, noises, or those things that you just can’t forget. If you really cannot focus, have a shower or do some exercise to wake yourself up first! But don’t let that push you off into your morning routine of “getting ready” without going back to God first.

And finally, don’t guilt trip if you miss a day – Bob says “if you miss a meal you don’t give up eating – you just eat a little more for the next meal!”

There is alot more in Bob’s segments than what I have mentioned here. For more, see The Word For Today, written by Bob & Debby Gass, for the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th of October 2007. I’ve heard alot of the typical ‘quiet time’ tips before, but lots of these were new things – new things which I’m putting into practice, and which are really helping me start my day with – and thus follow throughout my day – God’s direction.

Leslie spoke of God’s will, and how it certainly differs for each and every one of us. Most of us also never carry out his perfect will for our lives, because we simply decide not to – either blatantly or by thinking we’re doing the right thing when we’re really not fully seeking Him. God does work through this though, and still builds a will for our lives despite our non-compliance with the way he would have liked to have had it.

The bulk of Leslie’s talk, however, focussed on God’s general will for our lives. God’s specific will can only be fully uncovered when we start following His general will.

So, what is it?

It’s written throughout the Bible. As someone who grew up in a Christian family, I knew most of this in the back of my mind already. But was I doing it? No. Leslie’s talk gave me the further knowledge and prompting I needed to start trying to do His general will and through that, seek His specific will for me.

Following is a list of verses that I wrote down from the talk:

• 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5
• 1 Thessalonians 5:17-22
• 1 Timothy 2:1-4
• 1 Peter 2:13-15
• Matthew 5:44
• Matthew 18:21-22
• Psalm 66:18
• Proverbs 18:19
• Luke 17:1-2
• Malachi 3:8-11

Each of these says something about what God expects each of us to do. Some of it is easy to follow, and some of it isn’t. There’s certainly some things I can put some effort into improving on! If you think God may be wanting to reveal to you more of His specific will for your life, have a read of these verses and see what you can do to follow His general will first.