How Do We Spend Time With God?

Hey, Dr. James Spencer here. Today I want to share a special episode of Another Life Audio podcast with you. This show, March or Die, seeks to spread light on the toughest questions about faith. The host of the show, Jeremy, is a veteran, accomplished author, and CEO of the Mighty Oaks Foundation who uses his platform to dive into the what, why, and how of connecting with God, bringing fresh perspectives to Christian living. Tune in and march forward in faith. If you like what you hear, be sure to check out today's show notes and subscribe to March or Die on your favorite podcast app. Hello and welcome to the March or Die show today. Very glad to have you joining me. Looking forward to a great episode. Today I'm going to talk about something that may seem a little different than what I typically discuss on this show, but I assure you that today's conversation and really the direction that we're going to go for the next several minutes together is exactly where we need to be. When we talk about the difference between staying where we are and dying and marching. Again, if you listen to this show, you know that what I spend most of my time talking about is how we can move forward. When the world throws its trials and its traumas and its difficulties and its obstacles our direction, how do we continue to move forward? There are so many people, as I've said so often, that prefer to just stay where they are and die. They give up. They know what they're supposed to do. They understand that. But it's just too hard for one reason or another. Maybe they've been at this for a long time. Maybe the obstacle in front of them just seems too big. Whatever the case, they decide that although they'll continue breathing oxygen and they'll continue going to their job and doing the stuff that they are supposed to do, in spite of that, they know that in any meaningful way, in any real way, they are spiritually and emotionally and relationally dead. They're not moving forward. And as we discuss the better decision, the decision that's better than staying where you are, waving the white flag, kicking it into neutral, the better decision is to take the next step, putting one foot in front of the other and continuing to move forward. The question that must be answered, however, in all of that, the question that must be answered is how do I know if I'm moving the right direction? How do I know if I'm doing the right thing? How do I know that when I push beyond this trauma, this trial, this difficulty, this life situation, this obstacle, how do I know that I'm moving to the place that I really should be, that I'm going the direction that I should go? How do I know? I've addressed this many times in the past, but I want to really bear down on it today. We need to understand what it is that God wants us to do. The only way to know if we're going the right direction, truly, is to know that we're going the direction that God has set before us. I've talked about this a lot, but I want to spend a few minutes today talking about how we can spend time with God. What does it mean to spend time with God? Because truly, if we are going to know His heart and understand what He wants for us, we have to spend time with Him. And some of that is understanding why, understanding what that looks like. But then the other part of that, beyond knowing why we should spend time with Him and what that looks like, is knowing how we can do that on a daily, ongoing basis. And I want to spend some time there today. I believe, let me just say it this way, instead of I believe, I have experienced in my own life, that if I know what God wants me to do and I really believe that I'm where God wants me to be doing what God wants me to do, it doesn't really matter what the obstacles or the trials or the difficulties are as they pop up. That's life. Things happen. They're difficult. No one wants to deal with that stuff that's in front of us. But if I know I'm doing what God wants me to do, then I will take the next step. I'll do the hard thing, whatever the hard thing is. I'll keep pushing forward. I'll keep pursuing God, as Hebrews chapter 12 tells us, looking to Jesus, pursuing Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. We're walking after Him. The book of 1 Peter tells us that we are to follow in His steps. I'll continue doing that in spite of what's in front of me if I know I'm where I'm supposed to be. What gets in my head is this question, am I doing what I'm supposed to do? Am I where God wants me to be? You know what fixes that? What allows us to work through that is having an ongoing relationship with God, spending time with God. And we're going to talk about that in just a moment. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. All right, so to the topic at hand, how do we spend time with God? What does it mean to spend time with God? What does that look like? I want to talk through this and again, this is maybe not new information to you, but it is something that from time to time we need to be reminded of. Maybe you're a Christian. You accepted Christ, but you've never had a daily time or a habit of spending time with God. Maybe you once did but have gotten away from that. Wherever you are, I hope that this will be a reminder to you if it needs to be a reminder, first time you've heard this, that this will be an introduction to you and that you will engage with God on a personal level. It's one thing to know about Him. It's another thing entirely to know Him and to have an ongoing relationship with Him. I won't spend a lot of time on this as we jump into this, but understand that all of this begins first with having a relationship with God, understanding that you are sinful, that that sin creates a chasm, a gap between you and God. You can't have a relationship with God because of your sin. But God made it possible through Jesus who left heaven, came to earth, died on the cross in our place, paid the price for our sin. And the Bible says that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved as we put our faith, our hope, and our confidence in Him. We will have our sins eternally forgiven and that we are united in that relationship with God because of Christ. That's the starting point. So before we get into any of the rest of this, that is the starting point. Now beyond that, having an eternal relationship with God, how do we spend time with God? I want to start with answering the question, why? Why should we care? There are so many reasons, but I will focus on just a couple. Why should we spend time with God? The book of Revelation chapter 4 and verse 11 tells us that we were created for His glory. We were created for the glory of God. I've been through this over several podcasts. I've written about this on my blog, but the Bible tells us that whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we should do all to the glory of God. Our entire life should be wrapped up in reflecting the goodness of God and giving glory to God. Everything you should do or do, everything you are about should be a reflection of God. This is one of the areas that we struggle so much. What should I do? How should I live? Again, I've talked about this a lot. I'm not going to go back over the last couple of weeks of podcasts. I've talked about this a lot, but your life should be wrapped up in honoring God, ascribing value or worth to God. That's what worship is. That's where we should live. So that's point number one. Why? Well, because you were created to give glory to God. You were created to honor God. Therefore, number two, how can you fulfill your God-given purpose of glorifying Him and worshiping Him and honoring Him? How can you do number one if you are not intimately acquainted with Him? If you are not spending time daily with Him? If you don't know His heart and mind and His will for your life, how can you possibly honor Him whether you eat or drink or whatsoever you do? We somehow disconnect the various parts of our lives. We believe, although we may not say it, that there is a worship part. There is a spiritual part. There's a God part. Maybe that happens on Sunday or that happens in your small group through your church or some other time.

There is that, but then there's the rest of me. If the rest of you is not connected to the worship part, the spiritual part, then just understand that you're spending a lot of time, the rest of you, doing things that are not connected to your God-given purpose. Why? Well, because a relationship with God allows you to know Him so that you can then know how to live out your created purpose. Jesus was speaking to His disciples and in the book of John chapter 15, He said this, there's an analogy there, and He says a lot of things, but He talks about a vine, and He talks about how the vine dresser will remove the unproductive fruit and the unproductive vines, and how we should be connected to the vine. He then says this, you need to abide in me, abide in me, and I in you. That imagery there, and I'd encourage you to go and take a look at it, but that imagery there, abide in me in the context of the greater conversation about the vine and the branches. It means that we are to be with Him, to have a relationship where we abide, that means we are in relationship, we are with them, we are there, we are present. You could picture it this way, an abiding relationship is when two people are walking next to each other. People, particularly in the Christian world, like to use that phrase, doing life together, do life together. We need people to do life with us, to do life together. That's what an abiding relationship is. It's doing life together. It's not separating your spiritual from your secular or your Sunday from your every day. It's understanding that every day is about spending time with God, your creator. That's the command, abide in me. The Apostle Paul said it this way, he said that I may know Him, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering being made conformable unto His death, that I may know Him. Paul could have claimed any number of successes in his life, but as you come to the Apostle Paul in Philippians chapter 3 and chapter 4 and in his letter to Timothy, and he's coming to the end of his life, he's looking at his life, he's considering everything that's been done, and he says, look, I just want to be faithful. I want to know Him. I want to live a life that honors Him. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. So why? Well, because you cannot fulfill your God-given purpose if you are not first connected to Him. How can you know how to live for Him and reflect Him and worship Him and glorify Him if you're not spending time with Him? I'll move on to point number two here in just a second, but it's really easy to know if you're truly spending time with God. I'm going to talk about a devotional life here in just a second and talk about what that means, what that looks like, but there are different ways to spend time with God. Again, I'm going to break those down for you. But spending time with God isn't just a quick check-in in the morning. The Apostle Paul, he used this phrase, pray without ceasing. What does that mean, to pray without ceasing? Again, it's having an ongoing conversation, an ongoing conversation. I heard someone describe this one time as a husband and wife standing in the kitchen and she is, the wife is cooking some things and the husband's standing at the sink cleaning the dishes that she's using. And while they're doing that, they're busy. Their hands are busy. They're working. But while they're doing that, they're also talking about their day and talking about their kids and maybe talking about the future a little bit. That's pray without ceasing. That's having an abiding relationship. You're doing your work. You're doing the things that you're involved in, but your mind and your heart is ever toward your relationship with God. That's the why. What does this look like? So this is the second part. So we answer the why. That's how we can know how to fulfill our God-given purpose. What does this look like? This is where we can get really weird and overly spiritual, if that's possible. We spiritualize everything and we create, I don't know what it is about humans. We like religious process and we like religion. We like the act of adoration and so forth to God. And the Bible talks about religion. There's a place for habit, for sure. And I think habit is a big part of this. But this can look a lot of different ways. What does this look like? Well, number one, it looks like time. It looks like time. I said it's easy to know if you are walking with God or spending time with God. How do I do that? Well, evaluate your time. Evaluate your day. What were you into all day long? Again, you can be a mechanic or a police officer or a school teacher or whatever. You can do your job, but as you're doing your job, are you spending time with God? Are you having those moments of prayer? God, help me here. God, show me what to do here. God, thank you for this thing or this person. Is it an ongoing relationship, an ongoing time with God? Is that happening? Time. Did you spend a few minutes in the morning reading your Bible and praying and then walk away from that to do it again tomorrow? Or was that the starting point of a day where your heart and your mind are toward God? Time. Here's a question. How much time do you spend on entertainment versus spending understanding God and reading His word and in prayer and doing the things that we need to do as Christians to know Him and to understand Him? Where is your time spent? Now, be honest about this. And again, there's nothing wrong with recreation. There's nothing wrong with rest. There's nothing wrong with any of those things. This doesn't mean that every spare minute of your day, you need to be reading your Bible app. That's not what I'm saying. Although that could be helpful. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is look at your time. How are you using your time? How are you allocating your time? Spending time with God. This is not unlike other relationships. Spending time with God. This is prayer. Prayer is us speaking to God. It's us expressing our heart to God. I did a whole episode on prayer. You can go back and find that. I did a whole episode on prayer because it's so important. It's so necessary for us to express our heart to God. But even though we're expressing our heart to God, what's really happening there as we express our heart is we're asking God, God, help my heart, my will to be aligned to you. God, this is what I'm going through, what I'm dealing with, what I'm struggling with, what I'm thinking about, what I'm into, where I need wisdom. Take my heart. Take my mind. Take these situations and align them to your will. It's time. It's prayer. It's scripture. If prayer is us talking to God or speaking to God, scripture is God speaking to us. Every word in the Bible is true and is given to us by God. The Bible says of itself that it was God-breathed, Holy Spirit-breathed. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable, we're told in Paul's writing to Timothy. We spend time in the word of God because that's where we learn of God and understand exactly what he would desire for us to do. It's no wonder that in Romans chapter 10, we're told that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. As we read God's word and we understand God's promises and we understand God's will and his desire, what is good and what is bad and what he desires for us, our faith is built when our confidence is in his word, that what he said is true, that what he said he will do, he will indeed do. Our confidence is in God's word. So spending time with God is impossible if we're not listening to him speak. If you're married, try telling your spouse that you're spending time with them, even though you're not listening to them. One of the biggest arguments in every marriage is you're sitting in the room with me, but you're not paying attention to me. Tell your kids that you're not neglecting them when you would rather do anything other than listen to them talk. If you have teenage kids, and I have two teenage kids now, I have two young adult kids, man, sometimes they want to unload everything on you. You care about them when you hear them speak.

Scripture is more powerful than that, but in essence that's what it is. It's God speaking to us. But that's how we understand his heart and that's how we understand his mind. That's how we understand what he wants to do in us and through us. So what is spending time with God? Well, it is indeed time. It's prayer, communicating your heart and your mind to God. It's Scripture, receiving truth from Him. And then it is this, it's response. It's response. Again, I'll talk a little bit more about this as we walk through the next part. But if we express our heart and mind to God through prayer and we say, Hey God, in all of this, please align my will to yours. All right, so he's aligning our will. He's helping us to desire what he desires, to want what he wants, to go the direction that he wants us to go. We're reading the Bible, Scripture, to understand what he wants us to do and what he has done and who he is and what his promises entail and what he wants us to stay away from. So now we say, God, align my will to yours. Show me what you want me to see in Scripture. Well, the next part of then spending time with God is responding as he aligns our heart, he aligns our minds and he shows us in his word what he wants us to see. I talked about this recently in a message that I had the opportunity to preach, but it's one thing to know what you're supposed to do, but that knowledge only becomes powerful when it's put into action. Knowledge only becomes powerful when it is put into action. There are a lot of people that know what God wants them to do. There are a lot of people that spend their entire lives studying the Bible and understanding every Greek word and every Hebrew word and every nuance and they can explain it to you and how different passages connect one to the other and they can take you all the way through all of it. They even spend time perhaps religiously or ritualistically in prayer and yet they never respond to the calling or leading of God either through the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives or through the direct command or direction of Scripture. And so they know a lot, but that has no power in their lives because they're not doing what God says. Now let me pause here and bring it back to kind of our overarching conversation about marching. We need to spend time with God because it allows us to fulfill our God-given purpose. When we find ourselves at a moment in time where there is an obstacle or a trial, something big in front of us and we don't know if we should push forward or stay where we are. If our purpose is to give glory to God, then we're going to say, God, what do you want me to do next? I've got this trial. I've got this difficulty, this trauma, this thing that I'm dealing with. What do you want me to do next? Then we read, we pray, we spend time. In order to push beyond that trial, that trauma, that difficulty, to march when it would be easier to stay where we are and die, having spent time, read, and prayed, we then need to respond. It's the psalmist saying that your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. It's in the New Testament being told that we are to follow in the steps, the footsteps of Jesus. It's Hebrews chapter 12 telling us to look to Jesus, to follow Jesus. We move forward in a meaningful way when we spend time with God, we hear from him, we spend time in prayer, and then we respond. When God, through the Holy Spirit, works in our lives, we have a responsibility to do what he tells us to do. That's the only way we can get back to point number one, fulfilling our God-given purpose. All right, finally, number three. How do we do this? So we looked at the why. We've talked about the what, what it looks like. How do we do this? I want to give you three specific areas, and then on the last area, that third area, some specific ways that you can accomplish this. So number one, how do we do this? How do we spend time with God? The first part of this is in everything. I've already talked about this, but in all of life. So this is real big, right? This is the big part of the funnel, if you will, in all of life. You should spend time with God in all of life. There shouldn't be a secular and a sacred part of your life. There should only be sacred. That is, it's all devoted to God. It's all about God. I talked about this as we began. This is in everything. Whether you eat or drink, it's all about God. Now, I understand that we have hobbies, and we have jobs, and we have relationships, and we have other things that we're involved in. But again, going back to the analogy of the husband and wife standing in the kitchen, it's doing the things you're doing, but maintaining that position or that posture, that stature, if you will, of prayer and of worship. You shouldn't have to, in the midst of an activity, break away and spend time in confession and prayer and get your life cleaned up before you go to God. You should maintain that spirit or that attitude, that position. Sinful thoughts come, deal with those immediately. Sinful actions take place, deal with those immediately. Maintain that abiding with Christ in everything. In everything. Think about that. It's being a testimony. It's being a witness. It's being in prayer. It's asking God to guide you and to direct you in every area of life. That's big picture. There's a second way to do this. How do we do this? I would say corporately. Corporately. There are a lot of ways that humans attempt to find community. And I'm not against a lot of those ways. We need other people. The Bible is very clear on this. We need other people. We need community. But God's solution for the community that we need and for bringing other people together is the local church. I could spend a whole episode on this. I won't right now. But corporately, we need to not only worship God in everything, but we need to worship God with other people corporately, coming together. A local church is a local body of believers where the Bible is preached and taught. Worship takes place. Others of like heart and mind are able to spend time together. Acts chapter 2, as the church is being established, we see that outlined in Acts chapter 2. You can go read that yourself. The end of that is that all of the believers stayed together and came together and had meals together. They were together. We see that throughout the book of Acts. We see that as the church expands and explodes. We see that now in places around the world where church is illegal. Christians coming together corporately in other places, places where worship is free or people are free to worship. Corporate worship. Coming together. It's about hearing from God together, having the word preached, explained together, worshiping together, spending time with and life with, if you will, together. There is a corporate aspect to this. Hebrews chapter 10 makes this so clear that it says we are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Don't push back as some people have on gatherings of church. Get together with believers in your community. This is so important. It's so vital, in fact, that when someone leaves the Mighty Oaks program, we only ask them to do four things. That is to be in the word, to be in prayer, to be in fellowship with other believers, and to be connected to a mentor. I've talked about this, but that third part is so important. If you take yourself away from other believers who can encourage you and challenge you and provide accountability, if you take yourself away from that, it's just a matter of time, if it hasn't already happened, before you take yourself away from an abiding relationship with God. Church was God's plan. In fact, the Bible defines church as the bride of Christ. Acts chapter 21 tells us that Christ gave his blood. He died for the church. Or Acts chapter 20, rather, chapter 20, verse 28. He gave his blood for the church. Very important to God. It should be very important to us. So in everything, corporately, and then I would say specifically or personally, we could say this is devotionally. Devotionally. This is getting alone with God. We saw this modeled in so many places, but we saw this modeled with Jesus. Jesus, while he was on the earth, separating himself from everyone else so he could spend time in prayer, spend time in communion and fellowship with God the Father. This is modeled, but we're also told to abide in Christ. That is a separate, specific abiding. How do we do that? We spend time in prayer. We spend time.

Reading the Word, this is a devotional life. This isn't in everything. This is, I have a moment set aside, a time set aside every day to get alone, to speak to God, asking Him to align my heart and my will to His, to reading His Word so that He, through the Holy Spirit, can speak to me. This is shutting out the noise, shutting out everything else, and saying, God, please speak to me now. We read, we pray, we use a plan. There's a habit involved, and again, I said at the beginning, I'm not opposed to habits. They just shouldn't replace an authentic relationship with God. But we have a plan. This is when I'm getting up. This is what I'm doing when I get there. There are so many options. I love Bible apps, YouVersion Bible app. There are probably thousands of devotional plans. There are books that you can get. Other things that you can use to read along with the Bible, wrapping all of that up in prayer. There is an acronym, the ACTS acronym for prayer and worship, ACTS, A-C-T-S. The A is for adoration. You start your time of prayer expressing adoration, praise, worship to God. C is confession, confessing your sin and confessing those things that you know are opposed to God's will for your life. T is thanksgiving. In everything, give thanks, the Bible says. We need to spend some time in thanksgiving, having given adoration, confessed our sin, given thanksgiving, and then the S is supplication, asking for those things that you need God to do in your life, and we're told to bring those to God, a God who from His throne room encourages us to come experiencing grace and mercy. Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. Spending time with God. Are you spending time with God? Only as we spend time with Him, abiding in Christ, can we know His heart and know His mind and understand how to fulfill our God-given purpose. We need to give it the time it deserves and spend time in prayer and Bible reading and respond as He leads. It needs to go from general to very specific as we develop this habit, this lifestyle, this posture and position of in everything, living for God and allowing Him to work through us. Obstacles, trials, difficulties, all of it will, they are going to pop up in your life. It's going to happen. If you want to move forward in a meaningful way, know God, be committed to doing His will, respond as He leads, and take the next step. I hope that is a help to you today. This is so simple, but so powerful if we'll allow God to use it in our lives. Again, if you're not yet subscribed to this podcast, please take some time to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. That'd be fantastic. Then take some time, go over to Life Audio, lifeaudio.com. There you can find this podcast, of course, and many, many others. And I'd love for you to check that out. And I'm very thankful for the relationship that I have with the folks at Life Audio. I will remind you today, as I do so often, when the bullets are flying your direction, when your world seems out of control, you only have two choices. You can stay where you are and die, or you can do the better thing and march. What are you going to do? Many of our veterans feel they need to fight their battles alone. This self-isolation has led to the staggering statistic of more than 20 veterans taking their lives every day. The mission of Mighty Oaks is to eradicate the veteran suicide epidemic and help our warriors change their legacies. We've been able to help over 4,000 veterans and first responders by equipping them with the tools they need to live the lives they were created to live. Our faith-based peer-to-peer approach has one of the highest success rates of any program available today, offering hope and understanding to those who need it most. By aligning their lives to biblical principles, these men and women are able to lead their families, their communities, and our nation. It's your generosity that can make a difference in the lives of the men and women who have fought for our country and our freedoms. Now that they're home, don't let them fight alone. Learn more at MightyOaksPrograms.org. Many of us feel hurried. Did you know that being in a hurry is costing us more than we realize? Hi, I'm Jem Fadling, co-host of Unhurried Living, where my husband Alan and I help people learn to live and lead from fullness rather than on empty. We provide resources and training to teach you healthy patterns for rest, work, and spiritual connection. With more than 25 years of experience at the intersection of spiritual formation and leadership development, Unhurried Living seeks to inspire others to rest deeper, live fuller, and lead better. Join us each week as we continue to have conversations about leadership, soul care, the power of prayer, and much more. You can find Unhurried Living at LifeAudio.com and on your favorite podcasting app.