Quiet Times

A couple of weeks ago back visiting my old InterVarsity chapter at WM, I heard they'd done a survey of the fellowship. They found that only 5% of the students present at the weekly Large Group meeting were spending more than 10 minutes 3 times a week in prayer and Bible study.

The term "quiet time" is something that sometimes I feel averse to using a lot. I don't like that it seems like Christian in-speak and also that sometimes it can feel legalistic. However, I'm realizing how little--as some grand attempt to not guilt students, I'm not mentioning this at well.

So a Quiet Time is simply setting aside some time each day for prayer and reading scripture. Not that complicated. Can take tons of different forms depending on what you read and how you pray--length, can be thereabouts of 10 minutes to hours really. By setting aside a specific time of day we allow God some set apart time to speak to us--not just going through our days hoping God thinks what we're already doing it pretty alright.

I've been reading a lot of books about discipleship lately--how to help mentor Christian students and help them grow towards God. In most of these books after the first step of inviting the student into relationship, or once the person has "become a Christian"--almost immediately the next step mentioned in the books is to teach students/disciples how to spend time with God each day. Teaching them to "feed themselves" from the Bible and spend time in prayer rather than creating a situation where people are dependent on you as the mentor.

But I've also been thinking about the general life of a college student--the busyness, the people everywhere......it's very difficult to find space to be alone. But my conviction is that this is still essential. There are quiet spaces in the library, rooms when roommates are out for the day. It's like so much in life--if we live spending our time thinking that we'll do that later......later will never come. We must learn to find space and time for God now, not just wishing it will come around later.

When we were at a visioning retreat for IV last week we did a Bible study on Nehemiah. Nehemiah cries out asking for the forgiveness of the sins of himself and the sins of his fathers. He sees that the sins within his people are also within himself. I find that a lot at Georgetown. The sin of the institution and the student body there mirror a lot of my own personal sins--orientation towards achievement, busyness--and neglecting time with God. So then we repented on the behalf of ourselves and our people. Now I'm just considering how to move forward and help students re-establish this essential time each day.