At Intervals: Meeting God in Time
Introduction
The name of this class is “At Intervals: Meeting God in Time.” An interval is a space between things – a void between two objects, or a space of time between two events, a harmonic or melodic difference in pitch between two musical tones, the space between soldiers in military formation, an intermission between acts of a play. It can be a fixed amount or a temporary pause. In mathematics an interval is the totality of points (an infinite number) on a line between two designated points. It’s a word that’s been with us for over 700 years, deriving from a Latin word meaning “space between two palisades,” the gap between stakes in the ground.
A google search for “time” brings up 13 billion results, including Time magazine, the official world time, New York Times . . .
The English band Pink Floyd included a song called “Time” on their 1973 album, “Dark Side of the Moon” which is the 2nd highest selling album of all time (50 million copies):
Ticking away the moments that make
up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time has gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say
There
are countless clichés about time . . . time will tell . . . in the nick of time
. . . lost track of time . . . a matter of time . . . a waste of time . . . pressed
for time . . . the time of my life . . . one day at a time . . . the land that
time forgot . . . take time to smell the roses . . . no time like the present .
. . killing time . . . sands of time . . . as time goes by . . . time after
time . . . time heals all wounds . . . sign of the times . . . long time no see
. . . same bat time, same bat channel . . . till the end of time . . . time is
money . . . time is running out . . . time on your hands . . . the times they
are a changing . . . spacetime continuum . . . keeping time . . . time behind
bars . . . times table . . . record time . . . showtime . . . high time . . . time’s
up . . . in due time
An early writer of science fiction, wrote 100 years ago, “Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.”
The word “time” in its various forms appears 7245 times in the Bible! There are two primary ideas regarding time in Scripture:
- Chromos time – a particular time or season (quantitative)
- Kairos time – a fitting time or season, opportunity (qualitative)
Here’s a short sampling of Scriptures concerning time . . .
Ecclesiastes 3:1 – 8 (NLT) –
“1For everything there is a season,
a time for every activity under heaven.
2A time to be born and a time to die.
A time to plant and a time to harvest.
3A time to kill and a time to heal.
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
4A time to cry and a time to laugh.
A time to grieve and a time to dance.
5A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
6A time to search and a time to quit searching.
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
7A time to tear and a time to mend.
A time to be quiet and a time to speak.
8A time to love and a time to hate.
A time for war and a time for peace.”
Psalm 102:13 (NIV) – “You will arise and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to show favor to her; the appointed time has come.”
2 Corinthians 6:2 (NLT) – “For God says, “At just the right time, I heard you. On the day of salvation, I helped you.” Indeed, the “right time” is now. Today is the day of salvation.”
Ephesians 5:15 – 16 (NASB) – “Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.”
Today we are talking about praying at intervals, meeting God in time. What do you think? In our prayer lives, should we be intentional or spur of the moment? Should we set aside time to meet with God or abide in His presence constantly?
Alexander MacLaren says that Ephesians 5 instruction to make the most of our time “does not merely mean making the most of moments, but means laying hold of, and understanding the special significance of, life as a whole, and of each succeeding instant of it as the season for some specific duty. It is not merely ‘time,’ it is ‘the time’; not merely the empty succession of beats of the pendulum, but . . . heightened, and having significance, because each is apprehended as having a special mission, and affording an opportunity for a special work.”
I’ve been reading some Fenelon lately – François Fénelon was a Catholic archbishop, theologian, poet and writer – he is one of the great Christian mystics, a contemporary of Brother Lawrence and George Fox. He has some great insights on meeting God in time . . . here are some excerpts from his writings:
“. . . take care to redeem some brief time from the world for reading and prayer. Try to rescue half an hour morning and evening.
One raises one’s heart for an instant to God, and renews one’s strength for further duties. The less time one has, the more important it is to husband it. If you wait till you have regular and convenient hours at your disposal to fill with substantial duties, you run the risk of waiting too long . . .
. . . in a moment you can recall the presence of God, love Him, adore Him, offer Him what you do or what you suffer, and calm before Him all the agitation of your heart. Take half an hour in the morning, and another half hour in the afternoon, to repair the inroads which the world makes; and, in the course of the day, make use of such thoughts as touch you most, to renew yourself in the presence of God.
Above all, save your morning, and defend it as one defends a besieged city; make vigorous sallies upon intruders; clear the trenches, then shut yourself up within your citadel. Even the afternoon is too long a period to let pass without taking breath.
If you do not have much time at your disposal, do not fail to profit by the smallest portions of time which remain to you. We do not need much time in order to love God, to renew ourselves in His presence, to lift up our hearts toward Him, to worship Him in the depths of our hearts, to offer Him what we do and what we suffer. This is the true Kingdom of God within us, which nothing can disturb.
Above all, be faithful to the present moment, which will bring you all needful grace.
Let us not be content to pray morning and evening, but let us live in prayer all day long. Let this prayer, this life of love, which means death to self, spread out from our seasons of prayer as from a centre over all that we have to do. All should become prayer, that is, a loving consciousness of God’s presence, whether it be social intercourse or business.
There is a time for everything, and it is most important never to anticipate. One of the weightiest rules of the spiritual life is to abide in the present moment, without looking beyond.
It is not enough to act or to give; we must know how to receive, to imbibe, to yield ourselves calmly to the divine impress.
Spare time is often the pleasantest and the most useful as concerns one’s self; it can hardly find a better use than that of renewing our strength . . . through secret communion with God.
Time is precious, but we do not comprehend all its value; we shall know it only when it will no longer be of any advantage to us.”
I’ve taught my children formally in our home school for 16 years. One of the decisions I made at the outset was to be disciplined about our school hours – I realize that home schooling can get a bad rap with the caricature of lying on the couch in pajamas and getting school out of the way before lunchtime. I’m far from a drill sergeant, but every day we get out of bed, get dressed, eat breakfast, and begin school together at a certain hour. The children each have a place in which to do their studies, and we finish at a certain time. These kinds of regular habits are good preparation for life. One of my children was thanking me for this habit the other day, because of the dawning realization that if we’d let things slip too much, we could easily have slid into habits of laziness or been so loosey-goosey that before we knew it they would have been at the end of their schooling without being well prepared for their next steps. It’s amazing how such small actions can have such far-reaching consequences.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Be fully present in the present in the presence of God.
Philippians 4:6 – 9 (The Message) – “Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.”
Thinking is, generally speaking, any mental or intellectual activity involving our subjective consciousness. When we think, neurons get excited and do their thing. When we worry, our brains form ruts, as it were, that have all kinds of results in our bodies, souls, and spirits. When we pray, our brains form other pathways and, as God points out, we’ll have more of God’s wholeness and be part of His most excellent harmonies! Our brains are flexible, pliable, supple, adaptable, adjustable. How are we treating our brains by the kinds of thoughts we are choosing to think? The Lord tells us to allow prayer needs and thankfulness for who He is and what He’s done to shape our worries into prayers. Science backs up what God revealed many centuries ago. When we pray, we are turning our attention toward God, bringing into His light whatever is on our hearts.
A simple way to encapsulate meeting God in time is:
Be fully present in the present in the presence of God.
God is already present. God is already waiting on us. When we pray, we are acknowledging His presence and making ourselves present to Him. When we pray, we say or sing words that express this. There are entire fields of science devoted to studying the brain and how it changes. It can change by degrees over time. We may not often picture changes in our brains, but we’re all aware of the importance and power of habits. When we form a new habit, we are exerting extra mental effort for a while. But then once the habit is formed, less effort is required to continue it. If it were too easy to form new habits, we would be in big trouble! It’s a gift from God to protect us! But once we form a new habit, it’s hard to break, isn’t it? So when we’re talking about changing our prayer habits, let’s admit to ourselves that unless God zaps us, we are most likely to change a little at a time, one prayer at a time, over time.
I remember when I was a fairly young Christian having the desire to pray for an hour a day, because of a book I read that encouraged that habit. But my desire didn’t produce instantaneous results. I started by setting aside a special time of day and then began to pray. The Lord is more interested in our prayerful attention, not our perfunctory attendance. It doesn’t benefit Him or us to get frustrated because our prayer lives fall short of where we think they should be.
Let’s think about what time means in relation to God. After all, He invented it! God is above and beyond and outside of time, but He is marvelously able and wants to meet us in time. He has built time into the very fabric of life. In fact, our most precise clocks, atomic clocks, use the microwave signal that electrons in atoms emit when they change energy levels. God has built time into His laws, in providing for us a Sabbath rest every 7 days.
Since God has provided everything for our enjoyment, I put it to you that He even gave us times and days and hours and seasons as rhythms in which we can pay special attention to Him. We can mark time in music by tapping or clapping. We can mark time with God in prayer.
There’s nothing new about this idea. Many branches of Christianity mark time in daily, weekly, and seasonal patterns. What do we think when we consider these ancient traditions? It’s easy to think of a tradition as a set of expectations handed down to us that we are forced by social pressure to keep: like your grandmother’s quilts that you never really liked but you can’t throw away because you have to pass them on to your children. If prayer were studied scientifically, we would see that many different cultures over several thousands of years tried various ways of praying and discovered that daily, weekly, and seasonal prayers work best!
If this rubs you up the wrong way, consider this. Have you ever shared a meal with someone who flat out refused to sample a new dish or try a new flavor out of sheer stubbornness? Maybe someone only and always orders vanilla ice cream, unwilling to step out and risk one of the zillions of delightful concoctions out there! Or maybe someone always brings home exactly the same kind of flower every week even when countless varieties in every conceivable color and arrangement are presented. God created us to enjoy many different flavors and colors and to sometimes try new things. Let’s not be stuck when it comes to trying out prayer practices we may not have enjoyed before. In the Vineyard we are sometimes smug about being “middle-of-the-road”, not too excessive one way or another. I think it’s that very middle-of-the-road-ness that gives us great liberty to embrace all parts of the body of Christ. We can make a habit out of determining to learn from each person, from each part of the body of Christ. Each one brings something very special to the banqueting table. We can be lifelong learners, i.e. disciples, who are not too proud to learn something new!
Let’s look briefly at three primary components of meeting with God in time.
- Prayer at intervals through the day
When we consider how people in the Bible prayed, we see that
Daniel, an observant Jew who was taken captive in Babylon, kept the practice of praying 3 times a day. Jesus likely maintained a similar practice as it was the custom in His day to say a prayer known as the Shema three times each day.
The Psalms also speak of fixed hour prayer. Psalm 55:17 (NLT) – “Morning, noon, and night I cry out in my distress, and the LORD hears my voice.” Psalm 119:164 (NIV) – “Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws.”
Historically, both Jews and early Christians followed the Roman system of conducting the business day in scheduling their times for prayer. In Roman cities, the bell in the forum rang the beginning of the business day at about 6:00am (Prime, the “first hour”), noted the day’s progress by striking again at about 9:00am (Terce, the “third hour”), tolled for the lunch break at noon (Sext, the “sixth hour”), called the people back to work again at about 3:00pm (None, the “ninth hour”), and rang the close of the business day at about 6:00pm (the time for evening prayer). We see several examples of believers praying at set times in the book of Acts. This tradition is continued by millions of believers today, with varying numbers of what are known as “daily offices” or times set aside for prayer.
Our author, Ken Wilson, uses the analogy of digging a hole – in prayer if we want to dig a hole of any depth, we have to go wide first. We can pray for shorter segments at more frequent intervals, and then work on going deeper.
A good place to start is to choose a time of day at which we are at our best. We can give ourselves permission to dream and think – what would a really enjoyable short time of prayer look like? Where would it be located? How long would it last? What other activities would accompany it? We can try that!
We can incorporate prayer into the already established rhythms of life. If there is something we’re already doing habitually, we can be fully present with God then and there. I enjoy my little corner in our family room where I spend regular time with the Lord each morning in the quiet hours before the day’s activity is underway. I use an ever-changing stack of devotional aids, and have for decades made a habit of praying my way through the Bible each year. Paul and I like to pray together in bed right before sleep – recently we’ve been using “Jesus Calling.” We pray together with our children on school days as the first hour of the day, using worship music, Bible study, and encouraging each one to both pray Scripture and pray what’s on their hearts. I intentionally start my day with devotional prayer only, meditating on the character of God, dedicating the lives of myself and my family and household to Him, and listening for His voice. During those times, I rarely pray for needs, and have found over a period of many years that God has a way of taking care of me brilliantly and completely, most often “along the way” as I am focusing on doing His will and not seeking to get my own needs met. I’m not extremely structured in praying at different times of the day, but have many prayer triggers and habits built into my day, in the natural flow and rhythms of life. I like to pray as I walk around the neighborhood. I like to sing prayers, whether singing along with something someone else wrote, or singing my own words to music that I like. I seek to use a balance between intentional prayer for others and being led by the Holy Spirit. One neat tool that I’m gradually incorporating into my prayer life is “praybook.com” which connects with “facebook” – this is a high-tech equivalent of a prayer list.
In other seasons of my life, I had different prayer habits. When my children were babies, I prayed while I was rocking and feeding them. When I worked in the business world, I prayed during our daily commutes and workouts. During times of intense grief, I have sat at the piano and sung prayers of lament right out of the Psalms, and God has met me in very precious ways with His comforting presence. There are endless ways and times to pray – God just wants us to practice His presence throughout the day and pay attention to Him, just as He likes to pay attention to us!
When I studied chemistry in high school, our text book was not only a weight lifting aid, but we were allowed to bring the 800 page tome into exams. It wasn’t helpful if we didn’t know how to find the information contained there, but it was an open-book subject – we didn’t have to memorize the entire periodic table and all its attributes. Prayer is an open-book subject – there’s no extra credit for not using prayer tools, of course the Bible, but also accumulated wisdom from the saints who have gone before!
It’s often easier to like the idea of something before liking the thing itself. Example – our home school – when I try a new curriculum, I give it 6 weeks before deciding whether it works or not, enough time to give it a good trial. Example – new foods or spices – it takes time to acquire a taste for something! Babies look to their parents to give them a taste for various foods and flavors. As we grow, we can choose to try new foods & flavors in prayer because we notice that other people whose lives reflect the life of Christ very well seem to really enjoy them. If we give something a good try, we may find we like it and our prayer life is greatly enhanced. If we don’t like it, we can set it aside with a clear conscience and find other ways in which to grow in intimacy with the Lord.
As a practical exercise, let’s try a sampling of a couple of common prayer tools. The Divine Hours and Jesus Calling and Streams in the Desert.
Prayers that are entirely self-generated sometimes require enormous effort. Either that, or we lapse into saying the same things in only slightly different ways – feigned spontaneity. (example – some of the worship songs we sing are prayers sung over and over, a kind of liturgy! Which is fine if the lyrics are well-written, e.g. take my hands and let them be consecrated, Lord, to thee. But then we have songs with lightweight lyrics or theologically faulty – songs sung over and over have a tendency to go deep into our hearts, so it’s important to choose wisely!) Whether prayers are spoken or sung, if we try to come up with everything on our own, we will probably wear out or get bored fairly quickly! But using the prayers of others – in Scripture, in prayer books – as a springboard brings about a lovely ease to prayer. It’s like priming the pump.
Let’s do a heart check first – are we more reproachful or receptive when we consider other ways of praying? Let’s pay attention to our inner attitudes. Praying informally and conversationally is one way to pray. Using a prayer book is another way to pray. Neither is necessarily better than the other – they are simply different approaches.
Sample some new flavors of Biblically based prayer and see what works, what doesn’t work for you. Prayer requires discipline, but it’s not meant to be a form of punishment – it’s all about growing in intimacy with our Creator and best friend!
2. Weekly prayer with the community
God created the Sabbath for us, and what a beautiful gift it is! The American Tract Bible Society Dictionary says, “The chief obligation of the Sabbath expressed in the law is to sanctify it, Exodus 20:8 (NIV) – “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” It is sanctified by necessary works of charity, by prayers, praises, and thanksgiving, by the public and private worship of God, by the study of his word, by tranquility of mind, and by meditation on moral and religious truth in its bearing on the duties of life and the hope of immorality. The other requirement of the law is rest: “you shall not do any work.” The ordinary business of life is to be wholly laid aside, both for the sake of bodily and mental health, and chiefly to secure the quiet and uninterrupted employment of the sacred hours for religious purposes.”
The weekly worship gatherings remind us that God is a relational network, and that to love God includes praying with others. Our weekly celebration is fuel for daily prayers.
We don’t like to admit that we need others – we are so proud of being independent! But the truth is that we DO need one another, we belong to one another – we are interdependent parts of the body of Christ – Romans 12:4 – 5 (NLT) – “Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.”
I want to put in a plug for other weekly prayer gatherings, too. I greatly treasure and value the individuals with whom I pray on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. It has been a goal for me for many years now to pray daily with others, and weekly prayer gatherings are an important part of this. We share life together when we pray together. We encourage one another and build one another up when we pray together. Here at the Atlanta Vineyard, we have prayer groups (including our Sunday 9:30am prayer time and 10:30am service!), women’s Bible studies, small groups, prayer before outreaches, men’s breakfasts, and other opportunities – find a place to connect and connect and pray! There are always spur-of-the-moment opportunities to pray with others, but there’s something very special about regular gatherings where we have blocked out the time on our calendars intentionally – we can look forward to meeting with God together, praying with other believers with great excitement and anticipation of what God is going to do!
3. Seasonal celebrations
The prayer life of the people shaped by the Genesis understanding of God in time was further patterned around seasonal holidays. (God commanded the Israelites to rejoice and celebrate many times in the Torah, for example, Deuteronomy 16:15 (NLT) – “For seven days you must celebrate this festival to honor the Lord your God at the place he chooses, for it is he who blesses you with bountiful harvests and gives you success in all your work. This festival will be a time of great joy for all.”) The festivals were not only breaks from routine labor, but extensive preparations were made so the celebrations could be enjoyed, not just endured. Like any good party, these celebrations knit people together as a community.
There is a great power in annual special events that are variations on the same theme each year. What do you celebrate annually? Christmas, birthdays, Easter, Thanksgiving, ???
God commands us to celebrate! He doesn’t want us to languish in drudgery day in, day out, or to wear ourselves out with work, work, work. He wants us to work hard and to rest well and to joyfully celebrate His bountiful blessing!
Psalm 90:12 (NIV) – “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
Conclusion
There’s a saying that goes, “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” In other words, anything that is intrinsically valuable, like eating or breathing or sleeping, is worth doing poorly rather than not at all! Prayer is like that: it is worth doing poorly rather than not at all.
Our brains rewire by degrees over time. We can start where we’re at and make slow, steady progress. When we form a habit of regular exercise, we feel better and wonder how we ever made it through our day without it! This is because God made our bodies to move. Prayer is like that. God made our bodies to pray, too.
The Divine Hours
April 1st – the Morning Office
The Call to Prayer
Out of Zion, perfect in beauty, God reveals himself in glory.
“Gather before me my loyal followers, those who have made a covenant with me and sealed it with sacrifice.” (Psalm 50:2, 5)
The Request for Presence
May God be merciful to us and bless us, show us the light of his countenance and come to us. (Psalm 67:1)
The Greeting
You are my hiding-place; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. (Psalm 32:8)
The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
A Reading
He was driving out a devil and it was dumb; and it happened that when the devil had gone out the dumb man spoke, and the people were amazed. But some of them said, ‘It is through Beelzebul, the prince of devils, that he drives devils out.’ Others asked him, as a test, for a sign from heaven, but, knowing what they were thinking, he said to them, ‘Any kingdom which is divided against itself is heading for ruin, and house collapses against house. So, too, with Satan: if he is divided against himself how can his kingdom last?—since you claim that it is through Beelzebul that I drive devils out. Now if it is through Beelzebul that I drive devils out, through whom do your own sons drive them out? They shall be our judges, then. But if it is through the finger of God that I drive devils out, then the kingdom of God has indeed caught you unawares.’ (Luke 11:14 – 20)
The Refrain
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer.
The Morning Psalm – I Have Set My King Upon My Holy Hill of Zion
Why are the nations in an uproar? Why do the peoples mutter empty threats? Why do the kings of the earth rise up in revolt, and the princes plot together, against the LORD and against his Anointed?
“Let us break their yoke,” they say, “let us cast off their bonds from us.”
He whose throne is in heaven is laughing; the Lord has them in derision.
Then he speaks to them in his wrath, and his rage fills them with terror.
“I myself have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.”
Let me announce the decree of the LORD: he said to me, “You are my Son; this day have I begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession.
You shall crush them with an iron rod and shatter them like a piece of pottery.”
And now, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth.
Submit to the LORD with fear, and with trembling bow before him;
Lest he be angry and you perish; for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Happy are they all who take refuge in him! (Psalm 2)
The Refrain
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer.
The Small Verse
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel for he has visited and delivered us. Amen, amen, amen.
The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your Name.
May your kingdom come, and your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Give us today your daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;
For yours are the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
The Prayer Appointed for the Week
O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of my faith, that I may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The Concluding Prayer of the Church
Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought me in safety to this new day: Preserve me with your mighty power, that I may not fall into sin, nor be overcome by adversity; and in all I do direct me to the fulfilling of your purpose; through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.
