Hey moms, do you find it hard to have a consistent daily quiet time routine with the Lord?
If so, you’re not alone!
Now, before you get too hard on yourself, consider what season of life you are in.
Are you a mom with little ones? Are you a mom with school-age kids? or Are you a mom with no kids in the house?
These seasons differ so much from one another. What we do for our children when they are babies is very different from what we do for our school-age children and if you have grown children, your role in their lives has drastically changed.
So if everything we do looks so different in these stages, why are we so hard on our self if our quiet time with the Lord looks different in these seasons as well?
Young moms, you are taking care of babies all day long. Many are sleep deprived and your days are considered a success if your kids get fed and no one ended up in the ER. Moms with school-age kids, you are now juggling school, extracurricular activities, sports, on top of everything else. And many moms, you have both babies and school-age kids in the house. Your life is non-stop from the crack of dawn. If you are a mom that works outside the house or an entrepreneur, your life looks even different at each of these stages.
First, let me tell you that You are doing an amazing job!
God sees the time you spend taking care of your children and that you are pouring all you have into raising your children!
The question is, how do we create time for God each day during the different seasons of our lives?
The key thing to remember is God does not tell how our quiet time is to look like by saying we need to spend this amount of time reading the Bible or praying each day. We are the ones that makeup all these requirements that we must read so many chapters a day and pray for so long. The thing that I do know is if we draw close to God, He will draw close to us!
If you have not established a daily quiet time with the Lord, I suggest you take baby steps. Start with these two things.
First, Acknowledge God
The first thing that I would suggest is that in the morning when you wake up, put your thoughts on God, and thank Him for this day that he has made.
This does not take a lot of time!
It’s important that our first thoughts are on God as this will help how we approach the rest of the day. If I’m not careful, my thoughts will go straight to my day and what I want to accomplish. I will start to focus on my problems and start to worry. Worries, problems, you name it, they are waiting for us no matter what we do. So, instead of letting that be my first thought in the morning, I want to be purposeful about starting my day by putting my thoughts on God.
So what does that look like for me? What does that look like for you?
The way we both do this will look different! And guess what? THAT’S OK!!!!
For me in the season of life that I’m in with adult kids, I like to start while I’m in bed. While laying in bed I start putting my thoughts on God before my feet touch the floor and I get caught up in all the activities that the day has for me.
Now, this is tough! I don’t know about you, but I am not a morning person! It takes me a while to wake up. I’m not that one who jumps out of the bed, full of energy saying “hi ho hi ho, it’s off to work I go”. There is no pep in my step! I can’t even form coherent sentences sometimes! So in my case, I really have to focus and be deliberate with this.
Before I get out of bed, I choose to say a few declarations statements like:
“Good Morning Lord, Thank you for this day that you have made!”
Second, Acknowledge the Holy Spirit!
The second thing I do is to acknowledge the Holy Spirit in the morning. He is our helper, our guide, our teacher. He is everything we need! So I want to acknowledge that I need him in my life and that I need his guidance each and every day!
I will say a few more declaration statements like:
“Holy Spirit, help me to use this day wisely and fill me with a fresh new filling for today”
Because I’m not the most alert person this early in the morning, I had to write out what I wanted to say each morning. Preparing these declarations beforehand makes it easier to know what to say. The first few times, I was struggling to remember them word for word, but saying them word for word is not important! What’s important, is the few words that I did remember were enough to get my thoughts on God.
So first thing in the morning, what are you thinking? Are you thinking about God or about this day and what it may bring?
This will take time to train our brains to automatically focus on God first thing in the morning so be diligent about doing this every day!
Just a few simple declarations each morning helps me to start my day focused on God. Take some time and write your own declarations that you want to say first thing in the morning to your Lord and Savior. These declarations should reflect your heart towards the Lord so they can be short and sweet, or lengthy and even be different every day. There is no wrong way. Scriptures are a great way to make declarations. Check out this post HERE to see how I use scriptures on days I feel blahhh and also get a printout of the scriptures I use to help me focus on God.
The more we do this, the more natural it will start to be and before you know it, you will wake up singing his praises. The key is to start your morning off by giving your attention to God!
Do whatever you need to do to remind yourself to acknowledge God first thing in the morning. Print out your declarations and put them on your bathroom mirror or your frig. Use your phone to send you a reminder to say these declarations. There are so many options out there to help us set this up as a daily habit, so use those tools that are available to you.
Remember, take baby steps! Focus on starting your day off by putting your thoughts on God first thing in the morning. And because we are all in different stages, your first thing in the morning will most likely not be the same time as others.
We also need to include reading the Bible and praying in our daily routine, among other things, but again, that will look different to all of us. I plan to share this in the next few blog post! Make sure you follow my Instagram or Facebook so you don’t miss a post.
