Noelle Russell teaches a six-step method for quiet time with God: relax, acknowledge humility, read Scripture five times until you can visualize it, meditate on the passage, write down insights, then pray using the PRAY framework (Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield). You need only a Bible and notebook in a distraction-free space.
Chapters
My name is Noelle Russell, and welcome to another 7-minute series video. This one is going to be titled "How to Spend Quiet Time with God." Some of us, you know, I don't know, it just helps to have a step-by-step process for kind of getting into the Word, getting out our Bible, and learning more, spending more time in that divine presence. So So what I wanted to do is kind of share those 6 steps that I have learned with you in the hopes that it would maybe help you. Let's take a look at the first few steps. First thing you want to do is, of course, figure out how you're going to prepare, right? How are you going to prepare to actually learn more about the Creator of all things? You should probably be ready, number 1, to spend time in the Word. Right? So you should probably bring a good Bible. I'm not really, um, too picky about the type of Bible. I own Bibles. I think I own maybe 10 different versions, um, and I love all of them, and I spend time in all of them. And I think there's a beauty in the way that we as a human, um, society have translated it so many times and how I can find different meaning across that. I think that's part part of God's plan. So I find it interesting. So notice here, I don't tell you what kind of Bible, what version, what edition, what translation, right? Find one that works for you. Anyway, so after a Bible, you'll probably want to bring a notebook. And the reason a notebook is really important is because God's going to reveal something about himself to you, and so you should probably want to write it down. It may not make sense today, but it's interesting how the things we write down in our conversations with God If we look back on them and have the ability to kind of look back at the notes that we've taken, they were giving us exactly what we needed at the time we needed it, even though in the moment we may not recognize it. So of course, now you have to think, you've got the tools, now what? Well, I would recommend creating a special space. Now it doesn't have to be like for me, I mean, if you look, I'm in a hotel room, I'm traveling on business. So I can't have like a little, you know, altar created, though if you have that environment available and that is cool for you, do that. For me, it just needs to be quiet. It needs to be a place where I can literally open up my Bible, open up my notepad, and just focus. Most importantly, it needs to not have a lot of distractions. You should probably, I mean, if you need to, turn your cell phone off. Don't have Skype running in the background. Don't have Twitter or Facebook running on a browser on a screen that you can see as activity occurs there, right? Focus. It's, it's only for a fraction of your day. Take time, quiet the environment so that when you try to quiet your mind, it's not as difficult. So speaking of quieting the mind, let's take a look at the 6 steps, right? So the first step is just that. Right. It's relaxing, closing your eyes, cutting off the sense of sight, which tends to kind of give us some stimulation, right, in what we're looking at. So we close our eyes and we begin to quiet our mind. We relax. We— the main purpose of this first step is to quiet the outside world so we can listen. Right. To the inspiration and the revelation of God. So this is a time where you want to, in your quiet place, in a hotel room, on the road, right? Doesn't matter where you are, just get quiet. Close your eyes, get quiet, and get ready to encounter God's presence. So now that we're quiet, the next step would be, right, to humble ourselves, to open ourselves, to make ourselves receptive, to whatever that experience is going to be like today. This step is to remind us that we want to do this on purpose, that we are here, we're sitting here in the silence to hear the voice of God, to be given a revelation, to know God more. So we want to say it out loud if you want to. I'm usually right in a hotel room now. Actually, I think I'm pretty close to the elevator, so people can probably hear me. But normally, right, what I want to do is out loud say, God, I'm ready. Whatever message you have for me today, give it to me. I'm ready for it. We also then, of course, want to immerse ourselves in the Word, right? So we've now quieted our mind, quieted the outside so that we can hear. Now, God has given us the Bible, right? We have it in multiple versions right here. The words. The voice is right here, so we can open it up, we can read it, and we can focus on it in order to feel or, or be closer to God. So it just depends on how you want to do it. But the important thing at this point is to identify a passage of scripture and read it. I would recommend reading that passage, whichever one you've picked, 5 times. Right? Read it and read it again and read it again, almost to the point where you can kind of see the words in your mind. So the main reason for that repetitive reading of that scripture in the immersion step is so that when we are done reading, we can literally close our eyes and know what we've read and let it happen, right? Close your eyes, relax, and just meditate on what you've read. This process, the meditation and relaxation process, you know, it could take a while. A lot of times what ends up happening is our mind wanders and goes to something else, right? We might be able to focus on that passage for a minute, and then we're thinking about the grocery shopping we need to do, or the laundry that we need to do, or the paper that we need to write, right? We're focused on something else and our attention is drawn. So what we want to do is spend time kind of reeling it back in, yoking it back in, and making sure that we are focused on the scripture that we're trying to read. It's practice. Once we've done that, right, we, we take the time, we relax ourselves, quiet our surroundings, right? We say, God, we're ready for this, open for this. We then read the scripture that we've been called to, drawn to. We read it over and over and over again. We close our eyes, we think about it, we open our eyes, and we write down whatever comes to mind. Whatever comes to mind. Doesn't matter. Don't judge it. Whatever it is. Granted, at first, maybe that looks like the stuff you did today, right? What you're thinking about. But as you create a discipline, as you discipline your mind to focus on the eyes, on the areas of God, those words will start to change. And it's in the practice that we see that revelation occur. And then finally, of course, we like to always end our time in the Bible with prayer. Now, prayer can be interpreted as an acronym, and you can see it here: Praise, Repent, Ask, and Yield. So we want to— usually we start a prayer with Thank you, God, right? This is— my life is amazing. Thank you for everything that I have. Then we identify, did anything in what I read remind me of something that I need to not be doing, right? Did I drink unnecessarily? Did I, you know, put myself in a position that compromised my spirituality and my choice to follow Jesus Christ, um, right? What are the What things could I choose to maybe turn away from in my life? So we maybe identify those things and we say, yes, God, I recognize this and I'm not gonna do this again. We then ask for anything that we want, right? What are our petitions? As human beings, we tend to want things. We tend to say, you know what, I want a better relationship, or I want to be a better parent, or I want, you know, our financial situation to not be so tough, We can ask those things. Whatever we ask of God in his name, right? Knock and he will answer. So knock, ask, and you shall receive. And then finally, yield to God's will, right? You will ask and God may say, "Sure, here you go. Do this, right? Take this step, start this business, build this ark," right? That's how it starts, but it's yielding to the will of God, yielding to the, the message that we get, the steps that are needed, right? We won't get the full laid-out map of where we're going. We'll just get the next step. We'll get one step out of the next hundred. We'll get one, and we have to, on faith, trust that that one step will lead us in the right direction. So those are the, the 6 steps for Right? Relaxation, humility, immersion, meditation, documentation, and petition or prayer. So it's not too hard once you get the hang of it, but it's kind of nice for those of us intellectuals or those of us who kind of operate on that side of the brain. It gives us the ability to kind of formulate a plan when we start to want to get to know God even more. Anyway, it's probably a little over 7 minutes, so I better go, but I appreciate your time and I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did in making it.
