SOME EXAMPLES OF QUIET TIME
IN LIVES OF WELL KNOWN SAINTS
Here are some examples of well known
Christian men and women who made it a habit of maintaining a Quiet Time...
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Missionary and author Isobel Kuhn,
in her book In the Arena, wrote about a time when she was a student at
Moody Bible Institute and found herself so busy with school and work
demands that she was in danger of quenching her devotional life. Other
students were facing similar problems. So they met together and Isobel
suggested they sign a covenant—not a vow, but a statement of intention—to
this effect:
“I suggested our making a covenant with
the Lord to spend an hour a day (for about a year) in the Lord’s presence,
in prayer or reading the Word. The purpose was to form the habit of
putting God in the centre of our day and fitting the work of life around
Him, rather than letting the day’s business occupy the central place and
trying to fix a quiet time with the Lord somewhere shoved into the odd
corner or leisure moment.”
Only about nine people signed the
covenant to begin with, but the news spread and others began to join. For
Isobel, the major problem became finding a quiet place. She wrote,
“The only place I could find where I
would disturb no one was the cleaning closet! So each morning I stole down
the hall, entered the closet, turned the scrubbing pail upside down, sat
on it, and with mops and dust rags hanging around my head, I spent a
precious half-hour with the Master. The other half-hour had to be found at
the end of the day.”[Isobel Kuhn, In the Arena (Singapore: OMF Books,
1995), pp. 30-32]
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Another missionary to China, Bertha
Smith, wrote an absolutely fascinating story of her life. It was
bitterly cold in her part of China. During the day she wore thirty pounds
of clothing, and at night she slept under heavy bedding and with a hot
water bottle. But her challenge came in the early morning hour when she
wanted to rise before others so she could have her quiet time before the
scores of interruptions that each day brought. She would struggle in the
darkness to put on her thirty pounds of clothing, then break the ice to
wash her face in the cold water, and then she would slip out to a
particular haystack where she should rake aside the frosted part of the
hay, kneel down, and spend time with the Lord before the sun came up.
[Bertha Smith, Go Home and Tell (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers,
1995), p. 76]
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The great Puritan, Thomas Watson,
wrote:
“The best time to converse with God is
before worldly occasions stand knocking at the door to be let in: The
morning is, as it were, the cream of the day, let the cream be taken off,
and let God have it. Wind up thy heart towards heaven at the beginning of
the day, and it will go the better all the day after. He that loseth his
heart in the morning in the world will hardly find it again all the day.
O! Christians, let God have your morning meditations.”[Thomas Watson,
Gleanings from Thomas Watson (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications,
1995, first published in London in 1915), p. 107]
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Here is what one of his biographers
said about William Carey, the “Father of Modern Missions” who served many
years in the land of Burma:
“On Carey, as the director of the whole
enterprise, the heaviest burden of responsibility fell. He was still a
gardener at heart. He found God specially near among the flowers and
shrubs of a garden. In the walled garden of the mission house at
Serampore, he built an arbor which he called his ‘bower.’ There at
sunrise, before tea, and at the time of full moon when there was the least
danger from snakes, he meditated and prayed, and the Book which he
ceaselessly translated for others was his own source of strength and
refreshment.” [Iris Clinton, Young Man in a Hurry: The Story of William
Carey (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1961, pp. 55-56]
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A well-known British statesman, the
late Earl Cairns, Lord Chancellor of England, was an extremely busy
man, but no matter what time he reached home in the evening, he always
arose at the same hour to have his quiet time the next morning. His wife
said,
“We would sometimes get home from
Parliament at two o’clock in the morning, but Lord Cairns would always
arise at the same hour to pray and study the Bible.” He later attributed
his success in life to this practice. [R. A. Torrey, How to Succeed in the
Christian Life (Chicago: Moody Press, u.d.), p. 50]
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This is what a biographer wrote
about evangelist D. L. Moody:
“He was an early riser. He generally
rose about daybreak in summer, devoting the early hours to Bible study and
communion with God. He used to say that one who followed this plan could
not get more than twenty-four hours away from God.” [A. P. Fitt, The Life
of D. L. Moody (Chicago: Moody Press, u.d.), p. 114]
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This is what I read in the biography
of the well-known 19th century Bible teacher, G. Campbell Morgan:
“Here was a man who coveted for himself
a constant withdrawal from the pressing demands of his busy life, and kept
inviolate the sanctity of the early morning vigil of prayer and
meditation. Here he breathed the atmosphere of heaven, and daily recharged
his spirit with the power that in turn poured out in extravagant measure
in the preaching and proclamation of the Word.”[Jill Morgan, A Man of the
Word: Life of G. Campbell Morgan (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1972),
p. 342]
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In the biography of missionary
physician, L. Nelson Bell, John Pollock writes:
“Most important of all was Nelson
Bell’s discipline of devotional life. Early every morning he had a cup of
coffee and went to his desk for about an hour of Bible study and prayer.
He set himself to master the content and meaning of the Bible, devising
such study schemes as looking up every Old Testament reference which
occurs in the New Testament and typing it out. Then he turned to prayer,
for friends, colleagues, and patients, praying especially for every
patient listed for operation that day… This cycle of reading and prayer
did not strike Nelson as formidable but vital.” [John C. Pollock, A
Foreign Devil in China (Minneapolis, Minnesota: World Wide Publications,
1971), p. 52]
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In the biography of the famous
Christian philanthropist, George Muller of Bristol, there’s a very
interesting story. Muller was having health problems, and the doctors
advised more sleep. So he began sleeping later each day, and he grew worse
and worse. He finally determined that his late rising was interrupting his
Quiet Time, and that was affecting him spiritually. His spiritual decline
was simply worsening his physical health. So he resumed his habit of
rising early for prayer and Bible study. His biographer wrote,
“This resumption of early rising
secured long seasons of uninterrupted interviews with God, in prayer and
meditation on the Scriptures, before breakfast and the various inevitable
interruptions that followed. He found himself not worse but better,
physically, and became convinced that to have lain longer in bed as before
would have kept his nerves weak; and, as to spiritual life, such new
vitality and vigor accrued from thus waiting upon God while others slept,
that it continued to be the habit of his (later years).” [A. T. Pierson,
George Muller of Bristol (Old Tappen, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., u.d.),
pp. 163-164.]
Adapted from Robert Morgan - click link
to read his entire message -
Psalm 119:147-148 Need Help With My Quiet Time
