Why is it so difficult to experience God as a personal reality in our daily lives?
Noise and distraction. It is utterly impossible to engage with God on the run. Even the Son of God Himself rose early in the morning to get alone with God (Mk 1:35) or stayed up all night to pray on a mountain (Lk 6:12). A couple thousand years of Christian experience confirms the point: intimacy with the Almighty requires solitude and silence—experiences that are all too hard to come by in the age of technology. Daily meditation on Scripture and prayer offer the exclusive path to real, meaningful relationship with God; but neither discipline can thrive in a life filled with entertainment, social media, and interruption.
So what do we do? How can we know Jesus in a world where it’s so much easier to putz around on our phone than pray? You just have to do it. Fight for your time with God like you are fighting for your life. The fact of the matter is, you are.
Tim Keller offers this illustration: “If the doctor said, ‘You have a fatal condition and unless you take this medicine every night from 11:00 to 11:15 and swallow these pills, you will be dead by morning.’ If that were the case, you would never miss. You would never say, ‘I was too tired’ or ‘I didn’t get to it’ or ‘I was watching a movie and I didn’t leave time.’ You never would do that.”
He’s right. The problem isn’t our busy schedule or our tendency toward distraction. The problem is our priorities. We would never miss a dose of vital medication, because we value our physical health. But do we value our spiritual health? Keller goes on to admonish: “When people ask, ‘How am I going to get to prayer? How am I going to deal with distractions?’ I say, ‘Maybe you don’t believe you need prayer. And that is a theological, spiritual problem, and there is nothing I can do except tell you to get your heart and your mind straight on that.’”
So mark your calendar. Set a daily appointment for yourself. Get alone, away from your phone, your computer, your friends, and any and every other source of noise and distraction. Do it every day. Make no exceptions. Your life depends on it.
John 17:3 This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.