Voice of the Student

Did you know more than 82 percent of Christians only read their Bible on Sundays? 

While there are more than two billion Christians in the world, only around 400 million Christians actually spend quality time with God. Spending time with God may seem like a hard task, especially since all of us have super busy lives. But spending time with God is the important for Christians in order to prioritize our daily lives. 

Here are three different reasons why and how Christians should prioritize God in their daily lives.

The first is about quiet times, many people have steered away from spending time in their bible due to the reason of being Bound Under Satan's Yoke(BUSY). 

Having responsibilities and other things in our life is all normal, but using it as an excuse is not a good reason why you aren’t in your bible daily. You and God's time is so much more important than you time. 

When we wake up in the morning our hearts usually want to do what it wants to do, which is most of the time sleeping in. But God tells us we need to not trust our deceitful hearts, and do our spiritual disciplines, which would be to study our bibles. Studying scriptures is super important because it is the only physical tool that God gave to us to know more about him. If you haven’t started a quiet time in your life it could seem very hard, but in actuality it is really easy. 

The first thing is to start off small and productive, such as the SOAP method which is short for Scripture (S), Observe(O), Apply(A), Prayer(P). 

Going into the bible and finding passages to study and look over is a great way to start. Then you will have to observe what is happening, then we need to find a way to apply this information to our lives. Then lastly the most important one is prayer which is our only communication to God and you can also pray about what's on your heart, or to pray about your day.

The second way to prioritize God is by praying the right way every day. You may think, "Why is prayer so important, and how can there be a wrong way to pray?" To answer this question, yes there is a wrong way to pray, praying the wrong way is basically treating God like a genie. When we pray most of the time it's about ourselves, “God please help me on this test”, “God please give me a sign to know this is right”, God please give me whatever. Praying this way is going to leave you disappointed most of the time because God is not a genie who will grant you your wishes. God has a plan for you and he wants to have a relationship with you. Praying to God is important because we get to do it as a perk to being a Christian and we need to be using that perk that God gave us. 

Owen Carr, a famous pastor from Chicago, said this, “a day without prayer is a boast against God.” Which is true because if we don’t pray and invite God into our lives, then we are showing God that we don’t need him. Inviting God into our lives is the smartest thing a Christian can do because we are sheep. Sheep are dumb, stupid and cannot take care of themselves. God is a shepherd who will only lead the sheep who follow God.

Finally, the last reason to prioritize God is to worship God. Worshiping God is super important, and the least we could do for God. The world has changed the meaning of worship to a genre of music that we have a separate playlist for. Worship is so much more than the genre of music we listen to. It can be worshiping him through praise and thanksgiving by thanking God for what he has done for you and not just during my devotional time, but throughout the day as you recognize his blessings he has done for you. It can also be by enjoying all the things he created and glorifying him for it. Worshiping God is done in so many ways. A way to think about worship is by thinking about it like worth-ship. What is God worth to me? Is he worthy enough to have what I am giving him? Yes, he totally is God does so much for us even when we don’t even know it. John chapter 11 and 12 is a perfect example. In the story it tells about Mary who had an expensive perfume bottle and was questioned by the disciples on why she poured all of it out onto Jesus’ feet. Mary had saved the perfume for a special day, and that day had come because in the chapter before her brother, Lazarus, was resurrected from the dead by Jesus. So, Mary did the least she could do to give back to Jesus which was to pour out the expensive perfume. The disciples didn’t understand why she didn’t just sell the perfume since she was poor to get more money. But worshiping God is about you to him even when people may look and not understand why you're doing that.

These are perfect examples of why you should prioritize your daily life by spending it with God. Having a quiet time is a perfect way to start off your day right and it doesn’t even have to be that long. The SOAP method is a great way to start a quiet time if you don’t know how to start. Praying to God is the most important thing to prioritize our life with God, like I said before. Prayer is our only way to invite God into our lives so he can have a relationship with us. Prayer is a perk that we get to use since God gave it to us so we should use it the right way. Finally, worshiping God is not only just the music that we listen to, it is the things we do for God. It is the only way to give back to God since he has done so much for us, and it is the least we can do to give back to him. Prioritizing God in our lives is so important for our walk with Christ. These 3 things are just a few examples of how we can be fully living for God.