Most mornings my father was up before the sunrise. On some of those mornings, I’d peek through the cracked door, see him kneeling in his office and hear the quiet murmuring of conversations with his heavenly Father. These tender moments I observed as a teenager remain etched in my memory.
Years later, when I had teens of my own, the picture looked very different. I struggled to get up after the sunrise, my prayer time felt as chaotic as throwing confetti in the air, and devotions were few and far between. Needless to say, I felt like a failure.
Maintaining healthy rhythms of prayer and Scripture reading during non-stop parenting seasons is a challenge for most parents. When you’re in the thick of chauffeuring, school, sports, and everything in between, it’s so easy to become spiritually depleted from the lack of nourishment that only comes from intentional time with God. And when we fall out of these healthy rhythms, we often feel a nagging sense of guilt.
Here’s the thing: there’s one sense in which the guilt is good. Hard? Yes. But sometimes that nagging feeling is how the Holy Spirit gently prods our hearts, moving us toward healthy spiritual disciplines that necessarily nourish us.
And yet, there’s another kind of guilt that emerges from expectations that we’ve placed on ourselves. They are not expectations laid out in Scripture, but we have set a standard for “quiet time” based on what we have learned, heard, or seen growing up. My guilt in the overwhelming years of parenting largely came from unattainable expectations I placed on myself as an adult because of patterns I observed as a teen.
We’re a year away from being empty nesters, and as I reflect back on what it looked like to spend time in prayer and in God’s Word during the busiest seasons of parenting, there are a few biblical principles with which I’d encourage my younger self—principles that offer hope and reassurance when it comes to deepening our relationship with the Lord.
You Don’t Earn God’s Love with Quiet Time
If I were to look into the weary eyes of my younger self, often fraught with guilt over another day slipping by without a quiet time, I would first remind her that she is secure in Jesus. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1). Jesus saved us and loves us, not because of what we have done, but because of his grace alone (Eph. 2:8-9). Because of Jesus’ shed blood on the cross, we do not need to earn God’s love with spiritual disciplines.
When we treat our time in the Word as a “must” because we think blessings will automatically follow, or when we view it as a “to do” in order to ensure we are loved by God, then we have made these spiritual disciplines into legalistic duties rather than relational opportunities. God cannot love us more than he already does, and there is nothing we can do—including missing times in prayer and in God’s Word—that can lessen his love for us.
So, first and foremost, let’s pause and remember why we spend time with God. It’s not to earn his favor but to know him more intimately, to long for him more insatiably, and to abide in him more consistently.
There is No Substitute for the Word of God
The second thing I’d remind my younger self is that in the throes of parenting teens, we need spiritual nourishment. It’s as important in this season as any other in life. And one of the greatest ways we receive this needed sustenance is through God’s Word (Matt. 4:4).
Parent, there is no substitution for the Bible. When you need a break, a vacation temporarily helps. When you need comfort, a friend’s feeble words provide momentary relief. When you need wisdom, a parenting book may offer sage advice. But there is no other book that gives you lasting hope, wisdom, and comfort, and its words will never fail (Is. 40:8).
Because this is true, we need to be intentional with our time. There is almost always an opportunity in the day to pray and open our Bible; the question is: are we prioritizing it? If we can find ten minutes to scroll social media or twenty minutes to read a book before bed, then there is time in the day for this spiritual nourishment.
What’s beautiful—in God’s loving kindness—is that the more consistently we do this, the more we will miss it when we don’t.
God Delights in Your Small Offerings
The last thing I’d remind my younger self is that even five minutes with the Lord is not wasted; in fact, it is multiplied (Zech. 4:10). Somehow, I created this idea that unless I carved out an hour of concentrated time for devotions and prayer, then it wasn’t worth it. Somehow, I began to believe that I needed total quiet to deepen my relationship with my Savior.
None of that is in the Scriptures. In fact, in this verse in Zechariah, we’re reminded that God delights to begin his great work in what seems small to us. Parent, God delights in your small offerings, even when they’re interrupted by children’s voices calling out for another need.
The standard is not to live up to what someone else does for time in prayer and in God’s Word. The standard is what God has set, and he has called us to be faithful in walking with him (Mic. 6:8). Whether that’s an hour or ten minutes; whether it’s a slow meditative reading through Scripture or a “read-through-the-Bible-plan,” the Lord will use this time to deepen our relationship with him!
And who came up with the phrase “quiet time,” anyway? Probably not a parent, to be frank. If I could go back to those noisy, crowded years, I would tell myself: Don’t wait for quiet to meet with God. He’s present in the interruptions, too. Call out to him throughout your day. And your Bible doesn’t have to stay unopened until the house is calm. God’s Word is steady even when life is not.
In the busy seasons of parenting, our “quiet times” may not look like the polished version we once imagined—or like the version we may have in another season. But that’s not what God requires. He invites us, weary and distracted as we may be, to come and meet with him, knowing that his love is secure, his Word is nourishing, and his delight rests even in our smallest offerings. As you seek him, even imperfectly, your Savior will always be faithful meet you there.
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