SWEET ON THE LIPS...
...but bitter in the stomach!
What we do....
As Christians we hear the importance of having what is often called 'a quiet time' or devotional with the Lord, either in the morning, the evening or both. Yet although we start off with the good intentions it can often tail off or even feel a little bit pointless.
What we do at the little scroll is take our desire to encourage your passion for the Lord through knowing His word to develop your 'quiet time'. If you would like help, advice and support in this area then please read on as we explain our approach to this and what help we can give.
So let us start right at the beginning by asking the most
thought of questions. What is a quiet time? Why is it so hard
to do it? Will the Lord refuse to bless me if I miss one?
The problem with those questions is it surmises that a quiet time is a required religious observance of a mature Christian. You might have guessed, from our passionate desire to ignite your passionate desire for Jesus, through His word, that we take some issue with this kind of religious approach to this task.
What is a Quiet time?
We believe, fundamentally, that the word of God proves Jesus wants to have a relationship with you. We see it before the fall of man, when Adam would walk and talk with the Lord. We see it in books such as Song of Solomon, where the romantic relationship between Solomon and the Shulamite is described as an allegory of the relationship between Jesus and His church. We see it in the book of revelation where the church is called the bride of Christ and the Lamb's wife. Therefore we reject the notion of religious observance as though God must be appeased or He wont bless us and may even punish us if not done. Instead we commend that a God, who is described as knowing you even in your mothers womb, want's you to get to know Him just as intimately. As such anything we do with the Lord and in particular a time spent alone with Him should be in the form of a relationship. Unfortunately the reason many people struggle is because quiet times are approached in an obligatory way. With emphasis on getting through the defined tasks consistently. Yet that has more of an approach to giving up cigarettes' than it does to relationship with Christ.
So what do we at thelittlescroll encourage as a quiet time and how do we approach it?
If you haven't yet watched our videos explaining our value statements then if you click on the buttons to the right you will be taken to them. They are only about a minute each and they explain, in short, what we believe is the purpose of prayer and bible reading/study. The clear application though is that we believe a relationship is exactly that. It is two people in communication learning of one another to know them a little bit more every day.
If that's the purpose of a quiet time then it cant be done by appointments and religious practice. We often see the devotion as a time to pray and read the bible, similar to taking vitamins in the morning to do us some good and get us through the day but what if we see prayer and reading the bible as to different things. We want to show you how these two aspects of devotional life are in fact two different forms of communication. We want to teach you how to get to grips with both forms and to understand how the Lord is communicating with you through them. Once understood we then want to teach you that 'praying without ceasing' and 'meditating on the word day and night' indicate a continual, moment by moment devotional experience. As such we will show you how to move from an appointment to finding your Rhythm of continual conversation in the most rewarding relationship you will ever have.
Value Statements
We want to help you develop and grow your relationship with Christ. to help you understand our philosophy we have produced a series of short videos to explain, click 'our philosophy' button below to find out more. For our live seminar series click our 'workshops' button or to find out more about our 'study hall' support groups, click on that button