A runner has a difficult time describing the “runner’s high” that one gets after building up to running several miles at a crack. It’s something you have to experience yourself in order to comprehend it. There’s an unearthly wonder in the deep communication with God that comes after years of daily alone time with Him. Just like the over - whelming awe I felt seeing the white sand ocean floor clearly, 60 feet down through Cancun’s turquoise waters, there’s an indescribable awe when you have that clear connection with the Almighty from the bottom of your heart.

But the “runner’s high” comes after steady discipline, building up the capability to run for that long a period of time. It was almost a year of steady, daily devotions before I was conscious of God’s very, very real presence during devotions and in my minute by minute life. When I saw the seemingly remote Creator of the universe actually being a supernaturally obvious part of my little life, I truly fell in love with Him.

However, just like it’s the fitness you’re after in the running, not the “high”, it’s the constant connection with God I want, not simply the joy. The discipline can seem just an act at first, just a decision. But once the true reason for it begins to be a reality, the discipline goes on “auto -pilot” and it doesn’t seem like a chore; as with anything that becomes a habit, you’re not aware of the effort.

In my own personal life, I can easily lose my focus. Whether it’s just my helium balloon personality, or my ‘tumbleweed’ traveling life, I don’t know, but I do need to have a disciplined, daily, ‘first thing in the morning’ time alone with God. I am more concerned that I do not lose that habit than anything else in life. It has become the source of my real life and permeates every hour of the day and every activity. To have a time alone with God, but forget about it the rest of the day, is to meet Him in the closet , but leave Him there. To be aware of Him all day, but not spend time focusing on Him only and listening to Him in His Word and by His Holy Spirit, is to go through the day with your husband nearby, but letting the kids’ needs, the job’s demands, the noisy TV, the telephone, and all the distractions come between you and him being alone together focusing just on each other.

Daniel, one of the two most amazing Jewish administrators in history, in the top position of leadership in the major empires of their day (Joseph was the other one), had his time alone with God 3 times a day. I was acquainted with a young pastor who had time set aside 2 times daily, morning and before bed. In Bruce Wilkinson’s book, “Secrets of the Vine”, describing the incredible necessity of private time with God, Bruce tells about a friend of his who had been studying great Christian leaders. All of them without exception had their time with God early in the morning. John Wesley, without whose revivals we would probably not have the United States of America, woke up at 3 or 4 AM to kneel before God so he could be ministering to the farmers in their fields by dawn. Martin Luther, voted the second most influential person of the last 1,000 years, said, ”I have so much to do today that I must spend the first three hours in prayer”. Daws Trotman, founder of the world-wide Navigators Bible Study and Discipleship, spent two and a half hours daily alone with God. Richard Wurmbrand, who woke up the world to the tortured Christian prisoners around the world and founded Voice of the Martyrs to help them, had devotions from 4-8 every morning. Bill Gothard, founder of the now worldwide, many - faceted IBLP ministries gets up at 2:30 or 3 AM for private time with God. Dave Wilkerson, ministering to hundreds of thousands of people without hope through Teen Challenge, was having his two hours alone with God at the very top of the day, 12 midnight to 2 AM, before God led him into his spiritual calling. The pastor of the largest church in the world, in Seoul, Korea, Pastor Cho, spends 3 hours daily on his knees in prayer. The totally dedicated people do not, cannot be who they are without their hours alone with God their priority. Peter Lord, a pastor in Titusville, Florida, said, “Never let the breadth of your ministry exceed the depth of your life (with God).” I would add to that, “ the breadth of your true, eternally lasting ministry for God will not exceed the depth or amount of your private time totally alone with God.”

Even though ‘first thing in the morning’ devotions is positively daily for me, my life isn’t regular enough to get up every morning before dawn. But the days that I do wake up that early for my time alone with God, awesome is the only word to describe it. Even when the reason I’m up is because of praying fervently, even full of anxiety over a situation or person, the unearthly calm, vibrant navy color over everything outside, knowing you’re all alone except for God’s presence, is too powerful for common words. There is nothing else like it in all of life.

But life is regular enough that we all do some things consistently every day. Think of what you do every day without fail. Unless you’re very ill you get out of bed every day. You feed yourself every day. Get dressed. Go to school or work. Go to sleep every night. Devotions can become that regular and they most certainly are that vital. Afraid of them becoming too routine and not real enough? God will take care of that. He is perfectly capable of keeping things from getting routine!

Here are just a handful of verses that have meant a lot to me about meeting with the Lord in the morning:

Psalms 46:5 “God is within her, she will not fall. God will help her at break of day.”
Psalm ll0:3b “...from the womb of the dawn you will receive the dew of your youth.” Psalm 90:14 “Satisfy us in the morning with Your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad for all our days.”
Psalm 92:2 “It is good to praise the Lord and make music to Your Name, O Most High, to proclaim Your love in the morning and Your faithfulness at night,...”
Psalm 143:8 “Let the morning bring me word of Your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in You. Show me the way I should go, for to You I lift up my soul.”
Psalms 57:7,8 “My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast, I will sing and make music. Awake, my soul! Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn.”
Psalm 119:147, 148 “I rise before dawn and cry for help; I have put my hope in Your word. My eyes stay open through the watches of the night, that I may meditate on Your promises.”
Luke 4:42 “At daybreak Jesus went out to a solitary place...”
Luke 6:12 “One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, He called His disciples to Him and chose twelve of them...”
Isaiah 50:4b “He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught.”

I remember very distinctly 7 years ago having my time with the Lord and actually complaining to Him about the amount of time it was taking, because I had so much to do that day. I realized immediately how foolish it was and wrenched my thoughts back to reality: this was the most important thing that had to be done that day and every day. This was true reality.

My folks had taught my brother and 3 sisters and I practically from birth how important God’s Word was. They had us memorize verses especially about loving each other, getting along together, and not fighting. And they used them during the week, showing us how the Bible was a part of everything we did. We went to “Bible Memory Association” meetings on Sunday afternoons at our Wheaton Bible Church and quoted the several verses the booklet had us memorize each week on certain subjects. The Christian schools we attended also had verses each grade was assigned to memorize. But even if you could know everything about the Bible, it’s not enough. It is God revealing Himself to us so we can know Him. Here’s an analogy: it’s as if you would have read every bit of history - to the day, every physical fact - down to the blood type, every detail about someone’s life, but you would never have spent time with the person to get your impressions first - hand. God created us to be so intimate with Him that the love and oneness of the best marriage is the only example He can use that would even come close to what He has in mind for our relationship with Him. That can only come from time spent with Him in His Word.

That’s devotions.

I asked Jesus into my heart when I was 5 years old in April, 1958. But I first remember having that heart - felt longing to really know God well in sixth grade when Dad took Billy and I along to Moody Youth Camp. He was teaching the kids about the Holy Spirit and how He is God’s presence here on earth. I had that distinct consciousness that God was in me and wanted me to know Him all the way. Then when I was 14 years old, I was reading in Proverbs and a certain verse struck me as the perfect description of what was happening in my tiny life right at that second, and I knew God’s Word was for my life right now not just a holy book about Him. But I tried to have these ”devotions” I heard people talking about and be regular. I would read the little Daily Bread page for the day but couldn’t seem to stick with the program. Once I remember standing at my upstairs window, looking out over our back yard on 903 North Main Street in Wheaton, just crying, asking God why this Christian life didn’t seem to be real all the time or working for me. I would grow close to Him at church camp and cry, but the emotions would fade in two weeks. It was as if water had been poured over a stone and just evaporated instead of sinking in.

But when I was nineteen, a guy named Bobby Barrows, with whom I had been friends for 4 years, sat me down and said , “Bev, you have to make the commitment. You have to decide to spend at least a half hour every morning alone with God, whether you have time or not. God’s already done His part. You do yours. Start with Proverbs. It’s the easiest, because it has thirty-one chapters, one for each day of each month. Just read a chapter everyday until it becomes a part of you and God will lead you beyond that. But you have to do it. Every-day. No one else can do it for you. God will take you seriously when you take Him seriously enough to spend regular time everyday with Him.”

So I did it.

In less than a year God turned my life upside down, my world inside out. He organized circumstances and people in such a stunning way in my life, that I knew it was unmistakably God’s engineering. I fell head-over-heels in love with my seemingly remote, but now intimate Creator. He shined His loving spotlight on corners of my heart that were not His, control buttons I was still hovering over, and several unconfessed faults. He turned my “heart of stone into a heart of flesh” just like He did to the Israelites of His Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament). “I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow My decrees and be careful to keep My laws. They will be My people, and I will be their God.” Ezekiel 11:20,21 And I knew with every fiber that this is what He intended my life with Him to be. No matter how traumatic the changes were that He was making in my insides, what Bobby said had come true. God was serious with my life because I was taking Him very seriously.

I started to read the Bible through after about 11 months of Proverbs saturation and the book of Deuteronomy became my mirror. This book was my reality-check and revamped my comprehension of God being in charge of life. I took every word as my guide into my “Promised Land”, my life as it belongs to God. The rest of the Old Testament showed me how very much like an Israelite I was in my stubbornness and that there are tough consequences if I disobeyed my Lord and fantastic promises if I chose instead to obey Him.

Within 14 months, God had been so phenomenal that I had to start writing everything down in a journal in October, 1973. Then about three years later, the answers to prayer started pouring in so amazingly, I didn’t want to forget what God was doing, so I began a prayer journal, writing down almost every prayer and every answer. Then, while a student at Wheaton College, in November 1976, I was walking down the east stairs in Blanchard Hall between the 3rd and 4th floors after a morning class, and it overcame me, would I believe the Bible and have this real relationship with God if I was the only one in the world who had it? What if my family didn’t believe this, or my school or any of my friends, or anyone in the USA? I looked out the window over the campus and felt the warmth drain from my face. I didn’t know if I would choose this if I was the only one. I continued down the stairs knowing I literally had to choose. One of my friends saw me at the landing on the 2nd floor and said, “Bev! What’s wrong? You’re white as a sheet!” I shook my head and said, “Cyndi, I’ve been so off, so wrong,” and I went to my dorm room to let God take over as if I was the only one in His world. He is constantly growing, bringing things to mind, feeding, pruning. But unless I am feeding on His nourishment everyday, how can He deal with me or use me, or just even be my friend? This is not just a belief or faith or religious system. This is a relationship.

For twenty years, I’ve read one chapter in Proverbs, Psalms, and in the 4 Gospels everyday besides whatever Old and New Testament chapters God led me to. It’s like having a square meal everyday. My brother, Bill, and his wife, Jeanine, had heard at a Navigator conference to stay close to the Gospels in your devotions, because Jesus is the source of our Life in God. So from 1982 through last September, when I started combing through the whole Bible again (I hadn’t read through it in several years), I read a chapter in the Gospels everyday, going through the four every four months.

But this isn’t just reading. It can be in depth studying, looking up the words in the original language. It can be reading of other people’s lives with God, like Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost For His Highest. I’m crazy about books on prayer and Godly character and missionary biographies. Even though sometimes the time goes to a few hours, it never seems long enough.

You just don’t get tired of God. I wish I could share everything with you about life with Him, but that would take a lifetime! It really is like a terrific marriage. It’s been going on 30 years now, and yes, the consistency and reality of this love - relationship with God is all it’s cracked up to be!

Currents Thoughts:

Sharing my heart about the violin album songs.

Former Thoughts:

Violin Tragedy
The Love Chapter Part I
The Love Chapter Part II
Songs from the violin album.
Morning Devotions
Developing talents and using them for God.

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