3 Ways to Find Time to Grow Closer to God

No matter how busy you feel, you can make the time to grow closer to God.

Have you ever said that you couldn’t find time to be with God? It is a common struggle that we all have. You want to grow closer to God. You want to be consistent with your prayer, bible study, and other disciplines, but you just feel like you can’t find the time. 

I want to talk about this today because you must begin to look at different obstacles to your relationship with God so that you can overcome them and get that close relationship that you are looking for. In my work with coaching clients and conversations in the community, I noticed we all seem to have or have had a lot of the same struggles in the past. 

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They keep you stuck. From having a strong faith and from walking out your purpose and having peace when things are going crazy. It doesn’t have to. You don’t have to be held hostage or held captive by these things that get in your way because there is a way to overcome every single obstacle that is keeping you from drawing closer to God. 

Today I want to look at the infamous time struggle that we all share. We are in a society where busy is held in high esteem. You’re so busy doing all the things. You have so many responsibilities. Your kids have responsibilities. You’re driving kids to their activities. You’re working in the home out of the home. 

Maybe you’re volunteering at school, serving, supporting your families, involved in your church and you’re trying to do so many things that you find yourself spread out too thin. There’s no room left in your life for God and that is not a good place to be. I want to share three things that you can do that are going to help you overcome this objection. 

Grow Closer to God Step 1: Evaluate Your Time

The first thing is to take some time and evaluate your time. I just talked about how as a society we’re all busy, busy, busy. There’s this famous quote saying, I can’t remember who said it, if the enemy can’t keep you from God, he’ll just keep you busy. He doesn’t have to make you sin or keep you from your time with God. 

He will just make you so busy that you don’t have time to do any of that. That’s where so many of you find yourselves.  I want you to evaluate your time. Sit down with pen and paper and write down how you are spending your time every single day. This is such an amazing exercise to do. 

Keeping a time diary will help you look at what you’re doing with your time. To see where your time is going so that you can see what needs to change to fit in the important things. I think this is such an important activity to do because you’re going to find out if you are too busy.

If you’ve got too many commitments and responsibilities and you need to start taking things off your plate. Or are you just busy doing things that actually don’t matter and that aren’t super important? I know there are times when you are busy. 

I am a busy woman. I have four boys and they all have various schedules, activities, commitments, and things. I homeschool and I run a business. I’m involved in my church. I’m trying to have my own life and do things for myself. There’s a lot of things on my plate and I am the only driver in my house. 

I have to do all the things and take people to all of their things. I’m really busy and it would be really easy for me to say  I just don’t have time for God when in fact that’s not true. If it were true that I just didn’t have time for God, it would be time to make some changes. 

Another thing that happens is that you get busy doing things that don’t matter. Scrolling on social media or watching 800 episodes on Netflix. Just doing things that don’t matter because you haven’t taken the time to make a plan for your day so that you know what to do. 

Grow Closer to God Step 2: Make it a Priority

Next, you’ve got to make your time with God a priority. When you are looking at your time, looking at your schedule, and planning your days, you want to put in your most important things first. Put in when you have to be at work, when you have appointments, and what time you want to go to sleep. 

You’re going to put those things in first and then you’re going to build the rest of your schedule around that. As Christian women who want to spend time with God, who want to have a close relationship, and who need stronger faith, make sure that one of the first things you schedule in your days is that time with God. 

Even if it’s just 5 minutes or 15 minutes a day, it needs to have a protected place on your calendar, on your schedule every single day, every single week. It needs to be a priority because when you prioritize something, you are going to make sure that that happens. After all, it’s important to you.

If you can make sure that you are at home and in place to watch your favorite show, go to your favorite sporting event, get your hair done, get your nails done, or whatever it is, then you can do the same for your time with God. Make it a priority. If you have time to watch Netflix or Hulu or whatever it is your thing that you watch, you have time to spend with God. 

Grow Closer to God Step 3: Get Creative

The third thing is to get creative. I hear this so many times: “I really want to do[ blank] when it comes to my time with God, but I don’t think it’s the right thing to do because I’ve never seen anybody else do that before or because so-and-so said that it didn’t work for her. “

Listen, there is no one right way to spend time with God. There just isn’t. You and God are the ones who need to have conversations about what is right for you in your time with him. If you want to go for a five-mile hike and listen to some worship music or scripture while you’re out there, go for it. There’s nothing wrong with that. 

You have to get out of thinking that there’s only one way to spend time with God because somebody somewhere came up with this idea that you have to get up at 4:00 AM, read your Bible in the original Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek, pray for eight hours a day and fast 37 days a month, and that’s the way that you spend time with God. 

No, not true. So get out of that way of thinking. Don’t tell yourself it’s all or nothing and if you can’t do it this way, then you’re just not going to do it at all. That is not going to serve you well. Be creative. When you look at your time and you look at your life and you look at what you have available, go with that. 

There’s no reason to set yourself up for failure by saying you’re going to spend two hours with God when you know you only have half an hour. Plan accordingly. You can make daily time with God a priority. You can make it work. It doesn’t have to be hard or stressful. 

But you do have to be good stewards of the 24 hours a day you have. If you are chronically exhausted, it will be really hard to focus on what you’re reading, what you’re praying, and what you’re trying to do. If you’re so busy you can’t even get a moment to yourself, that’s a problem. 

Please do yourself a favor. Take 15 minutes to examine your days. Examine where your time is going, examine what you’re doing, what activities you have, and figure out what needs to go, and what needs to stay so that you can prioritize the time with God.

Even if it means you plop your kids in front of a cartoon for 15 minutes so that you can have time with God. Do that, be creative. Make it work. Figure out how to make sure that come hell or high water, you are going to have that time with God every single day. 

It needs to be that important for you to be consistent because the close relationship with God that you are seeking, is found in consistency. It is impossible to be close to somebody, to know somebody, to have a good relationship with somebody that you don’t spend time with, and God is no different. 

Please, take this admonishment to get a grip on your time. Get a grip on your schedule. Stop saying that you don’t have time because the truth is that everybody’s got the same amount of time and often the problem is that you haven’t made God a priority. That’s totally fixable. You can do it. 

Other Helpful Resources

• Where is God when You’re Suffering?
• 15 Easy Ways to Strengthen Your Faith as an Introverted Christian Woman
• How to Take Your Thoughts Captive

These 3 tips will help you protect time in your days do that you can grow closer to God.