Ep. 36 – Get Your Priorities Right – Daily Time With God

Biggest Takeaways You Don’t Want to Miss:

• In order to clarify your purpose and know which steps to take, you must prioritize your daily time with God
• Best way to get it done is to set your alarm 20-60minutes earlier than you normally wake up and pray
• Just in case your schedule is tight, you may still schedule it for another time in the day, just do it.
• Taking time out (2-3 days) to wait on God to speak is also very important. Fasting can help here as well.

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Episode 36 Transcripts: Get Your Priorities Right – Daily Time With God

Olu: Welcome again to Like Jesus Podcast. This is Olu Sobanjo and I have with me, Ade Sobanjo.

Ade: Hello!

Olu: Today we are very glad to be talking to you. Last week, we were talking about saying No and learning to say No in a good way in order to fulfill purpose or understand what God’s purpose is for your life. One of the points that we focused on last week was the idea of getting your priorities right.

This week, what we want to do is to lay emphasis on “How do you get your priorities right?”

It’s in the place of prayer. It is in the place of your quiet time, not just the prayer meeting at your church or one you attend at the church. Those, they add up too. However, for you to consistently hear God’s voice, you need to get real with God. You need to make your time alone with Him every day as a priority so that whenever you’re saying Yes to things, you’d know that this time is my time with God and I’m not going to give it out to somebody else.

We’ll go back and forth talking about our own experiences with quiet time, why it’s important and why you need to have one if you don’t have it right now or you have it sporadically, so you can start focusing on getting it done on a daily basis.

So, I’m going to hand it over to you.

Ade: Yes. You know, as you were talking, I was wondering: What are the experiences of people with quiet time and when we say quiet time, what comes to the mind of people?

Some don’t understand it. They don’t know what quiet time is. They’ll call it just a time that you will spend alone with God. Usually, people do that early in the morning. They study a portion of scripture, sing a few songs, wait on God to speak to them and say a prayer. And I think it’s very difficult to do. I personally have found it quite challenging way back when I started learning how to spend time with God. Now, it’s not as though I don’t like spending time with God but when you’re doing something exciting or when it’s exam periods in school or probably, you have a deadline, you begin to forget to do your quiet time or spend time with God. I want to say that this is very important because I’ve found that the major decisions I’ve made in my life were times when I spent quality time waiting on God.

So, it’s not just quiet time, even time for fasting and praying may be something that we should talk about today.

Olu: Yes! I think that over the years for me, it’s been a challenge depending on my schedule and all that I have on my plate.

I remember the time that I was in the university, it was easier. I’d just wake up and since I don’t have any responsibilities, I’d just take my Bible, play a CD and just worship and pray for one hour before I get up from my bed. Nobody is going to come knock on my door to do anything. But as I grew, it became a lot more challenging and then when I got married, it even became more challenging because we want to pray together; your schedule is different from mine; you’re a morning person and I like working in the night; my work schedule… Then the children started coming.

I remember the time that I was on maternity leave for a year. It was beautiful. It was easy for me to wake up at 6 in the morning and just spend one hour of prayer. I’m not rushing to work; I just take my time and that year was phenomenal. I just really loved the connection that I had with God. The real understanding that I got from God came from that time because I was focusing on God, understanding Him and I was able to even do extra time of fasting and prayers like you said. Then the school grind came into the picture… So, it’s a lot of changes that affect this and I remember there was a time in my life that I couldn’t do it in the morning because I sleep very late at night so I don’t want to wake up in the morning. We’ll still squeeze in time to pray together as a family but my own personal time would rather be sometime during the day or at night and in bed.

But I find that all these other times, there’s a lot of other things that are taking that time away from you. And I find that for this season of my life, waking up earlier has been a big help because then I’m able to understand what God is saying; I’m able to schedule time to be alone with God even before we have the family devotion, which all are important. It’s from that time of fellowship with God that other stronger things; stronger connection with God comes in.

But you brought in the aspect of even extra which is you get extra i.e. you do your one hour. In that one hour, what do you do?

In that one hour, I find myself sometimes worshipping at the beginning for like 5-10 minutes depending on where I’m at in my mind and in my walk. Sometimes, I’d actually get up and dance. Sometimes, I’d kneel down depending on whether I’m awake or alert or trying to get myself into it. Then I start reading maybe a devotional or a portion of the scriptures and then I think about it and as I’m thinking and meditating on it, I’m praying. So easily, one hour can go with practice.

For those that are starting out fresh; you’re seeing this as important from this episode and you’re saying, “You know what? I want to make up my mind”, one hour may be a stretch for you to even get to the point of fasting and praying for 3 days. I know that’s where you are going but at the beginning, you may want to just make up your mind to wake up 20 minutes earlier than you’d have or you normally will and just spend that 20 minutes to focus on hearing God. Take the scriptures, read it, meditate on it, pray it out. Ask questions like: How is this going to affect my life? How can I ask the Holy Spirit to help me to understand this? What else is God saying to me? What did God bring me here to do?

The more you start doing this, the more you get acquainted with it. Then, you write out. That engages your mind and shows that you’re serious about it. For those that are starting it out, it’s good to take time  20 minutes is not bad to start with but then you’d want to graduate it because you are enjoying it [if you’re enjoying it]. If you’re not enjoying it, reach out so we can talk about this. Leave a comment on the website or send me a message. Let’s see; maybe there’s something you need to be doing that you are not doing or a mindset change that needs to happen. We’d work through that but then gradually, you’ll start progressing until you get to an hour. From there, we can now come to the idea of spending extra time.

You want to say something?

Ade: Yes. As you were talking, I was thinking about somebody that is busy; the schedule is really tight but they have some time during the day. So maybe, they don’t have to do it first thing in the morning because that may be difficult…

Olu: [breaks in] That’s true.

Ade: [continues] So lunch break is a good place to do it if you can if you have the time and space.

Olu: Yes!

Ade: So we should just be focused first to make sure it happens. Put it in your schedule for the day. I think that’s where you start from. Just put it in your schedule for the day. Morning is better because it will direct your day. It will focus your day and that’s what you were saying. But, if you can’t even put it in the morning, put it somewhere and from there ask God to help you to put it in the morning and maybe it will take you to the next stage.

There are some people who know they can spend hours and they are only spending 10 minutes and they are wondering, “How come? Why is it that I’m not performing at the level at which I’m supposed to perform?” Those are the people that I’m saying to you; take time out. Take three days off. Have a retreat.

You may sleep throughout the first day of the retreat…

Olu: …because you needed the rest.

Ade: Yes! But at the retreat, you may come up with something. If you really want to know what your life is all about, you may need to take that whole three days off or one whole day off – one Saturday off to really focus. Ask those really deep questions like, “What will happen if I stop doing these things and just focus on this one?

Olu: You know, you’re very right.

I can’t remember but I saw a post or a quote earlier today or yesterday but I didn’t write it down. But it said something like,

“Our connection with God depends on Us.”

God is always ready. He is always waiting for us but we are the one that needs to make up and actually connect and say, “I mean this for real.” There are so many things that will fight for that time that you want to give to the Lord; that you want to use to understand what God is saying to you. But, If you don’t make up your mind and say “I really want to hear from God”, you’re not going to do it.

If you don’t say that… and I think that’s where I used to have the issue where I’ll say, “I’ll do it later. I’ll put it during the day…” It’s great, don’t get me wrong. It’s great that you will still get it done and at the stage, it’s good. But for those of us that you’ve done it before and you’ve seen the way it has affected your life, the point is you shouldn’t risk it.

I have a little thing that I wrote down and every morning, I actually read it. And part of it is, I’m committed to waking up at 5 am in the morning every day. The end of it is,  I am committed to going to bed at 9 pm every day but I’m not committed to that one. The one I’m committed to and I remind myself over and over again is the waking up at 5 am. When you commit yourself to this thing, God actually comes and helps you. When you say, “I want to do it”, then God begins to help you. That’s when God begins to give you the grace to understand Him more; to understand why He called you; to understand what to do that day… You’ll begin to see some extra grace that you have and you didn’t know was available for you.

So I want to encourage us, for those of us that are like me; We are all the same. There are other things that are keeping us awake at night. There are so many things that would try to fight for that time that you are giving to God but really you’re giving it to God so you can be blessed. It’s not like when you are giving a gift to me because when you’re giving a gift to me, you give it and it goes to me. That’s it. But this one hour, if you give it to God, you’re getting more; you’re getting the 23 hours that is left and you’re getting a lot more from it. So, start seeing it as very important. Start prioritizing it and God will give you the grace.

You can also talk to people around you so they can keep you accountable as well; so they can wake you up… I know sometimes when we wake up in the morning, my husband deliberately leaves his own phone in the room with the alarm still set so that I can wake up. But of course, I’m up already! So stop doing that. Take your phone with you. Don’t distract my quiet time.

[Both laugh]

Ade: It is a beautiful thing to be able to get your day started by prayer and meditating on what God wants for you in the day. So work at it. Aim at it and keep working at it until it works.

I want to also encourage the listeners that if you really want to go far in your purpose and fulfill destiny, you have to deliberately make time to find out more about what God has planned. I cannot tell you how important it is to do so. Now, so many things that we have done in our lives has been after a time of waiting on the Lord. I don’t think the fasting is 100% necessary but taking the time out is extremely important. Fasting makes it better. I’ve done times of 2-3 fasting.

How do you do that?

You take the time. You plan it. Go to a place – if you can do it at home, great! If you can’t, go to a place that is convenient and private [without distractions] and just do it. Plan the day. Plan your time to read scriptures, pray, rest, meditate on the Word and think about your life. Write down things. Ask yourself tough questions and answers them. While you are doing that, God will speak to you. That’s what we do every morning; How was yesterday? What did I do wrong? What will I do today? What are the 5 things that I must accomplish today? Write them down before you come out of that quiet time.

The more we do that, the more effective we become in our day and in our lives.

Olu: Alright! On that note, we are going to wrap it up today. I’d like you to pray. You want to pray?

Ade: Yeah sure. Why not?

Father, we thank you for everyone that has been listening to us again this week. We’ve been focusing on spending time with you before we start our day and before we start our week and even sometimes before we start some important seasons in our lives. So, Lord, we pray for grace. For everyone who knows they need to really spend time with you but they’ve not been doing it, we pray that they will have the grace to do so. And for those who have been doing it haphazardly, we’d become more consistent. For those who have been consistent, I pray that the time will be really effective because I know we can take time out, spend it and really get nothing out of it. So, Lord, we pray for effective time with you this week and for the rest of our lives. In Jesus name.

Olu: Amen!!!

Alright, people, we’ll see you again. We’ll talk again next week. Continue to shine for Jesus and take time to listen to Him.

God bless you! Bye for now.