191. You Don't Need a Perfect Morning to Meet with God

[gentle music] So I wanna start by being honest with you about something.

There was a season in my life, not long ago actually, when I was teaching piano outside of my home, and I was working at several different studios, and I had to be dressed and prepared and mentally ready and just out of the door every morning by a specific time.

There's no leisure time to sip tea or to go into this hour-long Bible study at some beautiful little writing desk with a candle.

My quiet time looked like a quiet, quick prayer whispered while I made my coffee or tea, a Bible verse that I'd pull up on my phone while I waited in the car, and sometimes it was a prayer I would say as I'm riding the train to work.

And you guys, I carried a lot of guilt about that because really, everywhere I looked, I was seeing those gorgeous depictions of what a godly woman's morning was supposed to look like.

You know, the candles, the leather-bound journal, the steaming mug of something artisanal, the open Bible with all the color-coded highlights and the tabs.

You know, maybe two hours or an hour at least of uninterrupted worship music playing in the background and scripture reading before the rest of the household even stirred.

And I was over here praying in the train or in my car at 6:00 in the morning, wondering if I was somehow doing this whole thing wrong.

Can anybody relate to that? I hope I'm not by myself here.

I have a feeling I'm not the only one, because we're all looking at what other people are doing and how they're doing it.

When we see Instagram reels and we see how people are doing their morning routines, it just looks so inviting and so delicious, something that we want in our lives.

But here's what I wanna say to that version of myself, and to you if you're in a season like that right now.

That guilt that you might be feeling that you're just not, quote-unquote, "doing it right", that's not from God.

The measuring stick you were using to evaluate your spiritual life is not God's measuring stick.

The standard that said your quiet time had to be a long, beautiful, Pinterest-worthy, and perfectly perfect and peaceful time in order for it to count, that came from culture.

That came from our Christianese culture, and not from, not from God necessarily.

And I think it's worth stopping right there and just letting that land, because I believe this is one of the sneakiest traps we fall into as Christian women.

We take something that is genuinely good, spiritual disciplines like time in the Word of God, intentional prayer, and we turn it into a performance.

We start using them as measuring sticks for how good of a Christian we are on any given day.

And when our morning doesn't look like that highlight reel, we feel like we've already failed before we open our eyes at 8:00 AM.

This is not the abundant life that Jesus came to give us.

That's just another form of striving.

So let me reframe this for us because I think we need a different foundation to build on.