Why should we have a daily quiet time? That is a good question. It is a significant investment to spend every single day some 30-60 minutes in God’s Word. We are all busy and our days are already overflowing with activities and responsibilities. So why should we pile even more on our packed plates?
The specific answer may be different for different people, but the underlying reason is probably the same for everybody. Spending time with our Heavenly Father is simply more valuable than anything else in life. Reading His Word and communicating with Him through prayer helps us get the right perspective. He is more than able to make up the sacrifice of time we give to Him, and through His Spirit we get filled with joy, peace, and love. That is the main reason we should have a daily quiet time, to get closer to God on a daily basis and improve our relationship with Him.
There is another good reason to have a daily quiet time: that we may finish our Christian race well. The Bible gives us the example of King Solomon, who was the wisest man who ever lived (1 Kings 3:12). No one before him nor no one after him was as wise and discerning as Solomon was. Yet, he did not finish well. At the end of his life, God was angry with Solomon and divided the kingdom of Israel in two, because of Solomon’s sin. So what went wrong? How is it possible that the wisest man in history got sidetracked and ended poorly in his relationship with God? And if Solomon did not finish well, what hope is there for mere mortals like us?
The scriptures give us some good insight into what happened and how we can learn from king Solomon. For this, we have to start much earlier, in Deuteronomy 17. There we read:
Deuteronomy 17:14. “When you come to the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ 15. you may indeed set a king over you whom the LORD your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.
16. Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the LORD has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again.’ 17. And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.
18. “And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. 19. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, 20. that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.
This is very interesting. Hundreds of years before Israel started to have kings, God already knew that one day they would. And He gives some very specific instructions to Israel’s future kings. There are three they should not do, and one thing they should. The three things they should not do are:
Don’t get too many horses, especially not those from Egypt
Don’t get too many wives
Don’t get too much silver and gold
In addition to these three don’ts, there is one thing that they should do. They should make for themselves a copy of the law, and read it all the days of their lives, so that they might do what it says. So in essence, they were commanded to have a daily quiet time! The result would be that they would fear God and not be prideful, and they would not depart from God’s instructions, neither to the right nor to the left.
When this was written, the law basically consisted of the Torah, the five books of Moses. All in all, less than 200 chapters. Suppose the king would read two chapters a day, that means he would read through the entire law more than three times per year. So future kings would be reminded at least three times per year of those three specific things that they, as kings of Israel, should not do. Don’t get too many horses, wives, nor gold (cars, cuties, cash). But what happened to Solomon? In 1 Kings 10 and 11 we see the following:
1 Kings 10:14. Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold, 15. besides that which came from the explorers and from the business of the merchants, and from all the kings of the west and from the governors of the land. 16. King Solomon made 200 large shields of beaten gold; 600 shekels of gold went into each shield. 17. And he made 300 shields of beaten gold; three minas of gold went into each shield. And the king put them in the House of the Forest of Lebanon.
21. All King Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the House of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold. None were of silver; silver was not considered as anything in the days of Solomon.
26. And Solomon gathered together chariots and horsemen. He had 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horsemen, whom he stationed in the chariot cities and with the king in Jerusalem. 28. And Solomon's import of horses was from Egypt and Kue, and the king's traders received them from Kue at a price.
1 Kings 11:1. Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, 3. He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart.
So the three things that he was specifically told not to do, he actually did. From this we can conclude that the one thing he was told to do, namely to have a daily quiet time, he probably did not do. If he would have read three times a year not to gather too much gold, nor too many wives or horses, would he have sent out his merchants to gather more gold? Would he have imported horses and chariots from Egypt? And would he have continued to marry more women? That seems highly unlikely.
The results are terrifying.
1 Kings 11:4. For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father. 5. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 6. So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and did not wholly follow the LORD, as David his father had done. 7. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. 8. And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods.
9. And the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice 10. and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the LORD commanded. 11. Therefore the LORD said to Solomon, “Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant.
So if the world’s wisest man did not finish what hope is there for us? We can learn from his example and have a daily quiet time, so that we may “learn to fear the Lord and not turn away from His commandments, neither to the right nor to the left”.
Godspeed!
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