Six (6) ways to develop consistency with God

In most of my previous posts, I have highlighted the importance of spending time with God. It is important that we find consistent time to spend with God. Life can get very busy but time with God should never be sacrificed . Consistency with God leads to consistency in our growth in and knowledge of Him. We get to know more about a person when we spend time with that person. We get to understand what a person likes or dislikes and how to relate with them when we spend time with them. So it is with God. We know God more and more and understand Him better when we spend time with Him.

Remember even Jesus who is part of the trinity always spent time with God consistently no matter how busy he was so we cannot afford to live our lives without this. See Solitude with God, a study of Jesus’ continuous fellowship with his father. Here are six ways to develop consistency with God.

1. Intentionally set aside some minutes each morning to read your Bible alone- The word of God is Jesus Christ himself and we get to know more about God and have him talk to us directly through His word. In your plan for each day, determine to set aside and spend the first few minutes of your day engaging with God rather than your phone. I have generally found that I easily get distracted and switch between apps when I use the Bible app on my phone in the morning, so now I have decided to consciously leave my phone behind, and move to another space where I can just use my hard copy bible, along with my notebook to write down any promptings or messages, or questions I have from the passages I read.

On the other hand, if you are more disciplined and can use the phone on your Bible during this time, please do but please ensure not to move to other apps as you could easily forget that you’re spending time with God in the first place. Also remember that this does not need to be for hours on end as you have to go to work or school. This could be about 30 minutes but you must be as focused as possible and ready to receive from God. Prior to reading your Bible, always ask the Holy Spirit to teach you and speak to you as you study the word.

This is different from reading a devotional where someone has read the Bible and provided their own interpretation or understanding of what they have read. This should be you reading the Bible directly with the expectation of hearing directly from God and learning directly from the word. Additionally, because this is in the morning and you might be very eager to jump on to your tasks for the day, you don’t need to read a whole chapter but can focus on a few verses in a particular chapter. An example of this can be where you divide James 1 into two sections to read half of the chapter one morning and the other half the next morning. This would lead you to read thirteen (13) verses the first morning and the remaining fourteen (14), the second morning rather than reading all twenty-seven (27) verses in one day with you most-likely rushing through it. The goal here is to have God speak to you and for you to learn directly from God. After you read, take note of the key message or one thing that you learn from the passage. As you do this daily, at a point you’ll realize that you cannot start your day without seeking God and this develops consistency with God.

2. Intentionally set aside some time in the morning for you to speak directly with God alone-. Communal Prayer is extremely important but just as Jesus, even after spending time with his disciples found time alone to fellowship with his Father alone, we also need to find time for just ourselves and our heavenly father. It is not enough to join all the prayer sessions happening online in the morning. While we do that, it is also important that we relate personally with God alone. Here also, we need to remove all distractions around us which might cause our attention to stray. Even when we remove distractions, our minds can wander from one problem to the other or one task to the other but please don’t stop praying when this happens. It happens to us all. Keep praying and ask the Holy Spirit to help you focus on God. Psalm 91:1 says he who dwells in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. The more we pray and spend time with God, the more we abide under the shadow of the Almighty. Under His shadow we are protected, provided for and kept.

Here also, it’s not about the quantity of time spent but about doing this in faith, the quality and consistency. Make this a priority each morning to start the day and take charge of your day with God. It doesn’t have to be 3 or 4 hours but can even be 15, 30 minutes, an hour or even two so far as you make this a priority each day and always remember your goal of spending time with God. When we pray in faith as led by the Holy Spirit, our lives are shaped according to God’s purpose and plan and our thoughts, intentions, goals, desires, likes and dislikes are aligned with God’s.

3. Have conversations with God throughout the day- It’s not enough to engage with God just in the morning and leave him out of the rest of our day. God is interested in everything that concerns us. As such, even in the least important things in our day, we have to find a way to involve God. Psalm 3:5-6 says trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your path. During various tasks in the day, we can speak to God, ask Him questions, ask His opinion on certain things, ask for His help on things we are struggling with, just speak to Him like we would to a friend. The first part of James 4:8 says draw near to God and He will draw near to you. We draw near to someone when we engage more with the person.

Even in relationships and friendships, people who are closer to each other are those who speak more to each other, who have more frequent phone calls and tell each other all the things that happen in their day. Same with our relationship with God. Fortunately, we don’t have to pick up our phones to call God, we can just speak to Him whenever we want because His Holy Spirit is always with us. It may sound silly to some of us but truly it really is as simple as that. While we set aside time in our mornings to learn from God and hear him through His word, let’s practise the presence of God by engaging Him throughout our day. It doesn’t take anything away from us and really doesn’t hurt. This helps to ensure that we are consistently acknowledging the presence of God in our lives and involving Him in every aspect of our lives and we don’t have to wait till morning or evening to tell him about our day.

4. Reading the full BIble in one or two years- I can’t even count the number of times I decided to read the Bible in one year and failed to complete this. So many times, I started different one-year Bible plans but failed to complete it but when I was finally able to complete I saw a significant change and impact in my life. A change which gave me the confidence to even start this blog in the first place. Bible reading plans are such that the various chapters in the Bible are spread across the whole year and each day there is a portion to read. This could be between two to four chapters each day and could be a mixture of old testament and new testament chapters or a focus on only old or new testament chapters each day depending on the type of plan you are reading. Although these are quite a large number of chapters in a day, engaging with the Bible consistently each day with the goal of reading through the whole Bible allows us to easily identify sources of key scriptures in the Bible which can be applied to our daily lives. It allows us to see God in different ways across different generations, to experience his love to different people and His ultimate sacrifice. It allows a deeper knowledge and understanding of the person of God from the beginning of and through time.

Yes, there may be days when you might miss your bible plan for the day but please don’t give up, strive to catch up whenever possible. Although life can get extremely busy there is still enough time to read the word when we make it a priority. Ultimately, this builds consistency in us when we are able to catch up, fill the gaps and continue with the plan. You may not necessarily have anything to pen down in your journal on a particular day as you read the assigned chapters for that day but as you engage daily, the word of God becomes an important part of your day and that builds consistency.

5. Communal Fellowship- Spending more time with like-minded believers rather than people who don’t know God helps to build consistency. The more we spend time at church, praying and fellowshipping with other believers and also studying the word together ensures that our days are filled with things that have to do with God. The more we hear about God and have conversations about Him, the easier it is to always think about Him. Key to communal fellowship are the friends we surround ourselves with. Do your friends know God or they don’t like to hear about God? Do you and your friends ever discuss God and his love or it’s all about the juiciest gossip and trends?

Over the years I have come to really appreciate friends who encourage me to seek a deeper relationship with God, friends who pray for and with me, who are able to point me toward God when things are tough, and friends who are able to speak God’s heart to me when I am being disobedient. If you are a christian and have christian friends, let’s normalise talking more about God than the newest gossip, let’s normalise sharing scripture than the newest trend and let’s normalise praying together when we meet rather than meeting to just eat good food. We build consistency when our community is consistent with the things of God. If you also don’t have Christian friends, seek out friends who know God and can help you develop a deeper relationship with and try to talk more about God with your non-christian friends. It’s never easy to start these kinds of conversations but the Holy Spirit is our Helper.

6. Social Media Switch up- I started the gospel citizen instagram page when I wanted to only see Christian content because there was a time that all I kept seeing was negativity. I followed only Christian bloggers, preachers, musicians etc just to ensure that there was a singular focus to the content I was exposed to on social media and that really helped me. Gradually, that page became a Christian blog where I posted scriptures and insights I obtained from scripture. It helped with my consistency with God because whenever I logged on to instagram which is my favourite social media platform, I saw more posts and content about God than about anything else. It brought my attention more to the goodness of God, His love and the need to spend more time with God rather than all troubles happening in the world. I saw things from the perspective of different believers across the world and how their faith in God had changed their lives and that encouraged me to also build my relationship with God.

My point here is this, social media is here to stay. You can decide to go off social media completely but there will always be another type of social media platform that you will be exposed to. Why not check the kind of people and platforms you follow. You don’t have to create a whole new social media platform to follow Christian content but you can update your current instagram, facebook, ticktock, snapchat platform to follow more Godly, spirit filled and Christian content. This also helps to develop consistency with God as we become more exposed to content that encourages our identity as children of God and our relationship with God.

This list is not exhaustive, there are more ways to develop consistency with God but these are a few that I have tried and have worked for me so far. Of course I still have a long way to go and I am still learning but my ultimate goal each day is to spend as much time with God as possible and I pray we all strive for the same. God is our source and the more we spend time with our source the more we are filled and equipped to find, follow and fulfil our purpose. Also, you don’t have to do all these at once, please take one at a time and build on them as time goes on and your life will never be the same. God loves us and always wants us closer.