Make Time | Part 1

Jeremiah 15:16 | Part 1 | Does your time with God feel like a chore? Maybe you expect huge insights every day and come up empty. What needs to change to help you in your time with God? 

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SPEAKER_02 0:04

God gets first and best always. God gets first and best. This is why we see throughout the Old Testament the best of the herd, the firstborn of the flock that was given to God. First and best goes to God. Do that with your day. First thing.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Welcome to the bridge with Junior Ziggler. Junior is the lead teaching pastor at the bridge in Chicagoland. And today we're starting a conversation called Time with God. Now, if you've been a Christian for any length of time, you've probably experienced this. You hear someone talk about their quiet time and it sounds amazing. They talk about how God spoke to them through a passage, how scripture came alive to them, how they spent time with the Lord and they walked away just so encouraged. Meanwhile, you're thinking, Am I missing something? Because maybe you've opened the Bible and you just felt confused. Maybe you've started a Bible plan three different times and you never finished it. Maybe you sat down to pray and you actually fell asleep. The good news is you're not alone. One of the biggest misconceptions about spending time with God is that the mature Christians somehow find it instantaneously easy and obvious. But that's not the picture we see in scripture. Today, Junior takes us to the prophet Jeremiah, a man who described God's word as the joy and the delight of his heart. But before it became a delight, guess what? He had to wrestle with it. And maybe that's exactly what some of us need to hear today. It's worth the challenge and it's worth the wrestle. Let's get into it. Here's Junior.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

It felt like we were ships just kind of passing in the night. Because we we had two little ones at the time. And I was working here doing grad school in the evenings, and Nicole was juggling babies in her job. On top of that, it had been a rough year in our family. Nicole had lost her dad to brain cancer. Our middle child was born, and she had some eye issues with like surgery and lots and lots and lots of appointments. And so Nicole would take like a baby and a two-year-old on road trips up to go be with her dad as he was passing, and we just became ships, ships in the night. We needed a getaway, like just the two of us. And I know this was selfish. It was like, man, I kind of felt like I had lost my girl. Like we used to have so much fun, but I know like life happens. And we talked about getting away, but we had no money. And that's when we remembered a gift card that Nicole's aunt had gave us. It was just this two-night stay in uh Chalet in New Glaris, Wisconsin. This old Swiss town of antiquing. This is like the classic old person town. Like we we had laughed. It's like, are we really gonna do this? We'll be like the youngest in town by like 50 years, but it's like, whatever. Like, this is our only option, let's just do it. So we got child care. We jumped in, jumped in a car, drove to New Glaris, had one of the best weekends really ever. It's like I kind of felt like I got my girl back. We just had fun doing the most boring of things, antiquing with no money, um, hiking, walking around a little historical society, scoring free samples at the bakery. We found the best pizza I've ever had. Like we did nothing worth writing home about, but yet we came home very different, just re-establishing that bond, this stronger relationship. That's the thing with quality time. Quality time is quite possibly the most underrated activity. I mean, you you know this. Relationships fall apart without quality time. And this has been studied biologically, that when you experience this positive social interaction for an extended period of time, like an adventure or just something fun, vacation, just time together, our brain releases oxytocin, which leads to these feelings of trust and relational satisfaction. God designed you that way. God designed you and I to pursue quality time with those that we love. But here's the question: what's your quality time like with God? God designed you for quality time, He created you for relationship with Him. And though He walked away, He came for us. God pursued you, God still pursues you. I mean, that idea is just mind-boggling that the God of this universe wants to spend time with you and invites you to him. And yet, with all of that, as beautiful as that is, there's some tension with that. Quality time with our creator, we want that. Now, pulling it off is what does that look like? Maybe, maybe you've had your time with God this week or last month, and can't really say it was quality time. Kind of be a generous adjective to say when it comes to your time with God. Like you want time with God, but the distractions and the things that get in the way, and it's just kind of hard to focus, and you're reading through God's word, and you start thinking about other things. And to make it worse, maybe then you go to like a small group and you have Jenny in your small group who's always talking about how awesome her time with God is. You know, it's like, wow, but guys, this morning, my time with God this morning is like, my gosh, it was like next to magical. And you're sitting there, you're like, you're happy for Jenny. They kind of wonder if she romanticized it because she says the same about her husband, and you've met her husband. But regardless, regardless, she is all pumped up about her time with God, and you're happy for her, but your time with God that morning is like, well, it wasn't near Jenny's experience. And so it kind of makes you wonder if you're doing something wrong. And that's what we want to talk about for the next four weeks. How do we add more quality to our time with God? And maybe that seems like elemental. Like, really, June, we're gonna spend four weeks talking about this. You know, this is this is one of this is one of the top things that Christians say they struggle with when it comes to their walk with Jesus. How to actually have that time with God. Foundational to our relationship with Him. This is a massive discipleship conversation, massive conversation. We're starting it today, and here's where we begin in Jeremiah 15. We're gonna start in verse 16. Well, as the lens of scripture zooms in, it's 605 BC in a tiny village just outside of Jerusalem. It's just a little outpost town called Anathoth. Now, though Anathoth is very tiny, it's the home of a man who will be known for thousands of years to count. Today he appears out the window. It's hard as racing. His own neighbors and old friends have been plotting his death, and somehow he just knew he'd come to this. See, he was raised by a priest, his son of a priest. At 17, he felt like God was calling him into ministry, but he was very reluctant and afraid to go there. Just the conflict that comes with leadership and the critics that come with that. Now he's in his mid-40s, and that fear is now being realized. To speak on behalf of God is to stir the pot. To speak the word of God is to invite hatred, especially if you're doing it right. To be effective is to make enemies. And nobody knows this more than Jeremiah. Though well known, he feels so alone. And though his name will be talked about for millennia, it's a hated name today. So he steps away from his window, he sits at his table, a half-used parchment stares back at him. In the face of opposition and hate and lies being told among friends and friends that he thought he could trust, but they really show their true colors and false accusations and threats. In the midst of all of that, Jeremiah sits down and he pens beautiful words. He writes, Your words, meaning the word of God, your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts. How beautiful is that. I mean, the guy's really going through it. Name is being drugged through the mud, he feels so alone, he's betrayed, his fears are now being realized, he's running to and taking comfort in the word of God. It's beautiful. Yet somewhat mysterious as well. Because part of us looks at this, and yeah, part of us is inspired, and this is beautiful, this is cool. But there's also another part of us that looks at this and asks, How? How'd you pull this off, Jeremiah? How'd you get here? Because I've tried to read God's word and I want to say this, but man, I can't. Maybe you felt the conviction to start reading God's word on your own, or maybe get deeper into God's word or read God's word more, you know, dive deeper. That's part of being a Jesus follower, is knowing his word. So you're rightfully convicted to do that, thinking, man, I gotta do this more. And so you do, and you sit down, you open up your Bible, you're kind of feeling good. It's like, yeah, I'm gonna do this. This is good, let's go. You know, I'm gonna start this habit. Here we go. And then you hit parts of God's word where you have no idea what to do with. You ever been there? You open up God's word and you read, like, did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? It's like, what do you do with this? It's like, Jeremiah, is this what you ate? What do you do with that? And it's like, all right, whatever, let's just keep reading. You flip over a couple books, it's like your navel is like a round gobba, which never lacks mixed wine. It's like, what? Is this a pickup line? Am I supposed to use this on my girl? Because I don't think that'll work. Who pours wine into belly buttons? You know, why am I why am I reading this? And so when we run across Jeremiah's words here, we're like, yeah, that's really beautiful, and I'm glad it's working for you, Jared Bear, but like, are you reading what I what I'm reading? Is it just me, or do you ever read God's word and you desire to make it the delight of your heart, like Jeremiah, but instead you read God's word and you kind of feel dumb because you just don't get it? Or is that just me? Let me take some pressure off for just a second. That's okay. It's actually part of the learning process. Feeling dumb is part of learning. It's kind of like I took four years of Spanish and uh maybe five. Uh I don't I should know way more than I do. But um when I go to like Spanish-speaking countries, I try to hang in there, but I can't. You know, I I look and I feel like an idiot because I am. I was in Honduras last February, and my wife, she runs like the a clinic. So we bring down like doctors and nurses to do this free clinic um in this area, and and families come and and families are trickling in, and I'm really useless when I go, so they just have me doing following around construction workers. So I'm working on some construction on the building, and as I'm as I'm working, I saw this teenage girl that's walking toward the clinic, and she looked like really down and really sad. And I thought maybe her mom was sick, or you know, maybe there's an unplanned pregnancy, which is like a big, big issue in in this um part of the country. And so I wanted to cheer her up as she was walking by, and I noticed that she had very beautiful hair. And so I tried to say in Spanish, hey, I love your hair. I said, Hey, uh, yo quiero su cabeza. And she looked at me horrified and then walked away very fast. And my buddy that I was working with said, What did you say? I said, Well, I love your hair. He said, Judging by her reaction, I don't think he said that. Come to find out what I really yelled, somebody ran over and was like, Do you know what you just yelled? I said, No. I mean, I said, I love your hair. He said, No, you said I want your head. So I felt so dumb. I went and found her in the clinic and like reassured, I'm not gonna murder you. And I've I felt in that moment I feel like just like giving up because I felt so dumb. But in a few months, going back to Honduras, I'm still gonna try to speak Spanish because part of the learning process is just kind of feeling dumb, saying dumb things and feeling awkward.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler. We'll get back to Junior in a moment. We want to tell you about one of his books, The Manual. If you're a man or raising a man, married to a man, maybe dating a man, there's a lot of confusion around what real manhood actually is. In the manual, Junior cuts through the noise, both the over-the-top macho stuff and the politically correct definitions, and he gets to the raw core of manhood. He exposes the toxic masculinity for what it really is, not manhood at all. This book is simple, honest, powerful, and it might just change how you view men, strength, and leadership. We'd love to send you a copy of the manual. Just visit juniorziglar.com and give a gift of any amount towards this show, and we'll send it to you. That's junior z-i e-g L E R dot com. Now let's get back to Junior's message.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

I coached all three of my girls' like um soccer soccer teams when they were, you know, five, six years old, and uh just watching them all, like all the kids at that time. It's like hurting cats, coaching all those kids, and they're kicking the ball and falling over, and they they look and they feel so awkward, but like that's part of the process, isn't it? You just power through that and you wrestle and you keep chipping away, and the more you chip away, the more gold that you mine. We have to remember, it's not like Jeremiah picked up God's word the first time, read it, and was like, oh, I understand it all. Belly button wine, that's good stuff. No, when Jeremiah wrote this, he was likely wrestling to understand parts because that's the point. To consume God's word is to wrestle with it. That's what Jeremiah means when he writes, when he when he writes, ate them. Ate them is the uh the Hebrew word alhal, which is very uh very poetic. It means to it means to eat like a meal, to consume a meal. But it has this double meaning, alhal. It means to learn or to wrestle to understand. So what Jeremiah is saying, especially if you look at this verse in in order, what Jeremiah is saying is, I ate, I struggled with, I wrestled with your word before it became the delight of my heart. I had to wrestle with it. And he's giving us something here. You want quality time with God, it starts with this wrestle. A major element of our relationship with God is wrestling to know him, to understand him and what he says. In fact, I'll go as far as to say, I'm wary of anyone's faith who doesn't have a wrestle. Because it is so easy to make our feelings our faith. I fear this is what is happening with a lot of Western culture, Western Christianity today. It's like I feel like God is this way, I kind of feel like God is saying this, I kind of feel like God would want this, and what we do is we put our feelings on God's throne. No, no, no. You rest, there's no wrestling in that. Now you're just doing what you feel, and you're attributing that to God. God says, no, no, no, no. Your feelings are fallen, stained by sin. For my ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts, and neither are my ways your ways. And since this is true, to engage with the Almighty is to enter into this struggle to align our thoughts and our ways with the God of the universe. That's a wrestle. There is no growth without struggle. It's kind of like um, all right, so at the risk of sounding like a gym rat, I know it doesn't, it probably doesn't look like it, but I go to the gym before breakfast. Obviously, I'm no bodybuilder. That's not my goal. I just want to be strong enough to make my daughter's future boyfriend sing twice. That and I like tacos. So when I go in the in the morning, um it's it's pretty much like the same crowd. A few of them have kind of become my one more guys that I've been inviting to church. But there are there are two different types of people at the gym, and you've probably noticed this. There are those who are like struggling and they're lifting and they're pushing, and you can tell because they have like sweat marks and they're trying to catch their breath, and they're like they're belting out Fort Minor and Creed, and they're just like, they're very intentional and they're very strong. Then there's this second group at the gym, and I'm glad they're there because they're trying to better themselves, but they drive me nuts because they just sit on the equipment and scroll on their phones and they just kind of like zone out and they're, you know, they're trying to, which I get, they're trying to wake up. But it's like, I want to kind of walk over some, I don't, but I want to walk over some of it. I'd be like, hey, not sure if you know this, but just sitting on the machine on Facebook isn't doing you any good. You've got to wrestle with the weights. You gotta break a sweat and struggle to get the value of being there. Which is why I question the strength of those who don't wrestle with God's word. Because any sort of growth demands struggle. The invitation from the divine isn't so much to feel something as much as it is to be overwhelmed and to struggle to align our thoughts and our ways with the God of the universe. If every time you left the gym thinking, man, I feel great today, probably doing something wrong. Because you're supposed to walk out going, dang, I feel that was rough. But like, that's the point. See, often, not always, that's our experience with God's word. Of course, there's times where we're encouraged and we're inspired, absolutely, but we struggle to understand and we're humbled by it and we're challenged by it. It's in the struggle that our thoughts and our ways become more like his. But here, it's the thing. I get it. The question is still about how, junior. How? Like, I've tried to get into God's word, I've I've I've failed, I've, you know, I get in for a time and then I quit, or I start reading, I start thinking of other things, I waste time, I'm inconsistent, I need more. Okay, let's let's get more then. How do we wrestle with God's word? Well, first off, you gotta you have to you have to schedule your wrestle. If something matters to you, you put it in your calendar. If something really matters to you, you make an alarm. And then you guard that time. One of the things I I appreciate about our staff culture is we have this very high accountability culture among our staff. And I was talking to um one of our elders, actually the elder who did our premarital counseling like 15 years ago, and um and this uh this elder had asked me a couple months ago, he's like, Hey, are you taking Nicole out on um date night? And I said, Yeah, you know, not as much as I should. Uh we get out, but like lately it's just been kind of hard because we've got kids and she's in school, working on her master's, and the kids have extracurricular activities, and I'm kind of working on some side stuff. Like we've kind of doing date night, but we haven't really been very consistent. And he said to me, he said, Well, do you put meetings with people in your calendar? I said, Yeah, of course. He said, Do you do that with your wife? I said, No. He's like, remember, we schedule what matters to us, and it should matter enough for you to schedule that. And he's right. Do you do this with God? Do you schedule a time with God where this is your time slot with God and nothing gets in the way with that? Pick a time. Like, let me get really legalistic here for a second. I think that being with God should be the first thing that we do. Before breakfast, before work, before working out, before doom scrolling on your phone, you get with God. Like part of our worship, part of our worship mentality is God gets first and best always. God gets first and best. This is why we see throughout the Old Testament the the best of the herd, the firstborn of the flock that was given to God. First and best goes to God. Do that with your day. First thing, you just get with God. So, one of the things that um I my wife and I love watching is actually we're watching this last night, is Planet Earth. And it for sure has its political agendas, but you can kind of sift through that. I we just love watching like God's God's creation and his creativity. And my favorite animal on on these like Planet Earth documents, and even at the zoo, I just love lions. Love these guys. In a lion pride, there is there's one male dominant lion. And when a pride gets the kill, they let that guy eat first. Not because he like bullies his way in. There's actually a reason for this. The leader needs to be bigger. The leader needs to be the protector. If the leader doesn't eat well, the whole pride is in trouble. And so the whole pride will back up and be like, you eat first because we need you to be the biggest. If the if the lion is well fed and strong, the whole family benefits from that. Parents, especially dads, more than a lion, your kids need to see you eating first. May the children of the bridge have memories of walking up, waking up in the morning, walking in and seeing mom and dad spending time with God. May they know the lion and the lioness eats first. I have good friends who make uh personal rules, no consuming breakfast until I've consumed God's word. Or another friend that said, no checking phones until I've checked in with my creator. Just have that, have that time and guard it, make some rules and be legalistic with yourself if you have to. Then pick a place. Pick a place. Last year I was in uh Wittenberg. I was invited to speak at like this pastor's gathering, and um a little early, and I wanted because I wanted to go visit Martin Luther's church and uh and the church down the street, you know how the story of like when he nailed the 95 thesis to the to the door, you can kind of go see you see that door. And so I got to walk around in the town, and and then I went into the his his church where he had preached, and it was it was just really cool, you know, walking around there. And I'd asked the the church worker, the building was empty, but the church worker was there, and I said, Hey man, where does uh where did Luther do like his writing and studying and praying and all that? Like, where's his office? I would love, I would love to see where he studied and wrote and prayed. And the guy started laughing and he says, We got to go across the street for that. I said, Why is that funny? He said, Because it's a pub. Apparently, Luther just had this like corner table where he'd read and write and pray, and that was just kind of like his spot. It's not just Luther though, we all have very special spots. All of us do. Like my wife and I, we dated on um State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. It's like this super hippie street with all these little cafes. And this is where after classes we would just go, we would hang out with each other. We actually got married right at the end of the street in an old church on the lake, and it's just kind of like our spot to walk up and down. When we go back, it's just special to us. You know, it kind of brings us into that frame of mind when we were college students and meeting each other and hanging out with each other. Spots can be very, very special. They set a vibe, they bring you into that frame of mind. We see this in scripture. Moses would meet with God on the mountain. Prophet Daniel would go to his window and pray facing the town, his hometown of Jerusalem. Like it was just his spot to meet with God. Jesus would climb to a high place to meet with the Father. Have a spot. When I train our summer camp staff, mostly high school and college kids, the first week that they come to camp, um, we talk about this. I tell them, like, pick a spot at camp, walk around, pick a spot, pick a tree, an overlook, a bench, and make that like your holy spot for the summer. Because years from now, you're gonna come back and you're gonna bring back your spouse, you're gonna bring back your kids, and you're gonna point to that spot and be like, man, this is where I'd meet with God. And I remember when God really pushed me in this direction right here. Like, what's your spot? Because of Jesus, we can meet with God anywhere. It's awesome. But there's something about having a place that's just your special sacred place, your spot where you meet with Almighty God.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler. That was part one of Junior's message, Make Time, from our Time with God series. One thing I appreciated about today's message is that it gives people permission to struggle. In fact, not only permission to struggle, but an expectation that there will be a struggle. Do you remember picking up Shakespeare in the tenth grade? There is no way you picked it up and started reading all the thou's arts, these, thou's, thouists, and you thought, you know what, I'm gonna ace this class. No, you had to study and learn. Why? Because it was an ancient document. Scripture is even older. It is an ancient document that takes time to learn and study. And yet, as Junior pointed out, sometimes Christians, we can get this impression that if we're not constantly excited about reading the Bible, or if we don't understand every passage right away, that somehow we're failing spiritually. But that's not what we see in Jeremiah's life. Jeremiah had to wrestle. And honestly, that's true of almost anything valuable in life. Nobody expects to get stronger by going to the gym once. Nobody expects to learn a language overnight. No one expects a marriage to thrive without investing time and effort. And sometimes we open the Bible for a few minutes, we don't immediately understand something, and then we conclude it's not working. The issue isn't that God's word lacks power. The issue is we've underestimated the value of staying in the wrestle. Because growth almost always happens on the other side of the wrestle. Some of the passages that have shaped my life the most, they're actually the ones that I didn't understand at first. They're the ones that forced me to slow down and ask questions, do some digging, and then to keep coming back. And maybe that's where you are today. Maybe you've been discouraged because your time with God doesn't look like someone else's. Maybe you've convinced yourself you're not good at reading the Bible at all. Maybe you've hit a difficult passage and you've just quietly given up. I hope you let Junior's sermon be an encouragement to you today. Keep showing up, keep reading, keep asking questions, keep wrestling. There's no growth without struggle. And what's on the other side of that struggle is immense blessing. Keep going. Thanks for joining us today. We'll continue this conversation next time as Junior opens God's Word again. Well, you have been listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler, a listener-supported broadcast. Junior is a lead teaching pastor at the bridge in Chicagoland, and we're so glad that you joined us today. As we told you earlier, we would love to send you a copy of Junior's book, The Manual. Whether you're a man, you're raising a man, married to a man, dating a man, this book cuts through the noise and gets to the raw core of manhood itself. All you have to do is jump on Junior's website, juniorziggler.com, and give a gift of any amount towards this show, and we'll send it right to you. While you're there, you'll also find great resources like today's message, all of Junior's books and podcasts, plus a link to our church, The Bridge. If you're in the Chicagoland area, we'd love to see you at one of our services. Again, that's juniorziggler.com, junior z-i e-g L E R dot com. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

The Bridge with Junior Ziggler is a production of the Bridge Community Church, a multi campus church in Chicagoland.