Practical QTSample

 #11 Chew the cud

For your QT to have a lasting effect, make like a cow!

A cow chews, rests, regurgitates and chews again — a gross but useful analogy with regard to our quiet times.  It's very useful at the end of the QT to try and summarise a key thought that we will carry with us for the rest of the day.

At one stage I realised that I was having this very intense QT with lots of reading and praying, but a few hours later I was struggling to remember what it was all about.

A Quiet Time is not about doing set readings, getting another chapter underlined and summarised.  It's not about getting through a list of prayer requests or making sure that you have followed the “recipe.”  A quiet time is about meeting with God and hearing Him speak.

The author of Psalm 119 talks about day, night, the early hours of the morning and all day as times when he meditates and reflects on God's Word.

The idea is that your daily QT is the mouthful of grass that becomes the cud that we chew all day. So, at the end of a QT there needs to be a consolidation: “So... what are You saying to me Lord?”

Reduce it to one sentence so that you will be ready to answer if someone were to ask you, at tea-time, lunch time or supper time “What was God saying in your QT today?”

Your answer does not have to be detailed — but at least the basic concept will be there:

"That I am loved by God.”
“That He is faithful even when we are not.”
“That I need to speak more carefully because words are destructive.”
“That I need to treat others with more respect.”
“That I need to deal with my pride.”

If you can't regurgitate the cud, then you may have chewed too much or too little in your QT!