Did You Have
Your Quiet Time?

What is this page about?

Think of two men.

The first man gets up at half past five. He reads three chapters of the Bible. He writes in a notebook and prays for forty minutes. But he is unkind to his wife. He is far from his children. He does not always tell the truth at work. He has not spoken to his neighbours for years.

The second man has no fixed plan. He prays in the car and at his desk. On Sunday he hears the Bible read and preached. He reads it with his children at the table. He is patient, honest and generous, and his street knows it.

Ask in most churches which man is filled with the Spirit. People will usually choose the first man. He has the thing that people count.

The short answer

1. The fruit of the Spirit is a list of ways to treat people. There is no quiet time on the list (Galatians 5:22-23).
2. When Luke says a person was “filled with the Spirit”, the person then speaks, serves or suffers. Luke says it thirteen times. Not once does the person then go away alone to read and pray.
3. One verse commands, “be filled with the Spirit”. The sentence goes on with singing together, giving thanks, and a family in good order (Ephesians 5 and 6). Nothing in it is done alone.
4. When the Bible says “this is how you can know”, it points to God’s commands and to love.
5. Religion does not make up for a family that is not cared for (1 Timothy 5:8).
6. The Bible’s own daily habit is prayer at fixed hours, often with others.
7. For most of history, Christians heard the Bible. They did not read it. Most could not read, and books were very expensive.
8. Jesus commanded two practices: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Nobody can do them alone at a desk.
9. Jesus’s hardest words were for people who kept every religious habit perfectly.
10. The daily quiet time, used as a test, is about 140 years old.

What the Bible passages name

Here is the teaching that this page tests. The page made up these words. They are not from a real teacher.

And here is the Bible passage.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control.

Galatians 5:22–23 · World English Bible

Go down the list. Ask of each one: where must I stand to see it? Love needs a person to love. Peace is with someone. Patience means being patient with someone for a long time. Kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness are all shown to people. Only self-control is mostly about myself.

The opposite list in the same chapter has hatred, fighting, anger and jealousy. So Paul is not comparing a man with good habits and a man with bad habits. He is comparing a person who is good to be near with a person who is not.

Romans 8 is the same. Its tests are these. What do you think about? Do you stop doing wrong? Are you “led by the Spirit”? The chapter speaks about prayer only to say that we do not know how to pray as we should (Romans 8:26).

What happened next?

Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts. He uses the words “filled with the Spirit” thirteen times. Almost every time, the sentence goes on to say what the person then did.

• Elizabeth was filled, and she called out a blessing (Luke 1:41-42).
• Zacharias was filled, and he spoke God’s message (Luke 1:67).
• The followers of Jesus were filled, and they began to speak. Three thousand people were baptized (Acts 2:4, 41).
• Peter was filled, and he spoke to the rulers (Acts 4:8).
• The church prayed and was filled. They spoke with courage, and they shared what they owned (Acts 4:31-32).
• Seven men “full of the Holy Spirit” were chosen. Their job was to give food to widows (Acts 6:3-5).
• Stephen, full of the Spirit, was killed with stones. He forgave his killers (Acts 7:55-60).
• Saul was filled. He was baptized, he ate, and he preached (Acts 9:17-20).

Speaking, serving, suffering. There is only one case of a person alone: Jesus in the desert (Luke 4:1). That was forty days without food, with the devil testing him. It was not a quiet time. And it ends with Jesus teaching in the meeting houses.

The one command

Only one time does the New Testament command Christians to be filled with the Spirit. Read how the sentence goes on.

be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs; singing, and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always concerning all things… subjecting yourselves to one another in the fear of Christ

Ephesians 5:18–21 · World English Bible

In simple words: Be filled with the Spirit. Speak to each other with psalms and songs. Sing to the Lord from your heart. Always give thanks for everything. Put yourselves under each other, because you honour Christ.

Then Paul goes straight on. He speaks to wives and husbands, to children and fathers, to servants and masters. This goes to Ephesians 6:9.

What the modern test says a Spirit-filled life looks like:

• time alone with God every day
• reading the Bible alone
• praying alone at a fixed time

What Ephesians 5 and 6 say it looks like:

• a church singing the Bible’s words to each other
• thanks for everything, always
• people serving each other
• a marriage, a family and a place of work in good order

The second list is a church service and a home. A person can do nothing on it alone. The modern teaching has kept Paul’s words “be filled” and added its own list.

The family, and the Pharisee

The Bible gives many clear commands about marriage, children, parents and work. It puts them inside the passages about the Spirit. And it says this about a man who does not care for his own family:

But if anyone doesn’t provide for his own, and especially his own household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.

1 Timothy 5:8 · World English Bible

In simple words: A person must take care of his own people, and above all his own family. If he does not, he has turned away from the faith. He is worse than a person who does not believe.

These are very strong words, and they are about a duty at home.

The Gospels have one story where a religious act is used to escape a family duty. A man says that his money is “Corban”. That means it is given to God. So he does not help his parents with it, and his teachers allow this. Jesus says that this is “making void the word of God” (Mark 7:13). In simple words: it makes God’s word empty.

The people Jesus corrected most were the most religious people of that time.

• They gave God a tenth of their small garden plants. But they left undone “the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith” (Matthew 23:23).
• They studied the Scriptures. But Jesus said to them: “you will not come to me, that you may have life” (John 5:40).
• A Pharisee in the temple could truly say: “I fast twice a week.” (Luke 18:12) But the other man in the story went home right with God.

So a person can keep religious habits and still be blind to God.

Jonathan Edwards was a very strict American preacher. In 1746 he wrote a book about how to know real faith from false faith. He listed some things that prove nothing, good or bad. One of them is when people like “to spend much time in religion”. He said the best sign of all is “Christian practice”. That means a holy life.

The two things Jesus commanded

Which practices did Jesus himself command his followers to keep doing? There are two.

• Baptism: “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).
• The Lord’s Supper: “Do this in memory of me.” (Luke 22:19)

Nobody can do these alone at a desk. The Lord’s Supper is for the church together: “when you come together to eat, wait for one another” (1 Corinthians 11:33).

The New Testament says strong things about both.

• “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” (Galatians 3:27)
• “The cup of blessing which we bless, isn’t it a sharing of the blood of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16)

The first church is described by four things:

They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and prayer.

Acts 2:42 · World English Bible

In simple words: They kept on with four things: the teaching of the apostles, life together, the breaking of bread, and prayer.

The “breaking of bread” is on the list. The private quiet time is not.

The old Protestant churches called the Word, the sacraments and prayer “the means of grace”. The Lutherans said it in 1530. The Reformed churches said it in 1647. John Wesley said it in 1746. Wesley also gave a warning. A means that is cut off from its purpose is “less than nothing and vanity”. That means it is worth nothing.

A means, or a proof?

A means is something God works through. A proof shows that God has worked. Here is how this page sorts them.

Means: God works through these.

• hearing the Bible read and preached
• reading the Bible alone
• praying alone and praying together
• baptism and the Lord’s Supper
• a daily quiet time

Proof: these show that God has worked.

• love for other Christians (1 John 3:14)
• keeping God’s commands (1 John 2:3)
• patience and kindness at home
• honest work
• help for a person in need (1 John 3:17)

A quiet time is on the first list. It is good. It is not on the second list.

Where the quiet time came from

Daily prayer with a plan is as old as the church. The first Christians said the Lord’s Prayer three times a day. Later, monks prayed at seven fixed times each day. In 1549 the Church of England made this simpler: morning and evening prayer for everyone. All of this was prayer with fixed words, at fixed times, usually with other people.

Normal people could read the Bible alone only when cheap printed Bibles came.

The thing this page is about is newer. It is a morning time alone that is used as the mark of a Spirit-filled Christian. We can follow its history.

• It began at a college in Cambridge, England, in the 1880s. It was called the “Morning Watch”.
• A student mission movement carried it round the world from 1898.
• A small book for university students in 1945 gave it the name “Quiet Time”.
• Large preaching meetings in the 1950s made it known everywhere.

So it is about 140 years old. It is a good practice with a history. It is not what Paul meant by “walking in the Spirit”.

Check it yourself

This page is a study of Bible passages. It is not advice about you. If you have a daily quiet time, keep it. But do not let anyone tell you that it is the proof. Do not tell yourself that either.

1. Read Galatians 5:13-26. List the nine fruits. For each one, write where you must stand to see it.
2. Read Ephesians 5:15 to 6:9 as one piece. Find the command in 5:18 and read to the end.
3. Read the whole letter of 1 John. Mark every place that says how we can “know”.
4. Find “filled with the Spirit” in Luke and Acts. Read the verse after each one. Start with Luke 1:41, Acts 2:4, Acts 4:8 and Acts 4:31.