Healthy routines when away from your faith community
This talk was given on November 10th, 2020, at Christian Student Fellowship.
How many of you have a daily routine?
How many of you are prepared for your daily routine to be hugely interrupted at the end of this semester?
My daily routine is almost completely dependent on the people around me. My community. CSF is my job now, but before it was my job, it was just what I did. And when CSF wasn’t happening, for whatever reason, I was lost. I lost accountability and spiritual examples and friends who would lift me up when I was feeling down. When a semester ended and I had to go home to my parents’ house, I was completely alone. And on top of that, I had nothing to do to keep me occupied, distracted. I would wallow in a period of aimlessness for a while. I’d watch TV all day. I’d scroll on Tik Tok for hours. But nothing that really filled the space left behind when my community was gone. So I strive to fill myself with something more lasting, something that will stick around even when my community falls away.
All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field. […] Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of the Lord remains forever.
Isaiah 4:6b-8 NIV
God and His Word is the only thing that is eternal. It lasts. And because of that, we must prioritize our relationship with Him. Over community. Over everything. So that even when our whole routine changes, He is steadfast in our lives.
Do y’all know the story of Daniel and the Lion’s Den? It’s one that children are taught in Sunday school, which is great of course. I want to talk about what leads up to Daniel being thrown in the Lion’s Den. We’re going to read Daniel 6:1-10, but before we do that, I want to share a little background information.
So. The Israelites are in exile from the Promised Land because they were unfaithful to God. Up to this point, God’s people have been through a lot. They split into two—Judah in the south and Israel in the north, and they fought amongst themselves in addition to fighting outside nations. They didn’t rely on God and were overtaken by the nations of Babylon and Assyria. These nations tried to beat the Israelites down and completely reshape their identity away from God. So Daniel went to Babylon. Despite everything, Daniel was very faithful to God, as were his friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendego, if you know them from the story of the Fiery Furnace. Eventually, Babylon and the rest of the Middle East is taken over by Persia. Daniel and his friends always found favor with whatever king was in power at the time because they were faithful to God. So now the Persian King Darius is in charge. So let’s pick up in Daniel 6.
It pleased Darius [the King] to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss. Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. Finally, these men said, “we will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God.” So these administrators and satraps went as a group to the king and said: “May King Darius live forever! The royal administrators, prefects, satraps, advisers, and governors have all agreed that the king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any god or human being during the next thirty days, except to you, Your Majesty, shall be thrown into the lion’s den. Now, Your Majesty, issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot be altered—in accordance with the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed.” So King Darius put the decree in writing. Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day, he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.
Daniel 6:1-10 NIV
The part of this passage in Daniel 6 that I want to focus on is the last verse. “Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened towards Jerusalem. Three times a day, he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.”
Daniel had a routine. Every day, three times a day, he went into his upstairs room, got down on his knees, and prayed. It was just what he did, no matter what else happened that day. Even when a big thing changed in his life—a new decree from the King, one that he served under—his routine didn’t change. It was his habit to pray to God. Even in the face of death in a lion’s den, Daniel remained faithful to God and kept to his routine.
Routines sometimes sound like a monotonous list of tasks you have to get done at a certain time. But really it’s just a collection of habits that you do. Habits can be good or bad; it’s just something you do regularly. I’m here to encourage you to fill your days with good habits. And there is one particular good habit that I know everyone needs.
I’m not going to tell you what your daily routine should look like. You can do it however you want, fill your day with good things you enjoy. It’s good to exercise every day and to brush your teeth and to go outside and to read, but I’m not going to tell you that you have to do any of that. Those are good things and you should do them (especially brushing your teeth), but none of those are the best thing. The best and most important thing is to make God a part of your daily routine, like Daniel.
Daniel, of course, isn’t the only example of someone with spiritual habits that we can look up to. Jesus himself made a habit of going to synagogue (Luke 4:16), and he often withdrew from his friends to pray alone (Luke 5:16). Paul went to synagogue, as was his custom (Acts 17:2). David prayed to God in times of trouble and peace all throughout the Psalms; it was his habit, his routine to go to God. So it sounds to me like we ought to have similar spiritual habits.
So let’s be practical. How do you include time with God in your daily routine so that it isn’t reliant on the people around you?
The first thing to do is to set aside a time. If you don’t have time to do this, make time. It’s important. You must make the time. According to the Psalms, David seemed to prefer morning time to worship and pray to God, but you can make time for Jesus any time. Nicodemus went to Jesus in the middle of the night and received what is now one of the most well-known verses of all time. John 3:16: “For God so loved the world he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” The important thing is to make time for Him—to worship him, to pray to him, to listen to him.
Okay, you have a time now. So what do you do? This is up to you. Everyone’s time with God looks different. Things you can include are journaling, reading the Bible, doing a devotional or book study, praying, meditating on Scripture, and so many other things. Sitting in nature and reflecting on God’s creation is also a great way to worship Him. The point is to commune with God—that’s what He wants from us. Communion.
If you don’t already commune with God every day, it’s time to start. God loves you so much and all he wants is to spend time with you. And making time to be with God apart from the community around you is the best way to make sure you’re able to stand firm when that community isn’t available to you.
And being away from your community, being away from a place like CSF, doesn’t mean you’re alone now. You can call or text people. You can write letters. I know that anyone here would be over the moon to hear from you. But seeing people shouldn’t be the thing that holds you close to God; being with him should be so ingrained in your routine that nothing, not when the grass withers or even the threat of a lion’s den, could pull you away from him.
The habits we have matter a lot. Our habits show us and others how we spend our time and what we deem as important. If God is nowhere in our habits, it’s telling of what we think about him. If I believe that Jesus is Lord of my life and the Savior of the world, if I truly believe that, shouldn’t my habits reflect that? Surely I can at least make a habit of communing with him daily, whether I’m around people who hold me accountable or not.
Daniel was around people who tried to tear him down. The administrators and satraps wanted Daniel to fail. But Daniel knew that what he did was good and would let nothing stop him. He knew only God was important. Daniel didn’t have, at least explicitly in the text we read, a community that kept him accountable. He and his people were in exile in a country that tried to reshape their whole identity to remove God. Everything was against him. But Daniel knew that God was with him, and he continued to put him first.
And it’s important to remember that these habits and routines don’t form overnight. The people at CSF who hold you accountable or who you look up to didn’t build their habits in a day. People at your church who you consider spiritually mature had to work to become spiritually disciplined. Even your pastor had to work to put God first. The Bible doesn’t explicitly say, but I think I can make an educated guess that Daniel didn’t decide to one day pray every day three times and then he did with no misses or mistakes. It takes work to build habits, especially if we also have to break bad ones to do so. Give yourself grace, as God gives you grace. He knows it’s hard. Jesus was human, too, and the Bible says that he went through every kind of temptation.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:15-16 NIV
I’m guilty of looking at all the times I’ve messed up in the past, when it comes to putting God first and just other sins in my life generally, and then declaring myself undeserving to approach God. I have a hard time building my quiet time habits because when I miss a day or two or I hurry through it, I beat myself down about it. I feel dirty and unworthy, so then I pull myself further away from God, when that’s exactly the opposite of what God calls us to do.
The truth is I am undeserving. We all are. But Jesus, God himself, came down from heaven, lived a sinless life, died on the cross in our place, and then rose from the dead and defeated death, so that we could come to the Father without fear. So that we could put him first and it not be in vain. No matter how much you mess up or how undeserving you feel, what Jesus did on the cross covered that, and he is waiting for you with open arms. He loves you so much. And all he wants is for you to run to him. If I truly believe that Jesus is Lord, shouldn’t my daily habits reflect that, whether I’m around my community or not? I think that, if Jesus died for me, then surely I can live for him.
