How to make time for God with a busy schedule can be the million-dollar question for a committed Christian.
We all have the good intentions of spending time with God but then life gets in the way.
Kids have tons of sports activities to be shuttled to, work captivates our minds even after quitting time, and even church activities can fill up our schedule.
So what is the solution? At this point, you would expect me to say this is what you need to give up to make time for God with a busy schedule.
But most of us can’t get rid of our family members, quit our job, or become an inactive church member.
But if we take advantage of all the little moments we often look over we can dramatically increase the time we spend with God.
Taking charge of your commute is how you can make time for God with a busy schedule
According to bestmattress.com in 2015, more than 3.6 million Americans traveled 90 minutes to work – each way.
Over an entire year, Americans who spend 26 minutes (the national average) driving to and from work give up nine full days to their commute.
So what does this have to do with our question of how to make time for God with a busy schedule? It is a game-changer.
Taking control of how we spend our commute drastically increases our time with God.
Without us changing our routine. I mean we all have to go to work. Why not make it meaningful?
On top of this, our coworkers will probably thank us because our attitude will be way more joyful.
Just the simple act of changing what we listen to on our commute adds 9 entire extra days we have spent with the Lord in a year. So how exactly do we make this change?
The first step is to simply spend some of our commutes talking to God. With our eyes open of course.
Luckily God does not require our eyes to be closed for our prayers to be heard. Next, we can turn on some good worship music.
The good news is the options are endless. At church, we are stuck with our worship leaders. And don’t get me wrong we all love them.
But on our commute, we can be led in worship by Natalie Grant, the Gaither Choir, or whatever song speaks to what we are dealing with. You can listen to the radio or make your customized playlist on Spotify.
The infographic above gives us a good picture of how to take advantage of our commute. As we move closer to our work we can use the Move acronym to make time for God.
So after praying and enjoying God’s presence we can then move onto making our vehicle an avenue for good preaching.
Your Car Can Become A Venue for Great Preaching
We can do this by tuning in to a great preaching station or turning on a great Biblical podcast.
After being encouraged through the preaching of the Word we can then enjoy the Word through audio Bibles.
It is a good idea after listening to a good sermon to meditate on the Word of God. So we can spend the last moments before we get to work being comforted by what God says.
Enjoying The Words of Christ Moves you to Enjoy Your Weekly Commute
We can do this in several ways. One unique way is to record us reading our desired scripture and creating a playlist to play on our commute.
Another way is to use many of the helpful apps they have out there that contain an audio Bible.
Church tech has a great article you can find here that can inform you of some great options. Or if you want you can go with the basic option.
That being meditating on the words of scripture that you have memorized or that you heard from the message you just listened to.
Using this MOVE strategy for your commute can help you learn how to make time for God with a busy schedule.
Get your worship on when you get your chores on
The New York Post surveyed 2,000 American parents who live with a partner found respondents spend an average of 23 hours and 36 minutes on cleaning and housework per month — or 5 hours and 54 minutes per week.
If you round this up to 6 hours that’s three hundred twelve hours spent cleaning every year.
We can’t just stop cleaning, can we? If your like me you wished if you could. But cleaning is a necessary task that we all have to do.
I bet you didn’t know that cleaning could be the answer to how to make time for God with a busy schedule?
What if you used the three hundred and twelve hours you spent cleaning to also grow closer to God? Simply turn on some great worship music.
Pray as you work through your cleaning tasks. Or put in some headphones and listen to an audio Bible or your favorite Bible teacher.
These little lunch breaks add up to a large amount of time. If we just take a thirty-minute lunch break a day that adds up to one hundred thirty hours a year if we work five days a week.
When we take advantage of this time we can spend one hundred thirty extra hours with God a year. And without Even changing our schedule.
We can do this by packing more than our lunchboxes. Bringing our favorite Bible to read on our break can help a lot.
It can be our favorite print version or an audio Bible app that we enjoy. Throw in some headphones and we can have some quality time with Christ without leaving the office.
To go a step further we can even make the wallpaper of our computer a motivational Scripture verse.
Exercise can be the answer to how to make time for God with a busy schedule
Being fit seems to be in nowadays. There are becoming more and more healthier options at restaurants.
There seem to be a plethora of new diet options coming out each year and fitness memberships are up.
Now how much time is spent exercising can vary. But let’s say that we spend 1 hour a week exercising.
That comes out to roughly fifty-two hours in a year.
So we don’t have to quit our exercise routine to keep up our time with God.
If we apply the principles above to exercise then we can gain fifty-two extra hours a year at the least with God.
If we exercise more we can increase our health. There is also another benefit of exercise.
When we exercise in a local park or hike in a nature area the outdoors can point us to the creator.
For example, there is just something special about listening to the creation account in Genesis with the backdrop of creation.
We can also invest in a great pair of headphones to put in as we walk five miles on the treadmill. Imagine being able to say after your exercise routine you not only walked one mile but also listened to one entire book of the Bible.
Or maybe you chose to pray for one hour as you jogged in the beauty of God’s creation.