How I Meet with God in the Morning

Blog by Alan Fadling

In my early years as a new Christian, my pastors and spiritual leaders often recommended the virtues of a morning quiet time. It became a very meaningful practice for me. Sometimes it was a source of guilt when I was not as regular as I expected myself to be. I’ve heard some people refer to this sort of practice as old-fashioned or legalistic, and it certainly could become either of those things.

I’d like to share a bit about my own morning practices. Over the years, many different elements of my mornings with God have nourished me, encouraged me, and refocused my attention on God-with-me.

There is nothing magical about meeting with God in the morning. I have some rhythms of how I meet with God in the evening as well. I just like beginning my day with God in that way. It feels like a faithful response to Psalm 5:3, “In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly.”

These days, I begin my morning meeting with God with fifteen minutes of quiet prayer. Silence is still often challenging for me. There is something in me still that wants to do something, say something, accomplish something. Silence is good training for noticing but not following that anxious voice within me.

I often sit in a reading chair in my home office that looks out into our backyard. Since Covid-19, we’ve kept a line of bird feeders back there that is a lively gathering in the mornings. Dozens of birds are having their own morning practice, and I enjoy watching them. I thank God for his creativity and his care that I see in these beautiful little birds. God’s care for them reminds me of the far deeper care God offers me. I feel the truth of that and come to more deeply trust in God’s love, little by little.

I’ve also been reading through the Gospel of John monthly since the beginning of the year. I wanted to soak in the life and the words of Jesus as John recounts them. John has long been my favorite of the four Gospels because the divine nature of Jesus shines through his very human interactions. I’ve long loved the Upper Room passage in John 13-17.

I will often take a verse or two to my journal and reflect prayerfully on it. I’m not trying to do exegesis as much as I’m seeking to hear how these words intersect with my today as I find it. How does the Spirit speak these words to me?

Another practice I’ve come to love is singing the psalms. For twenty-five years, I’ve found a lot of grace in trainings and retreats hosted by monasteries. And most of those have been Benedictine monasteries who pray the psalms daily in community. This way of singing the psalms using simple plainsong melodies has been a gift. Augustine is believed to have said that “The one who sings prays twice.”

I’ve been enjoying a new psalm book produced by Anglican House Publishers. It includes musical notation for a number of different plainsong melodies I use when I sing the psalms. You can view a YouTube video that talks more about this resource. This psalm book (or psalter) guides me in praying through most of the psalms every two months.

Another element of my mornings with God is praying for others. I have a method of arranging the various circles of people in my life using my smartphone Notes app. It syncs with my computer and I’m able to add notes in either location as I become aware of needs I want to remember before God.

Basically, this weekly rhythm of intercession begins with a few notes that reflect praying through my own intentions: my rule of life, some real-time formational prayers in which I’m seeking God’s grace, some prayers about my intentions in the areas of eating and exercise, and a few statements of vision, purpose, and priority. (For example, I am regularly praying our mission statement).

I also pray for my immediate family, extended family, close-by friends, leaders, and others in our church. I pray for various persons and events related to my work: our board and staff, my coaching clients, our donors, our PACE communities, upcoming speaking engagements, peers in formation, and people I’ve mentored over the years. I also pray for national, state, and local government officials, some who have yet to discover and trust the love of Jesus for them, and leaders in other parts of the world I’ve been honored to serve over the years.

This rhythm of praying is spread out over a week so that I am able to hold prayerfully the main people and opportunities in my life.

Finally, I read for fifteen minutes in a spiritual classic. Recently, I read Julian of Norwich’s Showings, a fourteenth-century vision of divine love and trust. She has been encouraging me to more deeply and fully trust in the unfailing love of God for me.

These have proven to be life-giving ways for me to remember God, acknowledge God, listen for the voice of God, and be responsive to God’s initiative toward me. I think of it more as a time of receiving than a time of spiritual performance. I have a few metaphors that help me frame my perspective in these daily mornings with God.

Morning meetings with God are a meal—literally nourishing. Engaging the Gospel and the psalms and being in the presence of the One who speaks nourishes my soul. I bring the hungers and thirsts of my soul to God, and I find something good that feeds me.

Morning meetings with God are training. There are times, and plenty of them, when my “I don’t feel like it” feels stronger than my soul hunger for God. Distraction seeks to divert me from my morning seeking. Busyness and a very long to-do list still tempt me to get going in the morning on my work.

But the dailiness of my prayer is training my will to persevere. Quiet trains me in presence—to God, to myself, and to others throughout the day. My engagement with scripture in these ways grows my vocabulary in conversation with God.

Morning meetings with God are conversation with a Friend. As my mentor Chuck Miller often said (and I’ve quoted him more times than I can count): “Prayer isn’t just something you do. It is Someone you are with.”

I’m not merely “doing a spiritual activity.” I’m not checking off a task on my daily to-do list. I’m sitting in the presence of Father and Son in the power of the Spirit. This is personal. This is relational. This is communion. This is conversation. I am actually meeting with the Living God.

Morning meetings with God are responding to an invitation. As a leader, I’m tempted to define my life mostly in terms of my activities. But as I wrote in An Unhurried Leader, leaders must pay attention not only to their activities, but also to their receptivities.

Before we speak we must listen. Before we go to work, we come into the presence of God. Before we serve others, we must receive the service of Jesus in our lives. Before we bless others, we ourselves must receive the continual blessing of God.

It’s a great gift to rise early to meet with God. There is something that happens in my soul that I carry into the rest of my day.

I hope you sense the joy of the Father’s heart and God’s invitation to you to come and meet with him. He is the kind of Father who delights when his children come to spend time with him.

For Reflection 

• What has been your own experience of meeting with God in the morning? Where (and why) might you have been resistant?
• What practices have been meaningful for you when you meet with God? Are there any practices that don’t feel as meaningful anymore? Why might that be?
• How would you like to proceed in meeting with God day by day? What might God be inviting you into?