3 Ways to Spend Time With God When You Are Tired and Weary
In the last couple of weeks, the dreaded Covid-19 made its way to my front door. Up until this point, no one in my family had gotten sick. But the Omicron variant had other plans.
Adding Covid on top of already being chronically ill, just sitting up for a couple of minutes at a time has been an exhausting challenge.
Recently, I found myself laying in bed telling God how sorry I was and how guilty I felt for not being able to read the Bible and write in my prayer journal like I normally do.
As the days stretched into over a week of not physically getting my Bible out and writing out my prayers, I was letting that guilt keep me from meeting with the Lord at all. Without realizing it, I had this internal belief that if my time with the Lord didn’t look a certain way, then why bother?
But I realized this type of thinking was keeping me in a cycle of guilt instead of helping me grow closer to the Lord.
I forgot that He tells us to come as we are: exhausted, weary, broken included. Scripture also tells us to draw near to God and He will draw near to us. But does this only look a certain way?
I feel like this is rarely something that gets talked about in Christian circles.
We are taught that we should be spending time every day praying and reading the Bible. And I want to reiterate that the only way to grow as believers is to be consistently in the Word of God and spend time with Him in prayer. This is definitley something we need to prioritize.
But what happens when we are physically or emotionally unable to spend chunks of time every day pouring over Scripture? What happens when our health fails us, there is a family emergency, we have a new baby and little sleep, or we are walking through grief and spending lots of time in the Word of God every day is too overwhelming?
Does this make us bad Christians? Is there grace that meets us where our limited energy ends?
Related: Seeking God When You’re Tired, Weary, & Worn Out
This got me brainstorming the idea of, “Are there other ways to spend time with God and soak up His Word other than in-depth Bible study every day?’”
So today, I’m going to share 3 ways that we can spend time with God whenever we are too overwhelmed and exhausted to spend chunks of time reading the Bible.
1.) Ways to spend time with God when you are tired – Break Scripture down into bite-size pieces.
When life is incredibly overwhelming, our time with the Lord is not something that needs to be complicated.
When we show up to meet with God, it is easy to be consumed by the lie that we are not doing enough. If we are constantly weighed down with this false guilt, eventually our reasoning for meeting with the Lord will be one of legalism instead of love; routine instead of relationship. If we are not careful, we can discourage ourselves into no longer showing up to be intentional – or showing up at all.
Sometimes in different seasons, it is much easier and realistic to be intentional with 10 minutes than it is 30 minutes or an hour.
If all you have is 10 minutes to give, He wants it. And I believe you can still get a lot out of this time and meet with the Lord.
My encouragement for this step would be to find a verse that sticks out to you and really speaks to your heart. Then, dig into this one verse. What does this verse(s) tell you about the character of God? What do you learn about the people in the verse? How can you apply this verse to what you are going through today? What questions do you have about the context?
Do you need somewhere to start? This free ebook, “30 Day Guided Verse Study” will help you do just that. Each day has a verse, a few prompts, and a prayer to help you be intentional in your time with the Lord and take away the overwhelm. You can download the free ebook below.
2.) Ways to spend time with God when you are tired – Listen to the Bible on the Bible App
This has currently become one of my go-to ways to spend time in the Word of God without actually reading.
I can do this as I lay down in my bed. For this step, you find a Bible reading plan or passage on the Bible App. At the top of the day, there will be a little button you can press and it will read the devotional or passage out loud to you. How cool is that!
Check out the video below for a tutorial on how to make the app read to you!
Related: The Best Apps For Deeper Bible Study
3. Ways to spend time with god when you are tired – Listen to sermons on YouTube or podcasts.
This is especially helpful if you are quarantining or your chronic illness/disability/major life changes have made it hard to physically go to church.
Some of my favorite pastors to listen to are:
- Robert Morris
- Matt Chandler
- Francis Chan
- Louie Giglio
Some of my favorite podcasts are:
- Girls Night Podcast
- The She Chose Hope Podcast
4. Ways to spend time with God when you are tired – Bonus tip: Set short-term goals.
If you feel like you are wanting to spend a little more time in the Word of God, but don’t know where to start or feel like doing a whole year plan is too much, set a short-term goal.
There are lots of Bible studies that are 3, 4, or 5 weeks long that have questions and prompts to guide you into deeper study.
Here are some of my favorites:
The main thing I want you to take away from this is that yes, spending time with God in His Word and prayer is so important. But I want you to be able to operate from a place of victory instead of shame.
If 10 minutes is what you have to give to the Lord, great. He can use that. If listening to Scripture on your phone is how you can get in the Word of God instead of physically reading; wonderful. He can us that.
I genuinely believe that if we are making efforts to draw near to Him and to seek Him, He will come and meet with you and honor that. He knows our human hearts. He knows the limitations of our bodies and the struggles we face in our minds.
What did you think of these three tips? Let me know below!
