For my first post on prayer, I want to make a simple entreaty: Let us drop the term “Quiet Time.“
Doesn’t “quiet time” sound very … soft? A bit too dispensable?
Think this through with me: what images and connotations does “quiet time” conjure up in your mind? Slippers? Coffee? A plush cushy chair?
No wonder we drop it when other things feel more pressing. Morning “quiet time” sounds and feels like a luxury… when we have time. The language we use matters; our choice of words informs our attitudes and actions.
Can you imagine Jesus or the Apostle Paul having “quiet time”? It’s a bit ludicrous, right? Really to the point of being offensive.
My suggestion is that we replace “quiet time” with “The Morning Watch.”
“The Morning Watch” brings in the idea of spiritual warfare. This is TRUE prayer. And this is a necessity. We DO have an Enemy. And he is prowling, watching and looking for whom he can devour. We ARE in a war… or we’ve been taken captive.
Are you living in defeat? Anxiety? Addiction? Escaping and numbing? How is your marriage? Are you experiencing “abundant life” and “freedom” that Jesus came to bring?
Perhaps you’ve gone AWOL.
“Prayer is a wartime walkie – talkie for spiritual and missional warfare; Not a domestic intercom to increase the comfort of the saints. And one of the reasons prayer malfunctions in the hands of so many Christian soldiers, is that they have gone AWOL.” ~ John Piper
Are you dressed for war?
Do you have a sword? How sharp? How skilled?
“If you can’t run with horsemen, how can you run with horses?” ( paraphrase Jeremiah 12:5)
“You CAN get better.” ~ Dan Allender
Let’s do it together. As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. ~ Proverbs 27:17
delight of my life 
Catherine, I’m so glad I’m included in your emails. This one in particular is so powerful and meaningful and so necessary. Thank you Lord for inspiring Catherine knight. Phil 🤓🙏🏽
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Thank you Phil!! That encouragement means a lot to me, I fight against the lie that what I do and write doesn’t really matter at all… so thankful that the Spirit used it in your life!!
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Thank you for sharing this, Catherine. 🙂 ❤
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I like the name, “the morning watch!” On the battlefield, soldiers set up a morning watch to be alert for presence of the enemy. As Christians, we fight the enemy daily so we desperately need a daily morning watch. Thank you for this blog, Catherine.
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This was very insightful.
On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 8:30 PM, delight of my life wrote:
> CatherineKnight36 posted: “For my first post on prayer, I want to make a > simple entreaty: Let us drop the term “Quiet Time.” Doesn’t “quiet time” > sound very … soft? A bit too dispensable? Think this through with me: > what images and connotations does “quiet time” conjure up in y” >
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