The Quiet Time Companion

As you begin each day, remember that you are engaging with a person: your holy, powerful and tender-hearted Father in heaven, who through his Son and by his Spirit has made you his child. You are not just reading words and reciting words, but spending time in his presence.

1. Briefly pray that God will help you hear, understand, love and obey him, as you listen to his word today.

2. Read today’s Bible reading(s), as per your progress chart. After reading a Psalm, it is good to turn it into your own prayer (keeping in mind how it has been fulfilled in Jesus).

3. Reflect on the passage, seeking to understand it and apply it to your life. A good way to do this is to compose a short prayer arising from/responding to the passage (either in your head or on paper).

4. Spend an extended time in prayer. You can begin with the prayer you’ve just composed, and build on it with additional points of praise, thanksgiving, or confession of sin. It’s good to be specific, whether these points come from the passage or from your life. Then ask God for personal needs, the needs of loved ones, our church, community, nation and world, as per your daily prayer lists.

A good rule of thumb is to spend one-third of your time reading, one-third reflecting, and one-third praying.

You can vary this basic framework. For instance, you may want to start with a time of confession, praise and/or your prayer lists, and pray a short responsive prayer after the reading. You can also spend time singing your praise to God, using songs from church.

It is also good to make use of pre-written prayers, especially the Lord’s Prayer and other prayers from the Bible, but also from the Anglican prayer book and other trustworthy prayer collections.

Here are some further pointers if having a regular quiet time is new for you, or if you are struggling to find a rhythm:

• aim to carve out time in your day when you will be uninterrupted, and when your mind is (relatively) clear

• do it at the same time each day (humans are creatures of habit!)

• having a regular place to go to also helps make it a habit—a particular room or chair, for instance

• if you are starting out, aim for 5-10 minutes per day, but see if you can increase this over time.

The Bible is the one place where God speaks his life-giving word clearly and infallibly. It is a wonderful gift to be able to set aside time to regularly and systematically hear his voice.

The progress charts in The Quiet Time Companion give an order for reading the books of the Bible according to what will be helpful in your reading. Track your progress by marking off each chapter after reading it. There are three charts: Psalms, Old Testament (OT) and New Testament (NT). 

Plans for reading

There are different ways of combining the OT and NT. Options include:

1. Starting Out (NT only). If you have never read the Bible systematically before, start by reading the NT, one chapter per day, in the order suggested.

2. Steady Diet. One chapter of each testament daily. This covers the NT yearly and the OT every three years (at five days per week).

3. Chapter-a-Day. One book of the Bible at a time, alternating between Testaments. At five days per week, this will take about four years. You’ll need to combine some shorter OT books, and perhaps divide some longer NT ones, to keep the rhythm steady.

4. Bible in a Year. Three chapters daily from the OT, and one from the NT, at five days per week.

Note that chapter lengths in the Bible are not consistent, so there may be times where you halve longer chapters and combine shorter ones.

Using the Psalms

Note that the plans don’t include the Psalms. They are separated to be read differently, since they uniquely school us for how to speak with God. Include a Psalm in your reading as often as you are able. After reading a Psalm, it is good to turn it into your own prayer (keeping in mind how it has been fulfilled in Jesus).

The order of the Bible books

Old Testament books are loosely chronological, according to when the events happened (not when they were written).

New Testament books are grouped and ordered according to their writer and audience:

• Mark, Peter’s letters, Jude (Mark tells the gospel via Peter’s eyes)

• Luke, Acts, Paul’s letters (Paul and Luke were ministry partners)

• Matthew, James, Hebrews (written mainly for Jewish Christians)

• John, John’s letters, Revelation (written by the Apostle John)

To know we have a heavenly Father who delights to hear our requests is one of the great privileges of the Christian life.

The daily prayer lists give space to write your recurring prayer prompts—things you want regularly to pray for in addition to prayers arising from your reading. They help create a weekly rhythm of prayer. Fill out this section before you begin using the booklet to ensure you are praying for a healthy range of things. You can list names of people, ministries, nations, and more.

In the “Every Day” box, write the names and things you intend to pray for daily. For example, the names of immediate family members, close friends, and people you are seeking to share the gospel with. You might also write prompters, like “what am I thankful for?” “what needs confessing?”, or “who have I promised prayer?”. Or there might be other particular matters for regular focused prayer in a particular season.

In the remaining seven boxes, allocate the things you would like to pray for weekly to different days of the week. You don’t have to put something every day. There might be one or two days of the week where your schedule means you are not able to sit down and pray in an orderly, organised way. Or there might be days when you have already prayed corporately for other things (e.g. Sundays, or the day your Small Group meets).

Ideas include:

• names of extended family, members of your small group and ministry team, colleagues, neighbours, friends (you can also just write a group name, e.g. “my cricket teammates”)

• church ministries and initiatives (e.g. praying for the leaders of St Peter’s, or for upcoming evangelistic events), and the spread of the gospel locally

• mission partners of St Peter’s (the Hickels with CMS in Germany, the Connellys in Cowra with BCA, St John’s Care, Diocese of Jos, Scripture Union ACT—the Weekly News contains prayer points for these partners)

• leaders and administrators in our diocese: the bishop’s office, diocesan services

• the spread of the gospel globally (e.g. having “world Wednesday”, where you pray for CMS missionaries using their prayer points, or using a resource like Operation Word)

• ACT and federal political leaders (the Bible tells us to pray for those in authority)

• other local and global affairs (e.g. local schools and instpeace in warring nations, natural disasters, etc)

• personal spiritual growth (e.g. praying for growth as an evangelist on Mondays, growth as an encourager of others on Tuesdays etc… or praying for different spiritual virtues on different days—humility on Mondays, joy on Tuesdays, compassion on Wednesdays etc).

• other prompters—e.g. a reminder to pray the Lord’s Prayer on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, or to pray other prayers you have come across in the Bible, or from other trustworthy sources.

 What you put on these lists is really up to you. As you read the Bible, however, you will find it prioritises prayer for particular things, and that as you come to know God more deeply, that will affect what you want to pray for. So your lists will always be changing, and growing more Bible-shaped.

As prayer needs change over time, you can cross things out and add things. You may want to use pencil and erase things (although then you miss out on seeing a record of answered prayer!). Once things get too messy, you can always get a fresh booklet.

Always remember, too, these lists are meant to help you pray for a healthy range of things, rather than a burdensome checklist. Prayer is about a relationship with God, not ticking boxes. For this reason, when starting out, it is good to start small and add over time. You don’t want to overwhelm yourself before you begin!