Making Quiet Time More Meaningful

I don't know about you, but having a good, meaningful quiet time is hard for me.  My alarm has just gone off, I want to go back to bed, I have so much to do that day, and my heart just isn't in it.  Most of the time, I'll just read a chapter or two in my Bible and move on.  It's more out of obligation than anything else because I know that Christians are supposed to read their Bible in the morning.  

Recently I have been reading a book called The Story, which is basically the Bible as a novel - it still uses the words of Scripture, but they take out parts like all the laws in the Leviticus and adds transitional paragraphs in italics to jump from one thing to the next.  That's a great way to get a sense for the Bible as whole without having to read the whole Bible (I tried to read the whole Bible in one year, but that quickly lost its spiritual value for me)  But where I am in the book, I feel like I'm just reading the stories - I'll read a couple pages and move on, but not think of how to apply my reading to my life.

So I decided to come up with a few steps to make my quiet time more meaningful :)

• Get out of bed - since my Bible is right next to my bed I have a tendency to just read it in bed.  That is totally not conducive to focusing, because you just want to go to bed again :)  Maybe you go outside or to a different room.
• Change it up.  I think this is one of the biggest things you can do to help you.  Maybe one morning you pick one verse and spend some time really thinking about what it means and how you can apply it to your life.  Maybe you read a chapter in a book like The Story.  Maybe you read a couple chapters in your Bible.  Or maybe you print out the lyrics to an old hymn and really spend some time thinking about what they mean - if it's a prayer, pray them to God.  Maybe you pull out your iPod and listen to some worship songs.  If you do the same thing every day it can become familiar and just another thing you have to do.
• Spend some time in prayer.  Sometimes I'll finish reading my Bible and go directly to do homework.  But God wants to hear from us.  Try talking to Him like a friend - tell Him what you're doing that day, confess your fears to Him, ask Him for His help in specific areas.

Those are just some of the things I have found to be helpful in making quiet time more meaningful - hopefully they can help you too :)