Our elderly neighbor, Helen, squinted up at my wife and me. "I am religious, just like you," she said, shoving white hair to the side of her head with knobby fingers. She rested her broom against the wood-paneled hallway of our old apartment building.

"Actually, Helen," I answered, tucking my mail under my arm, "I think of Christianity more like having a relationship with God, not being religious."

Instantly our conversation changed directions and leapt toward the heart of Christ's gospel: God doesn't just call us to follow a list of rules, He calls us to Himself. Helen followed us inside our apartment and we talked more about that over a glass of lemonade.

But suppose Helen were to follow me into my prayer closet instead or read my journal or crawl inside my head during my devotions--if she joined me in my quiet times, in other words--would she see proof that I am pursuing a relationship? Or would she just see religion?

During my time with God, Helen might observe me pray, read the Bible, and conclude with journaling. These disciplines usher me into God's presence, for if I am to know God more, I must be reading His Word and speaking to Him in prayer. Journaling propels me to personal involvement and keeps me from playing the passive observer.

But I cross the line between discipline and religious duty when I forget why I do these things. Furthermore, I risk perceiving my daily devotions as a fact-gathering time to learn about God, rather than to know Him. In the words of contemporary Christian singing group Out of the Grey, "We take our daily bread and after we've been fed, we take our hearts and turn away."

The fact is--and my heart sometimes takes longer to grasp the facts--my heavenly Father cares for me more than I will ever comprehend and He longs to spend time with me. An Old Testament prophet wrote that God wants to quiet us with His love (Zephaniah 3:17, New International Version).

In the New Testament, the apostle John shows us the kind of relationship God wants to have with us: "There was reclining on Jesus' breast one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved" (John 13:23). Author Brennan Manning explains the significance of this verse in his book Abba's Child.

"We must not hurry past this scene in search of deeper revelation or we will miss a magnificent insight," writes Brennan. "God allows a young Jew, reclining in the rags of his twenty-odd years, to listen to His heartbeat! . . .Until I lay my head on Jesus' breast, listen to His heartbeat, and personally appropriate the Christ-experience of John's eye-witness, I have only a derivative spirituality."

Prayer, Bible-reading, and journaling are all tools that help place me in the audience before God's heart. In His presence, however, we may not always feel like reclining on His chest. We may cry there, or want to bang our fists against His chest instead. That's the nature of relationships: Sometimes I can't wait to tell my wife something that happened at work; sometimes I get upset and don't feel like talking at all. But always, I must put my feelings aside at least to the point where we meet and talk, because I love her--because I'm committed to her. God desires the same from us.

We at Worldwide Challenge hope this section on quiet times motivates you to think about your time alone with God as a chance to meet with God, not a time to check in or check up on Him.

One reader suggested the best motivator we could provide would be a 2x4 board that springs from the middle of the magazine, hits you in the head and shouts "Get on it already!" As a safety precaution, we opted for these articles instead.

Life boils over with change, and that often affects your time with God. Do you consider yourself a quiet time dropout? Join the ranks of our associate editor, Judy Nelson. Looking for some new daily devotional ideas? We've crammed 10 fresh suggestions from people like you throughout the next few pages. Come spend a few moments with author and Christian leader Steve Brown as he discusses ideas from his latest book, Approaching God.

Just don't put the magazine down without applying these truths to your life. As A.W. Tozer wrote in The Pursuit of God, "[God] waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain."