Your spiritual practices were meant to bring you into His presence, not prove your faithfulness.
Have you ever finished your quiet time and felt relieved because you could check it off your list?
But did you actually meet with Jesus?
Because it is entirely possible to do everything you planned for your time with God and still walk away feeling as though something was missing.
- You read the chapter.
- You wrote in your journal.
- You said your prayers.
- You completed the devotional.
You did everything on the checklist. But were you actually aware of being with Jesus?
Somewhere along the way, quiet time can become something we measure instead of Someone we are meeting.
We begin measuring how many days we were consistent.
How many chapters we read.
How long we prayed.
How many pages we filled.
How focused we were.
And whether we felt spiritual enough when we finished.
Without realizing it, we can become so focused on completing the practice that we lose sight of the Person the practice was meant to help us encounter.
When Prayer Feels Like Something You Can Fail
For years, I thought I was bad at prayer.
I’m not sure “bad pray-er” is even a real category, but that is how I saw myself.
I would hear other people pray with beautiful, eloquent words. Their prayers sounded organized and deeply spiritual. They seemed to know exactly what to say and how to say it.
My prayers didn’t sound like that.
Sometimes I didn’t have the words. Sometimes my thoughts wandered. Sometimes what I wanted to say came out in short, simple sentences.
So I measured my prayers against theirs.
And because mine didn’t sound the same, I assumed I wasn’t doing it well enough.
But prayer was never supposed to be a performance.
Jesus wasn’t waiting for me to impress Him with my vocabulary. He was inviting me to come close, speak honestly, listen, and remain with Him.
I had become so busy evaluating how I prayed that I wasn’t paying attention to the God I was praying to.
Maybe you’ve experienced something similar.
Perhaps you’ve believed you weren’t good at studying the Bible because you didn’t understand as much as someone else.
Maybe you’ve struggled to sit quietly and assumed that meant you lacked spiritual discipline.
Perhaps you’ve missed several mornings and felt as if you had disappointed God or needed to “start over.”
But what if the problem isn’t that you don’t love God enough?
What if you have simply learned to measure your relationship with Him using a checklist that was never meant to define it?
I’m DeneenTB. I’m a Faith Growth and Work Alignment Strategist, and I help high-capacity Christian women build a personal faith life that fuels their work and leadership.
Here, we talk about growing with God in a way that is rooted in Scripture, shaped by your design, and sustainable in your real life.
If you’ve been trying to follow someone else’s formula for faith, I created the free Faith Shape Quiz to help you begin recognizing how you may naturally connect with and respond to God.
Now, let’s talk about what happens when our spiritual practices become a spiritual scorecard.
The Checklist Isn’t the Real Problem
Let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with having a Bible-reading plan.
There is nothing wrong with setting aside a regular time to pray, following a devotional, keeping a journal, or tracking a habit you want to develop.
Intentional practices can help us create space for God in lives that are full of responsibilities, decisions, and distractions.
The checklist itself is not necessarily the problem.
The problem begins when we use the checklist to determine the condition of our relationship with God.
I completed everything today, so God must be pleased with me.
I missed three days, so I must be drifting away from Him.
I didn’t feel anything during prayer, so the time must not have counted.
I couldn’t concentrate, so I failed.
She studies longer than I do, so her faith must be deeper than mine.
I was consistent last month but not this month, so I need to start over.
Do you see what happens?
The practice stops being a place of connection and becomes evidence we use to judge ourselves.
Instead of helping us keep our eyes on Jesus, it keeps our eyes on our performance.
And when our attention is on how well we are doing, we can miss the One who invited us to come.
Jesus Invited Us to Abide
In John 15:4, Jesus says:
“Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.”
Jesus does not describe our relationship with Him as a test we must pass. He describes it as a living connection.
A branch does not strain to prove that it belongs to the vine. It receives what it needs from the vine. Its growth and fruit come from remaining connected to the source of its life.
That is the invitation Jesus gives us. Remain with Me. Receive from Me. Let My life shape yours.
The purpose of spending time with God is not to complete the right activity for the right number of minutes. It is to become present to the God who is already present with you.
Your spiritual practices are not evidence you present to Jesus to prove your faithfulness.
They are places where you can experience His faithfulness.
When a Good Practice Becomes the Focus
We can see another picture of this in the familiar story of Mary and Martha.
Martha was serving. She was doing something useful and necessary. Jesus didn’t condemn service itself.
But Luke tells us that Martha had become distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. Her attention was consumed by what she was doing and by what Mary wasn’t doing.
Mary, meanwhile, sat at Jesus’ feet and listened.
The difference was not that one woman was spiritual and the other was not. The difference was where their attention had gone.
Martha was in the presence of Jesus, but she was too preoccupied to receive it.
And I wonder how often we do something similar.
- We can read the Bible while thinking mostly about how much we need to finish.
- We can pray while evaluating whether we are saying enough.
- We can journal while trying to make the page look profound.
- We can attend church while comparing our faith with the woman sitting beside us.
We can be doing all the “right” things while our eyes are still fixed on ourselves.
Even a good spiritual practice can become a distraction when completing the practice matters more than meeting with Jesus.
The practice is not the destination. Jesus is.
Your Way of Meeting With Jesus May Look Different
Some of my old journal pages are full of color, shapes, underlining, words written at different angles, and ideas connected across the page. (You can see my technique in the video How to focus your mind while praying- One strategy that will change your life and business.)
They don’t always resemble a traditional quiet-time journal.
But creating those pages helped me slow down, pay attention, and engage with what God was showing me.
That doesn’t mean visual journaling is the answer for everyone. It means that God met me as I brought my whole self into the process.
For you, meeting with Jesus might look like sitting with one verse instead of completing three chapters.
It might mean taking a walk while you pray because your thoughts become clearer when your body is moving.
It might mean studying the context of a passage because understanding strengthens your connection with God.
It might mean naming what you genuinely feel instead of saying what you think you’re supposed to feel.
It might mean sitting quietly and receiving one truth about God.
It might mean turning your attention toward Him during an ordinary part of your workday.
Different practices help different women become attentive to God.
That is one reason understanding your Faith Design matters. It helps you recognize which practices create genuine connection and which ones you may be forcing simply because they worked for someone else.
The goal is not to avoid discipline. It is to develop rhythms that help you remain connected to Jesus.
Stop Asking, “Did I Do Enough?”
When faith becomes a checklist, the question underneath everything is often:
- Did I do enough?
- Did I read enough?
- Did I pray long enough?
- Was I consistent enough?
- Did I understand enough?
- Was I focused enough?
But “Did I do enough?” keeps your attention fixed on you.
A better question is:
How can I become present to Jesus today?
That question changes the purpose of the practice.
You aren’t opening your Bible merely to finish a chapter. You are opening it to hear, understand, and respond to God’s truth.
You aren’t praying to accumulate enough minutes. You are bringing your real thoughts, needs, gratitude, questions, and attention to Jesus.
You aren’t journaling to produce a perfect record of your faith. You are creating a place to notice what God is doing in you.
You aren’t practicing silence to prove how disciplined you are. You are making room to listen.
And some days, the way you meet with Jesus will look different from other days.
- Your schedule will change.
- Your energy will change.
- Your responsibilities will change.
- Your emotional and physical capacity will change.
But Jesus does not disappear when your routine changes.
You are not starting your relationship over every time you miss a practice.
You are being invited to turn your attention back to Him.
Try This Before Your Next Quiet Time
Before your next spiritual practice, pause.
Before you open the Bible, begin the devotional, play the worship music, or start writing, say:
Jesus, I am not here to prove anything. I am here to be with You.
Then choose one practice that helps you become present.
You might:
- Read one short passage slowly.
- Tell Jesus what is honestly happening inside you.
- Take a prayer walk without trying to make the prayer sound polished.
- Write or draw your response to a verse.
- Sit quietly and receive one truth about who God is.
- Ask God what He wants you to notice today.
When you finish, don’t ask, “Did I do enough?”
Instead, ask:
What did I notice about God, about myself, or about how He is inviting me to live?
That is not another question to grade yourself with. It is an invitation to pay attention.
Because spiritual growth is not only visible in how consistently you complete a practice.
It is also visible in how you are becoming more trusting, honest, loving, discerning, courageous, obedient, and responsive to God in your everyday life.
Keep Your Eyes on Jesus
Hebrews 12:2 tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
- Not on the woman whose quiet time looks more impressive.
- Not on the number of uninterrupted days in our reading plan.
- Not on how spiritual we sounded when we prayed.
- Not even on the checklist we created with the best of intentions.
On Jesus.
Your practices can support that focus, but they cannot replace it.
So use the reading plan. Write in the journal. Set aside the time. Create the rhythm. Build habits that help you return to God.
But remember why you are doing them.
Quiet time was never meant to become something you merely measured. It was meant to become a place where you met with Someone.
Your Next Step
If you’ve been forcing yourself into spiritual practices that leave you feeling inadequate, the Faith Shape Quiz is a simple place to begin. It will help you identify some of the ways you may be naturally inclined to connect with God and grow in your faith.
And if you’re ready to go deeper, the Faith Design Profile™ Experience gives you a personalized understanding of how you are designed to grow, along with a Faith Rhythm Guide created specifically for you and your current season.
Before you leave, I’d love to hear from you:
Which part of your time with God is most likely to become something you measure?
Is it how often you do it, how long you spend, how much you accomplish, or how focused you feel?
Share your answer in the comments. Your response may help another woman recognize that she isn’t the only one who has struggled with this.
The next time you sit down with God, leave the spiritual scorecard behind.
Bring your honest self. Become present.
And keep your eyes on Jesus.
Be filled to overflowing,
DeneenTB
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