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I was setting up to teach an elective seminar on how to have time with God at an annual men’s conference, and I recognized a fellow from the same seminar last year. “My brother, didn’t I see you here last year?” “Yes.” “Well, I hate to tell you, but it will be the same talk!”

The challenge is, the brother never got started, and he keeps looking for something that will motivate him to begin. And as a speaker, I keep looking for ways to do just that.

I am increasingly convinced that the key to getting started is simply obedience. Joshua 1.8, for example, is a command:

Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. (NIV)

Instead of waiting until you want to to do something, we would be wise to recognize this principle: You will not want to do something until you first did it when you didn’t want to.

I could talk to you about the benefits of exercise, for example, but if it has been a long time since you did it, starting is difficult, and the benefits are not immediate. But if you stay with it, soon you’ll realize that you feel better when you live a lifestyle that includes exercise than when you don’t. Then you’ll want to do it. But you wouldn’t know that you want it unless you had first started when you didn’t want to!

The same is true for daily time with God. You’ll go from drudgery to discipline to delight. Eventually, you’ll say with Jeremiah:

Your words were found, and I ate them, And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts. (Jeremiah 15.16, NKJV)

You will not want to do something until you first did it when you didn’t want to. Or, as the writer of Hebrews explains it:

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12.11, NIV)