 You six in 21 says, for where your treasure is, there where your heart be also. And one thing we treasure more than anything is our time. Hi, I am Corey. This is Sydney and Amy, and welcome to Hope Today, where we're talking about some time management. Because I know for me, managing time, everything is like eating out my time. Everything is saying, spend more time with me, whether it's social media or my job, or family, or time with God. But today, we're going to talk a lot about time with God. I'm learning how to manage my time. Any tips here from the ladies here? Oh, yeah, I mean, this is exactly why we have our very special guest and author, Sandra Bird, with us today with her devotional. Talk about taking time and spending it with the Lord. Do you want to elevate your prayer life? Do you want to experience God's presence in your life in a greater way? This new devotional dwell 90 days at home with God. And I can't give away all the secret sauce in this book, but I will say this, after sitting down and pleasantly reading through every single devotional, I want to sit on a big comfy couch with my dog and my kids. I want to watch squirrels. I want to make a pound cake and just fill the air in the home. I want to be a foodie. So what she does, guys, is take our practical, every day moments in life. And she brings God into it. And it is really delightful. Because you know what I think? A lot of times when we look at worship, when we think of worship, it's not just praying to God. It's not just going to church and singing the songs. But worship is a way of life. And everything that we do, there's ways that we can practically and just intentionally bring God into the mix. And so even I know something that I do that you guys, well, if nobody hears me in the kitchen, shake me here and be like saying something. But one thing I'll be doing is I'll just start like I'll be cooking or I'll even ask God. I'm like, OK, what do you want me to add? Like certain spices and season. Let me tell you, ask God how to make some food and he'll make it just right. And then also I'll just be singing or just different things like even something I do that recently, just even managing my time or just even bringing God into our home, is that on Sundays, that's when I clean. Like right before church, it's just a practice that I've got into and I'm not kidding. It is so relaxing to me. And it's just I think it's because I'm cleaning the physical house, then I'm cleaning my spiritual house. So I think there's a reflection. Yeah. So those are two little tidbits that I've just been doing that has really made a big difference in my life recently. So yeah. See, that's incredible because I clean. It actually stimulates me and gets my mind going. But the main thing I do is I write things out. Literally the night before, I'll write out the next day. I mean, by half an hour increments. So it's really exciting to do that, to help manage. So I'm excited to hear from our speaker today. Well, speaking of writing, our next guest is an author of more than 50 books and has built a loyal following for her heartwarming, insightful devotionals. Sandra Byrd's latest is called Dwell 90 Days at Home with God. And she joins us now to share how we can elevate our prayer life, experience the presence of God, no matter where we dwell. Sandra, it's so good to have you with us here on Hope today. Morning. Thank you for having me. It's delightful to be here. Let's start with, first of all, 50 books. Now as a, right now, everybody's reading books. Everybody's loving historical fiction. Everybody's reading, it's summertime. You have both fiction and historical fiction books that you have written. Can you tell us just a little bit about them? Yeah, I started out writing for children. I started out writing tween books, mainly because that's where I learned to love to read. And I wanted to pass that on as it were. But after a number of years, I started writing my books for adult women, mostly. Started with a foodie series that's called The French Twist, Let The Me Cake. And I did plenty of eating cake and baking cake when I was writing that series. And then I delved into my true love, which is historical fiction. A lot of them set in Great Britain. And then my most recent one set right here at home. I am totally going to be reading those as soon as we're done with this interview. So this devotional is so, it really is heartwarming. It's just, I feel like I know you in a way. It's very awkward. It's like, oh, I feel like I could sit down at her table, bring up stories. And like I said earlier, I feel like I want to sit on a cozy couch. I want to bake a pound cake. I want to watch the squirrels. And I want to hear God's voice. Why did you write this dwell and being at home with God? What does that mean? Home is the place that we feel the most comfortable. We can take off our suits or our skirts. We can put our yoga pants on. I love that Sydney said she talks to God about recipes. I do that too. Sometimes I tell him a joke. I'm like, yeah, I thought this was funny. We're just intimate with the people that we're at home with. And God tells us in his word that he's come to make a home with us. So it's kind of a two-way interconnection. He makes this home with us. And we make our home with him. So we know that spiritually he dwells in us and we in him. But we also dwell in physical places while we're here on Earth. And in a way that we might ask the Lord not just to bless our food, but we invite him to the meal, that's kind of how I want to get for us to see at home. It's not that we just want him to bless the things that we're doing. We want him to invite him to live in our homes with him in the moments that we're cleaning on Sunday or weeding or disciplining our children or whatever we're doing at home. We're home mostly. So can we have eyes to see and ears to hear their God as he's there with us? And Sandra, you bring up that there are many seasons of being at home. Even now I'm walking through a season where I'm only getting one kid ready to go back to school versus three. And the other one is launching into adulthood. It's like, I don't know if I like this season. I want to keep him at home with me. What do we do when those seasons, we know there's a change. We know there's a shift. How do we embrace it and see it through God's eyes? One of the most important things to remember about seasons is like you said, they're a shift. They're cyclical. Where I went into trouble is when I think winter is going to last forever. This is a terrible circumstance. I'm always going to be lonely. Or this is a financial challenge. But you know what spring always follows. Cleasiasties tells us that. And also we've observed that in our own spiritual and physical lives. You can also get in trouble when you think summer's going to last forever. Oh, there's never going to be a challenge. Life is perfect now. I've wrinkled. I earned out all the wrinkles. Everything's going to be fine. So I think if we know that God guides us through the winters, he always brings us into spring. He enjoys the summers with us. And he brings maybe rest and renewal in fall. I think if we can begin to look at them not as things to grit our teeth through in the hard seasons and then maybe kind of feel entitled to in the easy seasons, we see that he's growing something in each one. I love the example of dormant roots. Sometimes you see a plant in the winter. It's doing nothing. It's spindly. There's no leaves. There's no flowers. But at that time, the roots are growing deeper. It's getting firm. All the action is happening underground that then later allows for that blossoming, allows for that fruit. So if we can kind of look at that in ourselves, hey, this is a tough season. God's with us. He's doing something. He's growing those roots deeper because when spring comes, he's going to bring some fruit and some flowers. And you know, seasons are moving and time keeps chugging along whether we want it to or not. So how important is that quiet time with God and really sitting down with your Bible, sitting down with the devotional? Give us an idea of what that looks like, sounds like in the day in and the day out of all of our busyness. So when I go to Bible study, I generally go to a passage or a chapter and I'm kind of digging in like an exegetical way to see what's there. And I profit by that. When I go to a devotional, it's almost like meeting with a prayer partner. It's somebody who opens up scripture and away with a story or an insight from everyday life that I might not have thought about. And then that person or that book that devotional says, hey, have you considered this? And then I talked to the Lord about that. When I have my quiet times with my devotional, I try to involve all the five senses. For example, I drink jasmine tea, which smells wonderful, it tastes wonderful. It kind of ushers me into God's presence in a way that doesn't otherwise because that's the only time that I drink jasmine tea. I have that soft sofa that you were talking about. I might have quiet worship music on in the background. So I involve all of the senses that bring me into God's presence. That becomes a set aside time for me and the Lord. It doesn't mean that I'm not praying when I'm washing the dishes or in carpool line, but just like anybody else who's valuable in my life, I turn off the phone and I face the Lord directly to describe to him the honor that he deserves for those moments in my day. Sandra, I am a firm believer that the world needs more stories about squirrels and you have several of them in your devotional. I mean, there is just nothing like when you stop and you're watching nature. Can you share maybe just a few of those great squirrel stories and how in the world you connected them with God in faith? Well, I gotta tell you God helps me connect them. I think people might think I might have a little bit of a, maybe I've got too much time on my hands if I'm always watching the squirrels, but basically that's what's happening around us. And as I was out in my garden or something, one of the squirrel stories is they were digging up bulbs and they were burying them in other places because they wanted to put them where they could eat them later. But that meant that I ended up with like a crazy pattern of flowers. So I had some of my garden that was very planned, very orderly, very tidy. And then I'd end up with, you know, daffodils someplace that I hadn't expected. But I feel like that's kind of like life. I mean, sometimes I have these very orderly plans and I put them in place and they come to be exactly that I want. And sometimes I end up with crazy quilt stuff that I actually do something and someone comes in uproots in an unexpected place. I've got a daffodil or a tulip or something, I can look at a circumstance and say, hey, I worked really hard on that. And it didn't, it didn't turn out the way I wanted to. And God could be like, but hey, yeah, did you see those flowers over there? They look pretty good. And if I'm willing to put my eyes on that, I can say, yeah, it does look pretty good there. You can turn all circumstances into something beautiful. That is a great squirrel story. I would love your thoughts on this scripture in Deuteronomy 6, verses seven and eight. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you're on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them around your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. I saw a key word in there, Sandra, at home. What are your thoughts on that scripture? Well, I don't know if you guys have ever noticed, but when I was raising my children, if I would be telling them something, I could hear the Lord swing it right back around in my ear and say, did you hear that? Like, you know, you need to do this. And the Lord was saying, yes, Sandra, do you hear that? I've kind of understood that the things that He wants us and the ways that He wants us to teach our children are also the ways that He's needing and loving and teaching me. So this kind of, this verse is the undergirding of all of the devotionals that I write. It's not just one focused moment on Bible study or half hour worship, which is all very profitable, but it's seeing Him at work, loving and leading and teaching us when we lie down, when we stand up, when we're at home, which is much of the time. So if we've got those eyes to see and ears to hear Him and I ask Him, Lord, show me what you're doing in this situation. Show me how you're at work in my garden and how that shows you how you're gardening in my life. If we keep Him before us all of those times in that Deuteronomy passage, we will be so blessed because we will feel His presence with us constantly and He will disciple and love us through the day. Well, Sandra, listen, as you're talking, I'm really feeling this deep sense that you have curated your life to be a place where God can reside. Was there a time before that where you had maybe a casual relationship with the Lord and then something happened to cause you to have more of a devoted relationship with the Lord? Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I've had many opportunities like that and I'm very grateful for it because each one brings me deeper. We can keep God on the peripheral. I mean, we can keep Him to His allotted slots and I did do that. You know, you get Sunday morning, you might get Wednesday night. When I'm in trouble, you get time there. But one of the things that was so important to my husband and I is we were reading in Numbers 28 and that's a strange place to draw inspiration from. Maybe we're not in Numbers a lot but what happened is the Lord would ask His people there to bring Him a sacrifice of food at dawn and in the evening and what the sacrifice was was what they were eating and it hit us, hey, He wants to eat with them. He wants to join them at the table. He wants to eat what they're eating. He wants to be present. He wants to be a part, not just Lord bless my food and then we carry on with what we're doing but come to the table, be with us, share our meal, share my life, share when I'm doing a recipe and Sidney says, hey, do we put garlic, salt or lemon peppering here? What works? He wants to be deeply involved and then when you've got that depth situations, we've all got those winters. My husband has had cancer twice and it's still not resolved. So he's now living with us deeply in those difficult circumstances, just as much in the everyday ones when we're at the table because we've cultivated that constant presence. Sandra, if I said lead us through a devotional right now, what would that be? Well, right now out of my book, there are all the ones in home but I'll tell you one that was happening in my life yesterday. I'm here with my family and my daughter and my granddaughter who's 20 months as you know and she's got to learn to discipline herself. The big thing she's working on is walk, don't run. Like when you're at the pool, walk, don't run. And when you want to do something and other kids are in the way, walk, don't run. And my daughter explained to her how she had to obey but then she said to her, you know what, big girls have homework. And I thought, that's true, big girls have homework. It doesn't matter if you're a baby learning how to walk and not run. It doesn't matter if you're an adult learning how not to envy or how not to gossip or how to give, you know, your time and ties in the way that the Lord wants you to do. Big girls have homework. And I think if you have ears to hear things that are going on around you, the Lord will bless you and give you those insights. So it was not only me being proud of my daughter for the way she was raising my granddaughter, it was God saying to me, it's okay, Sandra, you don't have to be perfect. Big girls have homework and there's stuff we can work on together. Oh, homework, no. What do you do if you wanna run away from home? Yeah, I wrote about that, don't I? I do sometimes wanna run away from home. I think we all do because we are so intimate with God and because we know he has the power to do anything, we can be hurt or angry when we pray and beseech him and ask for things to happen. And he says, no, I wrote a devotional about how when I was maybe six, my parents had told me notice something and I put my doll in a brown paper bag and threw a couple of clothes in there and I was like, I'm just gonna leave town then. So I walked outside the door and we had a door and a spring door and I closed the door behind me and I stood in between that little place because it was raining. And I thought to myself, even as a girl, okay, now what are you gonna do? I mean, what was I gonna do? I had a brown paper bag and it was raining out. So I turned back around and I came back in, I unpacked my stuff, I sat on my bed and the Lord does that with us now. He's like, you know what? The circumstances aren't always going to be great. Come in and sit down in your home where I am, where we are together. Even in the circumstances that are difficult, you don't need to run away from me. I'm here with you to comfort you and to be with you and to lead you in the direction that I've chosen. Yes, Angie, we just so appreciate your whole conversation, your wisdom and your insight that you're sharing with us about dwelling in our homes and bringing God into our homes. And I was just like sitting here. I just really felt the Lord wanted us to pray for you because you just shared about what you're walking through and going through with your husband and your family and that I just felt just to take a moment, if it's okay with you, just to pray. Yeah, thank you and I would be blessed by that. Yeah, so Father God, we just thank you so much for Sandra. We thank you so much for her ministry. We thank you so much for her family, Father God. And right now we uplift her husband to you, Father God. Lord Jesus, we just pray that your healing bomb of Gilead would touch him from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. Father God, we thank you that by your stripes, Jesus, that he is healed. And so, Father God, as their family is walking through this time, Lord God, we pray that you would be close to them. We pray, Father God, that you would wrap your arms around them, Father God. And we just call on your name, O God. You are Jehovah Rafa. You are the Lord that heals. And so, Father God, in the name of Jesus, we pray that you'd be in this situation, that you would be in this circumstance, Father God. And we thank you so much for this family and the impact that they're making for the kingdom. In Jesus' name, amen, amen, amen. And Lord, help Sandra to write more books, devotionals, historical fiction, contemporary fiction. In Jesus' name, Micah River. Thank you so much for coming today. Thank you. Lovely to be here. Well, stay with us because when we return in 60 seconds, we're going to share our final takeaways and provide insight to what it truly means to experience God's presence in our daily lives. We'll be right back. Remember your childhood joy and excitement when being invited to a party? You felt valued, included, wanted, and ready to have a good time. Bestselling author Bob Goff believes that every day of life can be lived with the same childlike enthusiasm and sense of humor. Inside, love does. You'll learn that love is a verb, not just a feeling. His insights and joyful reflections will help you discover what it means to live fully alive, even as you serve others. Prepare to encounter remarkable stories from Bob Goff's life as he shares how living and loving to the fullest is the best way to make Jesus known in this world. Request your copy of Love Does when you give your best gift this month. Your gift today will help Cornerstone Television show the life-changing love of Jesus through Christ-centered TV programs. Call us at 888-665-4483 or give at ctvn.org slash donate. What an incredible interview about spending that quality time with God, intentional time with God. And you'll notice that in that interview, Sandra said one thing that was so important. When she spends time with God, she shuts the phone off. I think it sets precedence for us when we say, God, this is intentional. If you've ever been on a date or if you're married or whatever you're doing and you're at the dinner table and you just pull out your phone and you have that like half attention, but you're still texting, it doesn't make that other person feel very valuable. And I feel that when we intentionally spend time with God, just like he says, when you pray, go in your room, your closet, shut the door, he adds that aspect to say, you're setting up boundaries between the world and what God wants to say. It starts to really highlight the value that you aspire God's words to in your life. Because a lot of people are talking, self-help, do this, do that. YouTube updates and ads, all kinds of things that are happening that are pitching at, this is the right way to go. But when you really need time with God, when you really need God to speak, just like Jacob, he put everybody else before and he literally stayed in a place with God. God, I'm not moving, I'm not letting you go until you really speak to me. Because I know for me and the ladies may share as well, wrestling with anxiety and wrestling with the pressures of life, that consistency that you have to pay the bills and you have to be present and the phone rings, you gotta pick it up, the texts, you have to respond, emails. This can really divide our time, which causes us to be internally divided. So one thing I would say is one thing that I did, and just the other day I was driving with my kids, it was a very hot day, it's been a heat wave, and I was driving with my kids and I saw a beautiful sunset. I mean, the sky was so perfect. It was so beautiful that I turned the car around, pulled up by the side of the road and it was hovering right over a wheat field. And I got out the car, my kids are like, da, da, what are you doing? And I was looking at the sunset and tears begin to flow down my eyes because I stopped looking up. I used to look up when I was a kid. And when we look up, I hear the words delight yourself in me, delight yourself. When we delight ourselves in God's creation, His presence is in that because we're taking a moment, not to look down in our phones, but to look up at the beautiful creation that God has made in taking that moment to separate our heart from the world and just surrender it back to God. Whatever you need to do to have that moment of time with God, whatever you need to do to separate, say, you know what, I'm gonna do a, what do we do with finances? I'm gonna do a time budget, right? I'm gonna budget out my time and I'm gonna figure out where my time is going. Even with money, if you don't tell money where to go, it's not gonna tell you where it went. If you don't tell time where to go, it's not gonna tell you where it went. And people are time stealers and time vampires and they'll call you with all kinds of drama. But if you say, listen, this is the time that I want to spend with God for God, for me, for my family, for everyone that is connected to how I spend my time, you will begin to find the benefits of internal healing, even physical healing, because this stress and anxiety it kills, it's causing strokes, it's causing aneurysms, causing stress and tension. But time with God will produce a rest and a peace that surpasses all understanding. I'm talking about the bills can still be due, but you got peace. The car got repowed, but you have peace. You might even be going through a relational situation, a divorce and trying to figure out how to work things out with the kids. God will give you peace and he'll give you clarity of how to move, how to be, and how to rest in him and get a good night's sleep. And not really worry about what's gonna happen because God's gonna work it out. I feel God speaking to one of you ladies, go ahead and jump into it. I just really love what you just shared about just resting in God, dwelling with God, just even being the midst of his nature and his presence and even that whole time management piece. And something that I recently did is that I had a little spiritual retreat was just me and Jesus and I was just in my place of prayer. And I just took, honestly, I shut everything down for like three days. It was just me and God. And let me tell you, it was amazing to just be in the presence. It was just continually getting up and to pray and just to spend time with God and to listen to God and to hear from God. And you know what? It wasn't so much about like, God, I need break through this. He just started speaking what was on his heart. He started speaking to me. I was like, I need you to intercede and pray for this. I need you to see what I'm seeing. And I think sometimes it's like, he says like, seek first the kingdom of heaven and all these things will be added unto you. But when we seek him, it's amazing the things that transpire and take place. And it was amazing even in that little time, the things that he told me to pray about for the nation, for certain people, the names would just start popping up, the breakthrough that I saw after that that he did on behalf of my family. And so I just wanna just encourage you today that will you take time to dwell with God? Maybe it's in your place of prayer, maybe it's at your kitchen. Maybe you wanna be like Cory and you see a beautiful sunset and you stop and you sit and watch. Maybe you'll be like Amy and you'll be around your couch and your kids and your family and just enjoying the moment. Whatever you need to do, invite him. He's at home within us. Take that time to seek the Lord. Amy, what are your thoughts? Oh, my thoughts are there is beauty everywhere. There is wonder everywhere. And I do believe that God is not hiding from you that he is revealing himself to you in a million different little ways. So I think today it's a great time to stop. It's a great time to be still. It's a great time to listen and honestly start noticing the things that primarily go unnoticed in our life, that kind neighbor that did something for you, that beautiful random flower that popped up that the squirrel planted for you. I mean, just noticing the little things. And I believe sometimes it's in the little things that you'll find the really big things that really matter. So today I just pray that you get at home with God. Maybe you're far from God. Maybe you've been running away from God. Now's a great time to stop. Get back with God. Let him be at home in your life, your family in your physical home, in your spiritual house. Spend time with him. There is nothing like him. You can search the world a million times around. Nothing compares to Jesus. So I pray today for you and your family that you find hope today. On tomorrow's Hope Today, experience the transformative power of God's manifest presence. Author Roger Helen shares the keys to pursuing a deeper relationship with God and experiencing an abundant life filled with daily renewal and joy. Don't miss tomorrow's Hope Today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers, whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.