How to Slow Down And Rest In God with Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

If you are anything like I was a few years back, your quiet time has turned into one more thing to get through. You sit down with your Bible, you read a chapter, you pray, you check the clock, and before you know it you are already thinking about the laundry and the phone calls you need to make. I have been there. I led a Tuesday morning women's Bible study at my church for years while I was still running on empty, and I know exactly what it feels like to finish a devotional and realize you did not actually rest in God at all. That is why I want to walk you through how I learned to slow down, using the practices in Peter Scazzero's Emotionally Healthy Spirituality.

Peter Scazzero wrote Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, and the book is not a light devotional. It asks you to look at your own patterns, your family history, your reactions, and your relationship with God in a way most of us never have. But the heart of it is simple: you cannot be spiritually mature while you are emotionally immature, and you cannot rest in God while you are running from one thing to the next. So let me show you the exact steps I used to slow down, rest in God, and build a steadier daily faith life.

Step 1: Admit That You Are Running on Empty

The first step is not spiritual. It is honest. There was a stretch in my late fifties when I was burned out in ways I did not even have words for. I remember one Tuesday morning in particular, back when I was still working at the church office. I got up at five-thirty, made my coffee, opened my Bible, and sat there for twenty minutes without reading a single verse. I just stared at the page while my mind ran through the staff meeting I had to lead that afternoon. That was the morning I finally admitted to myself that I was running on empty, and it scared me more than I let on. I was still showing up, still leading the study, still cooking dinner, still smiling at church, and underneath it all I was exhausted. Peter Scazzero's point is that you cannot rest in God if you are pretending everything is fine.

So I want you to ask yourself one question, and be honest: when you sit down for your quiet time, are you trying to get closer to God, or are you trying to get through the list? If it is the second one, that is not a character flaw. It is a signal. It means your soul is tired and your schedule is too full, and the only way to slow down is to admit that first.

This is where Emotionally Healthy Spirituality helped me more than any other book I had read. Peter Scazzero does not let you skip this step. He points out that many of us use spiritual activity to avoid looking at our own emotional state. We do more, we read more, we serve more, and we call it faithfulness. But rest in God starts with the truth, and the truth is that you are tired. That is okay. That is where you start.

Step 2: Protect a Real Block of Time, Not a Crumble of It

Here is what I changed that made the biggest difference. I used to carve out ten minutes here and fifteen minutes there, and I wondered why I never felt settled. I tried evenings first, right after dinner, but by then my head was full of the day and my eyes were heavy. I tried right before bed and fell asleep in the chair twice, which Glenn still teases me about. Mornings were the only time that worked, and it took me three tries to admit it. Once I did, I stopped treating the whole thing as optional. Now I read early in the morning, around six o'clock, in my recliner by the living room window with a cup of coffee. I give myself a real block of time, usually forty-five minutes, and I protect it like it matters, because it did.

Peter Scazzero talks about the value of stopping, not just doing. When you give God your leftover time, you are telling yourself that rest is not important. When you give God your first time, you are telling yourself that rest is the foundation of your day. I am not saying everyone has to be a morning person. I am saying you need to find the block that is genuinely yours and guard it.

If you can only find twenty minutes, take the twenty minutes. The length matters less than the regularity. What changed for me was knowing that the time was coming every single day, that I was not going to let the phone or the television or the guilt steal it. That is what makes rest possible: not a perfect hour, but a protected one.

Step 3: Read Less and Sit Longer

This one sounds backwards, and I know it. But the single biggest shift in my quiet time came when I stopped trying to read a whole chapter and started reading a few verses, sometimes just a few sentences, and then sitting with them. Peter Scazzero's book taught me that the goal is not coverage. The goal is contact. You are not trying to get through the Bible. You are trying to let the Bible get through to you.

So here is what I do now. I read a short passage slowly, maybe twice. One morning last winter I read Psalm 46:10, just that one verse. Be still, and know that I am God. I read it three times, closed the book, and sat with it, and I cannot tell you that anything dramatic happened, only that the tightness in my chest loosened a little for the first time in weeks. Most days I close the book and sit with a question: what is this saying to me today? Sometimes the answer comes right away. Sometimes it comes while I am washing dishes later. Sometimes it does not come at all, and that is fine too. The sitting is the point.

If you use Emotionally Healthy Spirituality as your guide, you will notice that Peter Scazzero includes questions at the end of each chapter, and they are not questions you can answer in a minute. They are questions you have to carry around with you. That is what I mean by sitting longer. You are not in a hurry to finish. You are letting the question work on you.

Step 4: Write Down What You Notice, Not What You Should Feel

I have kept journals for years, but most of them were full of what I thought I should feel. I wrote things like, I am grateful for this day, when what I actually felt was anxious. Peter Scazzero helped me see that this was a way of lying to myself in the name of faith. So I started writing down what I actually noticed, even when it was not pretty.

Now my morning notebook has two columns. On one side I write what is actually going on, and on the other side I write what I am noticing in my reading. Then I sit and I look at both sides together. One entry from last month says it better than I can explain it. Left side: Glenn's bloodwork came back and we are still waiting on the doctor's call, and I am angry at a friend who did not show up for coffee. Right side: I kept noticing the word wait in my reading. I sat with those two things for a long time, and what came out of it was not a plan or a solution. It was just the honest knowledge that God could hold both of them at once. That is where the real rest happens, because I am finally bringing my whole self to God, not just the polished version.

This is one of the most uncomfortable parts of the book, and I want to be honest about that. Peter Scazzero asks you to bring your emotional life into your spiritual life, and that is hard for people like me who were raised to keep those separate. But I can tell you from twelve years of leading Bible study that the women who actually grow are the ones who get honest in their journals.

Step 5: End With Silence, Not With a To-Do List

The last step is the one I almost skipped, and it is the one that changed everything. When I used to finish my quiet time, I would immediately start planning my day. What do I need to buy? Who do I need to call? The rest was gone before I even stood up. So now I end with silence. I set a timer for five minutes, and I just sit. No reading, no writing, no planning. Just sitting in the presence of God. I started with two minutes, because five felt impossible. After a week I moved up to three, and after about a month I could sit for the full five without reaching for my phone or my list. The timer matters more than you would think. It keeps me honest.

Five minutes sounds short, and it is. But when you are used to filling every second with noise, five minutes of silence feels like an hour. The first few times I did this, my mind raced. That is normal. The point is not to have a perfectly empty mind. The point is to practice being still enough to notice that God is with you, even when nothing is happening.

Peter Scazzero calls this kind of practice the foundation of a healthy spiritual life, and I think he is right. When I end my quiet time with silence, I carry something different into the rest of my day. I am slower. I am less reactive. I am more myself. And that, more than anything, is what rest in God looks like in real life.

What Else Helps

A few practical things made these steps stick for me. First, I told my husband Glenn what I was doing and why the morning time mattered, and he started protecting it for me. Second, I turned off the notifications on my phone before I sat down, and I left the phone in the kitchen, not next to my chair. Third, I kept a pen and a simple notebook in the same spot every day, so there was no excuse to skip the writing. And fourth, I reminded myself that this is a practice, not a performance. Some mornings are beautiful and some mornings are a mess, and both of them count.

If you are leading a small group or just doing this on your own, I would also tell you to be patient. Slowing down after decades of rushing is not a one-week project. It took me months to stop reaching for my phone during the silence, and I still have mornings when I catch myself planning lunch during my reading. That is okay. The point is to keep coming back.

You are not trying to get through the Bible. You are trying to let the Bible get through to you.