Book Review: Making Time for God in Our Overscheduled Lives

Life is incredibly busy. There’s so much to do and so little time. You might be working in a demanding career, serving in ministry, taking care of your kids, or completing your education along with being present for your friends and family and trying to put aside enough time to take care of yourself. 

With all of these responsibilities and commitments, time with God gets pushed to the bottom of our to-do list. So many of us are way too exhausted and overscheduled to spend time with God. Yet, we know that time with God is vital to our spiritual flourishing. But what is there to do about this dilemma? 

Karynthia Glasper Phillips, an ordained minister and health practitioner, has written a timely and relevant book for women balancing the juggling act of life and feeling unsure where faith fits into all of it. 

Press Pause: Making Time for God in an Overscheduled Life is a gentle encouragement for Christian women of all ages to prioritize the relationship for which they were created. Thankfully, Phillips doesn’t just tell us what we need to do, she shows us how. 

Whether you’ve been walking with God for years or you’re new to faith, we all can benefit from this book. The publisher has permitted me to share a brief excerpt from the book so that you can get a sense of what it’s all about. Before I share the excerpt, I’d love to highlight my favorite themes from the book and also note where my perspective differs from the author’s. 

Part 1: Balancing the Juggling Act

The excerpt I’ll be sharing is from the first part of the book. This is where the author diagnoses the problem so many women struggle with. We are too busy, and our spiritual lives are out of balance. In fact, the more we have on our plate, the more we need to prioritize time to experience God’s presence.¹ We gain strength for our daily lives when we pause to spend time with God.

To illustrate this, Phillips writes about an experience she had sitting at a traffic light and realizing that she had checked social media, started her crock pot, exercised, drank water, gotten dressed, and even grabbed a change of clothes for an event that evening, but had not spent any time with God.²

This resonated with me. I can remember a time in seminary when I found myself getting up early to work on an assignment about the Bible without stopping for even a moment to spend time with God. The irony wasn’t lost on me. 

Phillips did what I wish I had done in that scenario. She immediately parked her car in a grocery store lot, spent a few minutes in prayer, and briefly reflected on the scriptures. Even though things were busy and her day had already begun, she still paused to listen for God. 

I appreciated this example because I know many women feel guilty if quiet time doesn’t happen at the exact time or in the exact way that they planned. Instead of pausing to spend time with God, many women just put it off until the next day or when things feel less chaotic in their lives. But, whether you’re spending time with God while sitting in a beautiful chair with coffee or tea, or you’re taking a moment to spend with God in your car, at your desk at work, or somewhere in the margins of life, it’s still effective. 

Related: How to Develop a Personal Relationship with God

Part 2: Why We Need Spiritual Intimacy

While Phillips diagnoses the problem in part 1, here she presents the reasons why we need spiritual intimacy. She writes that “pressing pause with God prevents us from nibbling on ‘fad diets’ that will not sustain us during crises of faith, work-related issues, and home life.”³ 

Pausing with God helps us to develop a taste for the things of God rather than nurturing an appetite for harmful things that draw us away from God.

“Pressing pause with God prevents us from nibbling on ‘fad diets’ that will not sustain us during crises of faith, work-related issues, and home life.” 

Press Pause: Making time for god in an overscheduled life, 82.

Phillips also shares the benefits of spiritual intimacy. While she makes it very clear that time with God isn’t about what we can get, some of her conclusions in part 2 felt transactional. For example, she writes that “the results of quiet time are demonstrated in the manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit, wisdom, prosperity, and health, among other things.”⁴ There are so many faithful Christians who seek God regularly yet still battle health issues and experience poverty. Quiet time doesn’t necessarily solve these problems. I wholeheartedly agree, though, that time with God can help us experience the spiritual blessings we received when we became Christians.

Lastly, in the final chapter of this section, Phillips shares helpful foundations for quiet time. If you’re new to spending time with God or you’ve been struggling to become more intentional about it, you’ll find this chapter refreshingly practical. 

Part 3: 7 Day Personal Retreat

The entire book was already very practical, but part three is incredibly hands-on. With devotionals, thought-provoking reflection questions, and short prayers, it walks women through a seven-day personal retreat. If you take Phillips’ words seriously and apply her methods, you can certainly move from feeling far from God to developing a stronger relationship with him. 

My Overall Thoughts on Press Pause

I love that the author not only explains why women need to spend time with God, but she also helps walk them through how. She prays for her reader throughout the book and cares deeply about each person who will pick up a copy of Press Pause. The book offers the gentle nudge we need to prioritize time with God, along with the practical tools we need to get there. As I mentioned before, some of the conclusions in the book felt transactional. Time with God is essential, but it isn’t a formula for receiving specific outcomes.

I would recommend this book for Christian women of all walks of life. However, it would be particularly useful for Christian women who are juggling a lot of roles and tasks. If you are a woman in ministry or you serve others in your work (healthcare, chaplaincy, caretaker), you’ll find this book to be particularly relevant.

That being said, I’m happy to share an excerpt from Part 1 of Press Pause. At the end of the excerpt, I’ll share where you can purchase the book and learn more about the author.  

An Excerpt from Press Pause: 

Adaptation from Press Pause by Karynthia Glasper Phillips

Mechanisms for Physical and Spiritual Homeostasis

Applying the right tools to maintain spiritual balance is crucial to our well-being. They assist in developing healthy moral consciousness, decision-making, godly living, and success in the marketplace. Understanding this empowers us to lead a life of harmony and balance with God and man. In my experience as a healthcare practitioner and professor, I know all too well that maintaining homeostasis is vital to natural health and life. In the spiritual realm, God, in his infinite wisdom, has provided mechanisms to correct imbalances regarding our spiritual homeostasis. 

Why is this important? If the body does not recognize a change in normal regulation of its functions, sickness and even death can ensue. Likewise, when our spirit is not in harmony with God’s Holy Spirit, there are signals in place to aid in discernment of the consequences of our choices and behaviors. At that point, we can willfully continue in our own strength or adjust and align with God’s direction.

Let’s examine some basic concepts associated with natural, human body homeostasis and convert their usage into the context of spiritual homeostasis. 

Negative feedback to restore homeostasis. Negative feedback is a mechanism that identifies an undesired change and corrects it with counteractions. This opposite action is accomplished by the control center messaging a hormone or organ to reduce the agent’s effects of imbalance. This occurs through a signal that slows and stops the unwanted change and restores equilibrium. 

Biological example of negative feedback. In the case of diabetes, when blood glucose (sugar) increases above normal, the control center sends a message to the pancreas to release insulin to lower blood glucose, returning it to normal (equilibrium) levels. If the pancreas is malfunctioning, the body will require insulin to be injected to restore blood glucose equilibrium. 

Spiritual example of negative feedback. After days, months, or years of little time with God, our spirit becomes nearly empty of the presence of God. Jesus intercedes with the Father for us, and if we respond to the call of correction and draw near, he will draw near to us to correct unwanted behavior. The opposite actions of prayer, reading, and journaling counteract the disconnection with God. Then spiritual fatigue is removed, and the freshness of joy strengthens us to move forward. 

Positive feedback to restore homeostasis. This mechanism recognizes an increase in a substance, and a signal is sent to the control center that validates an abnormality. A message is sent out to correct the abnormal imbalance, increasing a substance (for example a hormone) until the abnormal imbalance slows and stops, returning the body’s function to equilibrium.

Biological example of positive feedback. When a woman is pregnant, initiation of labor is triggered by the hormone oxytocin, which is released and increases, sending a message to start uterine contractions. The hormone continues to increase, as does pain and the opening of the cervix, until the baby is delivered, and under normal conditions the body’s equilibrium of hormones is restored. In the case of induced labor, the woman is given increased amounts of a synthetic version of oxytocin, known as Pitocin, to stimulate uterine contraction until delivery of the baby. 

Spiritual example of positive feedback. The more time away from private worship, the less guilty we may feel. It’s as if we no longer depend on God and instead accomplish goals and dreams without God. We become emotionally fatigued, with signs of irritability and less patience. Have you ever felt like that? But the more we pause in prayer, the more we gain self-control to find time with God and correct our spiritual homeostasis. Discipline for spiritual development can seem hard when changing a habit; in the beginning, regular prayer, reading, and journaling can be hard work when we have been out of control with no time for God.

The concept of spiritual homeostasis is a state of being that navigates us into the path of righteous living, God-consciousness, and maturity, with a sense of positive well-being. In many cases, spiritual homeostasis acts like the leveler that helps us to align our will to the purpose of God. Think about how many times you have looked at a picture unevenly tilted on the wall and stopped to straighten it so that it was balanced. As Christians, there are times when we are misaligned with the ways of God and need an adjustment: The same annoying feeling of displeasure with a crooked wall hanging is prompted in our spirit—but how often do we stop to adjust our lives to the ways and plans of God? Anytime we detour from the path of righteousness, we know it, and we have a choice to follow the redirection of the Holy Spirit. We must listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us. 

Friends, when we make room for sacred reading, conversation with Father God, and reflective listening, we become in sync with the will of God. Obedience, trust, and walking in faith become easier the more we are in the private chambers of worship. Take a break here and revisit the mechanisms God has in place to maintain spiritual homeostasis, to avoid derailment or misalignment with his will for your life.

Adapted from Press Pause by Karynthia Glasper Phillips. ©2026 by Karynthia Glasper Phillips. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.  

If you are interested in learning more about this book, click here: https://www.ivpress.com/press-pause

1. Karynthia Glasper Phillips, Press Pause: Making Time for God in An Overscheduled Life (Lisle, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2026), 13. ↩︎
2. Phillips, Press Pause, 33. ↩︎
3. Ibid, 82. ↩︎
4. Ibid, 114. ↩︎