Billy Graham suggested that quiet time consists of three main elements: prayer, Bible reading, and meditation.
By the 1940s, the quiet time had supplanted the Keswick concept of the morning watch as the most widely promoted pattern for private prayer among evangelical Protestants in England and North America.
The quiet time, in contrast, brought Bible study and meditation into the practice and placed the emphasis on listening to God.
First developed in Christian and Missionary Alliance circles, the quiet time (also called the quiet hour) was promoted by modernist Protestants like Harry Fosdick, as well as by the Oxford Group and Samuel Shoemaker, an instrumental figure in the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Adopted by Billy Graham in the 1950s, the quiet time became the most popularized evangelical Protestant devotional practice from the middle of the twentieth century to the present.Johnson, Greg (2007).
From Morning Watch to Quiet Time: The Historical and Theological Development of Private Prayer in Anglo-Protestant Devotionalism, 1870–1950.
These books contain directed Bible studies, often incorporating stories or anecdotes that convey Biblical principles, similar to the parables used by Jesus in his ministry.
While advocating a life of prayer and biblical contemplation, his concern is that personal devotions not become a performance treadmill in which Christians feel their daily acceptance with God is based on what they do instead of what Christ did.