Sunday, April 8, 2012

Journaling



Journaling is therapeutic; it’s a good spiritual and emotional self-measuring tool, its accountability.

I can journal what I did during the day or the weekend. I can journal what I got out of my Bible reading. I can journal my walk with the Lord. I can journal what is stressful in my life and ways to manage the stress.

I feel like I am getting my emotions out and on paper. I find it a stress relief. Sometimes I just keep writing. Those thoughts that keep coming back or negative thoughts that haunt me. I write them all out. I just keep writing until I am done. It can be emotionally exhausting. It is cleansing. It is refreshing. It takes work. It can be like a work out.

I do not dig deep every time. I do write just about every day. I have been journaling for years and did not realize how good it was for me until recently when I looked back on the last year and a half. Oh, how God was there, carrying His little girl through this mine field of a year. Going through it, I must admit it I didn’t feel like God was there, though I knew He was because I believed me Bible and not my feelings. I saw Him on those pages. Day after day, guiding, leading and comforting.

There are so many good reasons to journal. If you have never kept a journal before, you can start anytime. There are some journals that are so pretty or you could just use a notebook, whatever fits how you want to journal.  Here are some tips about journaling that I have learned:

1.      When I get a gem from my Bible reading, I will write that in my journal. I want to remember the special things that God is giving me personally from my time alone with Him. The Bible is a timeless book that applies to me today. I want to keep track of verses or stories that stand out to me and then apply them to my life.


2.      If you are going through a hard time, it is a good idea to write in a journal. Getting your feelings out on paper is good for your mind. Putting down on paper all the hardships that you are going through may be difficult, but again very therapeutic for you.


3.      It may also help you to be thankful for what God is doing in your life. You do not have to be going through a hard time to journal. By journaling you can see how good God is in your life and be able to thank Him for those things. Try starting with three things a day that you are thankful for and you will see there will be days that there will be many more things to be thankful for.


4.      A journal is a good place to keep prayer requests. Remembering people’s prayer requests is a sign that you care. How many of us hear a prayer request and then do not write it down. This means we do not remember to pray. Our brothers and sisters in Christ need our prayers. Pray for others. Writing their requests down in a spot that you go to often will be a tremendous help to praying for others. If your church has a prayer page then use it like a book mark in your journal so you can remember to pray for your church family.

Don’t make your journal complicated, just one book for everything. I keep my journal next to my Bible on the table by my bed because that works for me.

Do what will work for you; just journal.

ENDURANCE



ENDURANCE
To keep going and going and going
It is hard to keep going. It is hard to keep going strong. It is hard to finish strong.
I have had to endure more than I ever would have imagined.
I wanted to finish strong. At some points if I just finished I would have been happy.
The picture above is of a woman doing an exercise move called a plank. I was advised to hold that exercise move for a full minute, 60 seconds, or a better description of time, an eternity.
The plank position is a hard position to hold. The time goes by so slow. My body would shake. My muscles would cry out to be relieved of the position, and most times when the 6o seconds were up, I would cry.
Jesus endured the cross because he was focused on the joy. He made a choice. This past year and a half I made a choice. It was nothing like the choice Jesus made, but it was one choice that affected a multitude of choices that had to be made on a daily basis.
That phase of my life is over and I did endure. I give God all the glory for that. It was by his strength that I was able to endure. I learned that God will give me the strength I need.
Endurance takes commitment. It is a choice. It is hard. I can do hard things.
I learned doing hard things is hard, but it is possible.

Friday, April 6, 2012

I HAVE HATED



I am not proud of that. At first I wanted to deny that I felt that way. I cannot hate, I must have love and forgiveness when people wrong me. At least that is how I thought Christians were suppose to feel. I really fought those feelings for a long time. Then I realized that I could no longer deny what God already knew.

Why do I act like I can fool God? Why do I think I can just go on and pretend that God thinks everything is fine, when I know I am not fine and God knows I am not fine?

It was hard to admit it to my heavenly Father. It was hard to say it out loud, to hear from my own mouth that I hated. I was ashamed of how I felt. My feelings of hate were so strong and there was no down playing them or excusing them. I did feel they were justified, but it still didn’t make it right in my heart to keep these feelings.
I felt hate but I did not want it to make its home in my heart, my soul or my mind. I did not want hate to be a part of me. My feelings of hate were not going to subside, neither could I think I would not feel this way again, so I needed to do something with these feelings or they were going to multiply. I could not allow that.  These feelings of hatred were not what God wanted for me.

In Titus 3:3,4 the Bible says, “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; ” (KJB).

Because of Christ I am different. When I live in the flesh I am acting like I do not have God in my life. I am acting like the world. I am so thankful that God sent his son Jesus to die for my sins, and to show that appreciation, I want to act like I am a Christian.


I want God to use me and I am not usable if I keep feelings like hatred in my life. Feelings of hatred are my problem, no anyone else’s. I need to make the choice to give my hatred to God. For my own sake. My feelings of hatred where not effecting the persons they were focused towards. I was the one dealing with them. In time, I believe hatred would have spread like a cancer to other areas of my life. They would be destroying my life, not the persons’ life I was hating.

What I have learned is:

1.   I am very capable of hating.

2.   When I confess my sin, God is faithful and just to forgive me of the sin of hatred. (I John 1:9)

3.   I need to forgive the person(s).

4.   Repeat 2 and 3 as needed.