AH! I cannot begin to tell you how great today has been. I don't know why, but I am PUMPED and when I say PUMPED I mean like giddy, dancing around, wanting to sing kind of pumped. I have had this unbelievable amount of joy and excitement for SOMETHING and I don't have any idea what it is!
The past couple weeks have been hard. For some reason my heart was extremely heavy and I felt like every second of the day was a struggle to choose God. Now, I know we all experience hard times, but this time it was different because I actually "sat" in it. My pastor the other day was talking about the importance of groaning to God and so this period specifically consisted of not only groaning but continuous prayer and seeking after what I know to be true: God is good, He loves me, and I am never alone. Whew! It's hard admitting to others that you are struggling and for me, it's been hard admitting to God that I am struggling.
As you probably can tell, I love to write about things, so when I pray, I usually write in a journal. This has been a habit for a couple of years now and at first, I was especially excited to see how God answered prayers. What I am learning now and seeing throughout my journals is how God is shaping me. I look at my prayers from even just a few months ago to now and theres a huge difference. I have forced myself to be completely honest and own up to my failures and sins instead of praying for God to just cover them.
Prayer has always been tricky for me because growing up in a private Christian world, people tend to get breathy and use big words. I never wanted to pray out loud because I was convinced I'd never sound as great as that "really great Christian" person over there. What seems so obvious yet took me so long to realize is that prayer isn't supposed to fit into a formula. There's not a phrase or name your supposed to say that makes God hear yours louder. Prayer is simply you talking with your Father, and the more I do it whether it be in my journal or out loud, the more comfortable I become. The more I hangout with God the easier it is to be honest and know what to ask because I am getting to know Him more. It makes perfect sense! The more time you spend with and get to know someone, the easier it is to talk to them and feel confident that they are listening because you are close.
Writing about the hard times is so neat because I get to days like today where I want to scream on the top of a mountain and can see how God never let go of my hand. I have to choose Him every second and I definitely do not choose Him all the time. It is a battle, I'm tellin ya, and it has sucked. But MAN does joy come in the morning!! (Psalm 30)
Reading Psalms now as I am growing and maturing as a Christian even looks differently. I mean, look at the majority of Davids words!-- this guy struggled and voiced it without ever hiding how he felt. He actually talked to God and realized that God could handle any anger or frustration. I found that my prayer journal is looking more and more like the way David wrote in Psalms because there are days when I am questioning why something is happening or why God is being silent and I am furious. Or times when I am struggling but almost reassuring myself with how powerful God is. Just because I may not feel like He is at the time, I'd rather say God is good because it's true than wallow in self-pity and not trust God will ever help me out. But then there are times when I feel like God is bear hugging me and I want to dance, so I tell Him every little detail about it! Praising and thanking because I don't even know what else I can do! There's no formula, just being real.
I use Jim Branch's Blue Book as a helpful guide for my quiet times and there was the coolest excerpt from C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed:
The past couple weeks have been hard. For some reason my heart was extremely heavy and I felt like every second of the day was a struggle to choose God. Now, I know we all experience hard times, but this time it was different because I actually "sat" in it. My pastor the other day was talking about the importance of groaning to God and so this period specifically consisted of not only groaning but continuous prayer and seeking after what I know to be true: God is good, He loves me, and I am never alone. Whew! It's hard admitting to others that you are struggling and for me, it's been hard admitting to God that I am struggling.
As you probably can tell, I love to write about things, so when I pray, I usually write in a journal. This has been a habit for a couple of years now and at first, I was especially excited to see how God answered prayers. What I am learning now and seeing throughout my journals is how God is shaping me. I look at my prayers from even just a few months ago to now and theres a huge difference. I have forced myself to be completely honest and own up to my failures and sins instead of praying for God to just cover them.
Prayer has always been tricky for me because growing up in a private Christian world, people tend to get breathy and use big words. I never wanted to pray out loud because I was convinced I'd never sound as great as that "really great Christian" person over there. What seems so obvious yet took me so long to realize is that prayer isn't supposed to fit into a formula. There's not a phrase or name your supposed to say that makes God hear yours louder. Prayer is simply you talking with your Father, and the more I do it whether it be in my journal or out loud, the more comfortable I become. The more I hangout with God the easier it is to be honest and know what to ask because I am getting to know Him more. It makes perfect sense! The more time you spend with and get to know someone, the easier it is to talk to them and feel confident that they are listening because you are close.
Writing about the hard times is so neat because I get to days like today where I want to scream on the top of a mountain and can see how God never let go of my hand. I have to choose Him every second and I definitely do not choose Him all the time. It is a battle, I'm tellin ya, and it has sucked. But MAN does joy come in the morning!! (Psalm 30)
Reading Psalms now as I am growing and maturing as a Christian even looks differently. I mean, look at the majority of Davids words!-- this guy struggled and voiced it without ever hiding how he felt. He actually talked to God and realized that God could handle any anger or frustration. I found that my prayer journal is looking more and more like the way David wrote in Psalms because there are days when I am questioning why something is happening or why God is being silent and I am furious. Or times when I am struggling but almost reassuring myself with how powerful God is. Just because I may not feel like He is at the time, I'd rather say God is good because it's true than wallow in self-pity and not trust God will ever help me out. But then there are times when I feel like God is bear hugging me and I want to dance, so I tell Him every little detail about it! Praising and thanking because I don't even know what else I can do! There's no formula, just being real.
I use Jim Branch's Blue Book as a helpful guide for my quiet times and there was the coolest excerpt from C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed:
"He can't be used as a road. If you're approaching Him not as the goal, but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all."
YES! For so long I looked to God as the road and then Heaven as the end, which will be in the end, BUT thinking about it in this light brings such a different perspective to me! God is the END and choosing Him is the goal of every single thing we do! The road may be this life, in general, with it's ups and downs, but the greatest thing about it is that we know what's at the end, so we continue to go through the good and the bad to get to God! And Jesus is right there with us until we finally cross the finish line and it's JUST Him! We cannot get there by being idle, we WILL walk on a path. I guess it's just up to us to choose who or what we are walking towards. Heck, I want to run!
This post is getting long and went in a completely different direction than I thought it was going to but I felt like I had to open a document and type something. I needed to explain how incredibly peaceful and happy I am. How excited I am for something for which I feel God has been preparing me.
It sounds weird, doesn't it? But I just know it's good.
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