Journal the Journey

The past two posts have been cliffhangers, and I want to say to those I know would like to read my continuing thoughts on them (my biggest supporters, you know who you are): I will return to them when I get the inspiration to. One of the beautiful things about this blog is that it’s been my goal to make it feasible for me to keep up with by simplifying the process and removing as much pressure as possible. I do hate that I don’t set aside 15 minutes every single day, especially when I started so well. But one of millions of reasons I’m thankful for the sunrise to come in the morning is that He promises new mercies rise with it. So one day maybe this won’t be such a struggle; but if it continues to be, the struggle is worth it. Ultimately, I don’t want to be writing just for the sake of writing. I want the words I type to be meaningful, helpful, inspirational, inspired – just as is the case in my handwritten journals, and I do not write in those daily. So although it’s my goal to habitually set aside 15 minutes to write daily, that doesn’t mean I will definitely have something to say before the 15 minutes are up. I’m not going to try to force the posts, because it would be a waste of your time and I would be ashamed to go back and read it down the road. I’ll write as God’s Spirit in me leads. Besides, I did enough mandatory writing in my high school and college years to last me a lifetime.

Moving on…

Inspiration did hit me tonight, in a late night shower of all times and places, and I knew I was going to write tonight as soon as I got out even though it is taking away from my much needed sleep. My fifteen minutes on this thought weighing heavy on me tonight begins NOW:

There are a lot of lies that the Father of Lies, Satan, whispers to us so cunningly in strategic effort to pull us away from God or keep us from drawing nearer to Him. Thoughts like:

God isn’t good.

God doesn’t care.

God is boring.

When I taught children’s church a few years ago, I even had one of the kids tell me that sometimes he feels like the devil is cooler than God, that God is the boring one and the devil is the exciting one. As taken aback by his comments as I was, I could not help but appreciate his honesty in communicating how he felt and I did my best to show that appreciation while also pointing to Truth. I unveiled the lie he was being fed, and it made me angry that there is no age limit as to when our enemy will start speaking this lie. He is persistent when unchallenged, ruthless to the core, full of hatred for us and for God.

After my shower, I grabbed my laptop and crawled into bed. My computer was running slow, probably in large part to all the windows I have open. When I pulled up the “Notes” app on my iPhone to type in some websites that I need to return to later so that I could close out the pages to help my computer stop running so slow, a note that I wrote on December 10, 2014 was pulled up. After getting over my initial shock of seeing it open when I did not open it, I read it. It fit so perfectly that I knew it was time to share. Here it is, a musing I had over 5 months ago, undoubtedly as I was trying to fall asleep (since it is time stamped at 11:37 pm):

One way Satan has undermined the power of God’s Word in our time is overexposure… to make it so commonplace that we don’t even give it a second thought. His Word has become inspirational quotes, like those of authors or like lyrics by song writers. Many homes like my own have multiple Bibles, and many Christians like myself don’t even open one of them – sometimes for weeks on end.

Then there are those in persecuted churches that pass around pieces of it, memorize it, and then pass it on to other brothers and sisters in Christ because they do not have access to the entire Bible in their language. I saw a video years ago of Chinese Christians receiving their first Bible that hit me to my core. There were tears and shouts of joy as they held it so tenderly in their arms. They were kissing it as they embraced it, so grateful for it.

“Is My Word not like fire?” I hear God ask within me. These are the same words He speaks in Jeremiah 23:29.

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My time is up, but my plan is to pick back up on this in the morning after taking my teen to school. This is heavy on my heart, so hopefully Part 2 is up in less than 12 hours from now.