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Why journal?

/ College, Dear Friend Series, Resources / 40 Comments

Dear friend,

Journaling has changed my life. If you asked me to pick one thing to take to a deserted island, I would bring my journals. My journals tell a beautiful story of how God changed my life and continues to work in my heart.

I journal about everything!
Prayers, moments of sadness, moments of complete joy, scripture that touched my heart, lessons God has taught me, notes from sermons, and so much more.

Here are 7 ways that journaling can help your walk with God. Journaling can help you:

Focus in prayer. I love writing my prayers to God in letter form. Often when I pray to myself, my mind drifts away and I lose focus. When I write out the prayer, I’m able to stay focused on God.
Trust God. You begin to trust God more when you see that he is faithful. Rereading old journals is one of my favorite activities! I will read a prayer from two years ago and realize that God answered it. When that happens, I sometimes write the date next to the prayer so I will remember God is faithful. This is great evidence that God cares, listens, and answers for days when I doubt him.
Believe God loves you. The Bible is a love letter to us from God, so why not write it like one? I will take a passage and write in my journal, “Dear Joy…. (insert scripture) Love, God.” These letters help me further believe God’s love for me.
Understand scripture. I learn through writing, maybe that is why I love journaling so much. Writing the verses out in my journal helps them seep into my brain.
Stop thinking. Before bed, countless thoughts roam through my head. If I don’t write them down, I won’t be able to fall asleep. Journaling takes the thoughts off my mind and helps me fall asleep.
Teach others. I write down everything, pretty much, especially when I’m going through a struggle. Then when a friend goes through something similar, I can pull out my journal and share with her verses or sermons that helped. This is a way to encourage her and teach her.
Remember. I never want to forget the amazing things God does in my life through the years. My journals become a yearbook of all the beautiful memories between God and I.

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Tired of giving up on goals?

/ Goals, Resources, The Journey / 6 Comments

This week I went to lunch with one of my best friends from high school. I absolutely love this girl and love spending time with her. She doesn’t realize it, but she always teaches me lessons about myself and God. During our lunch together, we were very vulnerable and both shared our current struggles. What struck both of us, was that most of our current struggles were the same as our past struggles.

She said, “This year is going to be different. I’m going to work on these issues. It is going to be a better year.”
Déjà vu. I’ve heard this before.

I told her that she said the same thing last summer, she said, “Wow, that is depressing.”

After lunch, I couldn’t get those words out of my mind. Like my friend, I am bad at following through on goals. At the start of new semesters I always have new goals. Here are some examples:

I’m going to stick to a healthy diet and work out regularly.
This semester will be different, because I will pray more!
Finally, maybe this semester I’ll actually understand how Jesus can satisfy my desire to be married.

Sadly, I never last longer than a week or two at attempting to reach these goals. I give up or just simply forget about the goals. The end of the semester comes, and I say to myself, “Wow, that is depressing.” I don’t want to continue this cycle. I don’t want to spend my whole life making goals only to never check off the boxes. I want to see growth in my life. My dad always told me that when we make goals they have to be specific and have multiple sub-goals to reach each one. Here are my main goals and sub-goals to reach them:

1. Grow closer to God

Spend time with God
Read my daily chapters of the Bible on my Bible app plan
Pray for 10 minutes

2. Live a more healthy life

Exercise at least 30 minutes
Healthy snacks
Don’t eat past 10

3. Be content in this stage of singleness

No more romantic comedies

For June, I am trying something new. I am putting my goals into a excel document and checking them off daily to help me remember them. I am sick of being depressed that my goals are not being met. Below is a screen shot so you can understand what I’m talking about.

Important to note:

Make spending time with God a goal for this month. It is easy to look at this as a list of rules to follow, and think if I follow these rules then I will grow. That isn’t always true, because the change begins in the heart. God is the only one who can change our heart, so we have to spend time with him. As I was writing this, the same friend texted me saying she had been thinking about our conversation as well. In the car she heard a Christian radio station say, “We have to see God’s way in all we do instead of living by the rules.” Make sure you are not just following rules you made for the month, but that you are actively trying to follow God’s plan for you and become all that he made you to be.
If you miss a day, do not get mad at yourself and give up. It is okay. Some of the goals you set for yourself are going to be impossible to achieve every day in our busy lives. The important thing is to not give up.
Find a friend to be accountable with. For example, I’m getting my parents involved. The three of us are going to put our lists on the fridge to hold each other accountable.

What are some goals that you tend to give up on? Do you repeat them over and over again?

If yes, join me on this journey. Below there is a blank pdf of the chart I made. Print it out and fill in your goals.

Together we can experience growth.

Click here for pdf: Blank June Goals pdf

I hope this post has been encouraging! Be sure to add me on social media and share my blog with your friends! Thanks!

In the Middle, You Find Jesus | Charlotte Gambill Book Review

/ Book Review, Relationship with Jesus, Resources, The Journey / Comments Off

I recently went to a women’s conference called Dare To Be by Natalie Grant and Charlotte Gambill. Natalie led worship and then Charlotte led the teaching. It was very inspiring and impacting! Charlotte opened my eyes to something in scripture I had never before thought about – the middle. Charlotte also wrote a book about this called The Miracle in the Middle: Finding God’s Voice in the Void. This is a fabulous book that I would recommend with you! Because I loved the conference and book so much, I want to share her message and expand on the topic.

In Mark 6:45-52, the story is shared where Jesus walks on water towards his disciples. In these verses, the men were in the middle of the trip between the land where Jesus was and the land on the other side. The boat was in the middle of the lake, far away from Jesus. I want to focus on the word- middle. This is pulled directly from verse 47, “Later that night, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land.”

How would you define the middle? For the disciples, they were literally in the middle of the water, but the middle can look different for everyone. Maybe you are in the middle of waiting for something, middle of a struggle, middle of a breakup, middle of singleness, middle of a conflict, there are lots of middles in our lives. Right now I am in the middle of trying to figure out what career to work towards. I would love to be at the end and know exactly what God wants me to do, but right now I am where God wants me, in the middle.

Being in the middle may not be comfortable, but it requires trusting that God will get you to the other side.

The disciples would have felt more comfortable if they would have been on land next to Jesus, and maybe they thought about turning around and going back to where they came from. Right now I am in the life stage of singleness. I have to choose daily to trust that God knows what he is doing. Some days I may want to run back to my old lifestyle of dating who I wanted instead of waiting for a Godly man. I want to run back to what I know is comfortable, but I don’t because I am trusting that God will use this middle to glorify himself.

The middle may not be comfortable, but it does have an end.

The enemy knows when we are in the middle. Because each step we take gets us closer to the other side and closer to a break through. Every middle is equal distance both ways, so sometime it would require the same amount of work to go back to the beginning as the end.

As humans, we don’t want the journey, we want the results. We want to get to the end. We want to know what decisions to make, be married, get past the conflicts, and get out of the boat!

In the middle is when you put to practice all that you say and believe. It may be easy on the shore to say that you believe God is good and that his plans are perfect, but how you live out your life in the middle is the proof.

In the middle you see the miracle. Jesus walks on water and comes to you. When you are thinking how will I ever make it to the other side, Jesus performs a miracle.

In the middle, you find Jesus.

The greek word used for middle, mesos, in this passage is also found in another passage in the Bible. John 19:18, “There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.”

So where was Jesus? In the middle. He was in the middle of dying a painful death for you and I. He was in the middle of saving us from the pain of our own sinful choices. He was in the middle of saving us from the hurt this world causes us. Jesus was in the middle!

When you are in the middle of your struggles, waiting for hope, or just want to get to the other side, remember that Jesus is in the middle.

I hope this post has been encouraging! Be sure to add me on social media and share my blog with your friends! Thanks!

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