A Silent Conversation

Hello everyone!

One of the many requirements for those who wished to go on the trip to Jamaica was journaling. In addition to journaling, the members of our team (me, Phil Ward, included) were required to read John Piper's book, Let the Nations be Glad. Kathryn wrote about the book and her interactions with it in her blog post entitled, "Suffering to be like Jesus." I highly encourage you to read it. She does a fabulous job of articulating the crux of the book and its effect on the way we view missions.

The purpose of journaling about the Jamaica mission trip is complex and basic. First, I have always found it so beneficial to write down my thoughts and emotions and concerns and questions and blessings. For me, journaling has been a way to pour out my heart to the Lord. It's a way for me to write down, in black and white, all the gray, fuzzy stuff that goes through my head and heart. It helps me to discover what I truly think and feel about particular experiences. It seems at times that journaling allows me to take inventory of my spiritual progress in the faith as well as to examine where I need to beg God for more Grace. As the Word penetrates our very being and exposes our greatest needs, so to journaling provides a rich spiritual encounter with God. The Holy Spirit convicts me where I fall short and exhorts me where I have been faithful; God's perspective of my attitudes, actions, emotions, and thoughts are laid bare before me through the Holy Spirit as I reflect on the day I've lived.

Secondly, I have found that journaling allows me to better express my thoughts and emotions before God. All that motivates me and irks me, things that give me life and passion, thoughts that humble me and propel me to holiness are all poured out before the Lord. Journaling is a slow process; it's unlike typing in Microsoft Word. You have to be diligent and intentional about the topic to which you write. This helps us slow down and to begin to think deeply and to feel deeply about what God is doing in our lives and our obedience to His will.

Lastly, journaling enables us to recount the works of God in our lives. Francis Bacon once said, "If a man write little, he had need have a great memory." It is strange in our culture to keep a journal, but it appears so necessary if we are to recount what God has done in and through us. Great events and amazing moments where God woos us into His grace and empowers us with His love are lost in the potholes of our memories, never to be thought of again. This ought not to happen. How often would our faith be strengthened if we simply opened the pages of our journal and recollected the moments of when we fell to our knees, as the beggars we are, and implored God for His help to which God so bountifully supplied? Stephen Charnock writes, "How worthy is it to remember former benefits when we come to beg for new."

Upon editing this blog I had a friend say to me, "it seems as though you know God is going to do something worth writing down." The one thing that came to my mind was the words of Psalm 102:18, "Let this be written for a future generation, that a people not yet created may praise the Lord." I don't know what will happen, but in the words of Aslan, from Prince Caspian – the book, "There is only one way to find out."

What we write in our journals will be a conversation with God. A silent conversation. May the silence be a deafening witness to the awesome works of God.