Tag: spiritual growth

Posted in Thoughts from Life

Upstream

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

Have you ever watched fish in a river or stream swim against the current? It’s truly fascinating, especially in those moments when they swim but seem to make no progress.

It’s how I feel so very often. Like I’m pumping those fins but not getting anywhere. I’m trying to make progress in learning and growing and serving in the kingdom of God, but I fill as if I’m going nowhere and simply exhausting myself in the process.

I don’t know much about the science behind why fish swim against the current, but I can think of a few reasons why it would make sense. In some locations, if fish flowed with the current, they would eventually wash out to sea where they would die in an environment unsuited to them. And we all know the fascinating behavior of salmon who swim upstream to spawn in the same place where they themselves were spawned.

Despite my ignorance of the science behind why these fish behave the way they do, I know one thing for certain. They behave the way God designed them to behave. He created them with this natural drive to swim against the current. If He did it, it is good.

Do I trust that truth for myself as well? Do I trust that all of my struggles in life, in learning, and in serving are still in His hand? That He is guiding and strengthening and working in me even when it feels that I’m flapping away and make zero progress?

Do I trust that, no matter what, His engagement in my life is good?

I don’t really have a biblical reason to compare myself to a fish swimming against the current. It’s simply a reflection of how I feel sometimes. When I see a fish swimming with all its might and going nowhere, I identify with this living illustration from nature.

But there are truths that I do have biblical reason to believe. I share the yoke with Him, and His yoke is easy. His burden is light on my shoulders. Yes, even in the middle of the current. Even when I’m flapping my fins and feeling like I’m going nowhere.

I’m in that season right now where it feels like I’m not making any progress. But my heavenly Father is constant, and His Spirit is still whispering truths to my heart and mind. He is still growing me and drawing me closer to Himself, even when it feels like I am not truly making progress.

So, I’ll keep flapping those fins. I’ll keep swimming. And I’ll trust the progress to His faithfulness.

Posted in Thoughts from Scripture

Growing

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

I am growing. It’s a natural part of life. We should always be growing mentally, emotionally, spiritually…in many ways. Growth is life, and we should seek it, even when it’s not the most comfortable thing in the world.

Over the years, though, I’ve learned a truth about growth. Just about the time you think you’ve made good progress and you can claim a measure of maturity in an area, something comes along to show you just how much you have left to learn. This is most especially true when it comes to spiritual growth. The Holy Spirit is such an amazing teacher, isn’t He? He gives us just what we need each step of the way to learn the next lesson. But, on the flip side, this means that we don’t see the fullness of the growing challenge ahead of us. We see the next step or two. Not the full hill. He’s patient with us and kind to us and helps us not feel so overwhelmed on the journey. But, we still have to recognize that our growth won’t stop with the next lesson learned.

Recently I was preparing a Bible study lesson/discussion on 1 Corinthians 1:10-25, the next passage in the guide I was working through for this particular group time. I went in with a general theme to work from, but mostly I did what I normally do when exploring a passage for personal study or teaching. I started reading through the passage repeatedly, asking the Lord to show me where He wanted me to go with the discussion time.

Sometimes I pray that prayer very specifically in hopes that He’ll give me just what I’m supposed to share in the Bible study or discussion time. But I know better. He never stops there. He also always gives me my own little private training session. Or discipline session. Or kick in the behind. Whatever you want to call it. It’s real. And it’s not always fun.

But it’s always good and necessary.

In this particular instance, I was doing a little research on Corinth, learning about the Corinthians’ love for a good debate and their societal tendency to elevate those who were the most eloquent in said debates. I jokingly thought to myself how poor of a fit I’d have been in Corinth. I hate debates and arguments. I want to just make a statement that will help both sides understand each other and move on. Agree to disagree, people. It’s okay! You can have different views and still get along. Let’s make it happen!

I processed through this passage, expecting to make my mental observation about not wanting to move to first-century Corinth and move on. But no. The Lord gave me that nudge that said, “Let’s take a look at this for a minute.”

Uh-oh.

The hinge point was verses 22-23: “For the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.”

And the thought came to my mind: What is your goal when you try to bring peace to an argument? Is it to bring peace? Or to proclaim Christ?

Oof. I knew immediately that this thought was not one for building a lesson or laying the groundwork for a discussion. This was for me. This was to wake me up to my own priorities. I hunger to stop conflict. To make things feel better and help people see eye to eye. That’s enough, right? Nope. Not if my calling, my whole purpose in life, is to point people to Jesus Christ. If that’s my purpose, then it’s not about this side or that. It’s about Jesus. Period. A no-brainer, right? And yet, it was still a lesson I needed to be taught.

This is the reality of spiritual growth. It can come from unexpected directions at unexpected times. It can catch us right in the middle of a moment when our focus is on something completely different. It can catch us by surprise. But, if we’re listening, we always know when that moment hits. We suddenly see something very clearly and wonder that we didn’t know it all along. And then we are confronted with the challenge of implementing this new understanding in our lives.

That’s growth. It’s not huge or magic or like a bolt of lightning striking us with an epiphany. It doesn’t always “preach.” It doesn’t even have to be specifically while we’re studying Scripture. I’ve had these nudges in the middle of cooking a meal, teaching my children, or driving down the road.

Growth is listening. It’s being aware when the Spirit says, “Let’s take this further.” It’s recognizing that the Lord Jesus Christ knows each of us better than anyone. He knows what we know and what we have yet to learn. He knows what we’re going through and what we’ll be facing next week. He knows what we need to pay attention to. And He will tell us.

And when we listen, we grow. It’s not always pleasant. It’s not always fun. It sometimes hurts.

But it’s always, always good.

Posted in Thoughts from Life, Thoughts from Scripture

The Choice

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, Your consolations delight my soul. Psalm 94:19 (NASB)

This was the first verse on my mind this morning. I felt the anxiety tighten its band around me, even though I had no idea where it was coming from or what specific thing was causing it. So, I breathed this verse and asked the Lord to whisper to me the truths of His consolations. The things I sometimes don’t automatically remember when I’m in the middle of anxiety.

When the anxiety hits, instead of the consolations I usually see the circumstances. And never the good parts, no matter how numerous they might be. I only see the negative parts of our circumstances. The struggles. The discouragements. The places where we are lacking. I know this shouldn’t be my focus, but it can be hard to redirect. To actually enumerate the consolations of our amazing, victorious, loving God.

When I look in Scripture, I see many who were stuck in their circumstances. Abraham in the waiting. Jacob in his bondage to Laban. Joseph in slavery and prison. David in being pursued, first by Saul, then by one challenge after another. The Israelites in slavery and exile. The prophets in abuse and rejection of the people. And on and on and on.

But what I don’t see is evidence of rejection by God. They might have felt forsaken and abandoned by God, forgotten in their mire. But they weren’t. They just needed a different perspective.

This is what the psalmist recognized when penning the words of Psalm 94. Perspective was everything, and that perspective revolved around choosing to remember and receive God’s consolations. The truth about God.

That’s where I am today. The specific circumstances that weigh down on my heart and mind change through the years. But they are always there, in one form or another. They impact my heart, my mind, and even my health. They have wounded my husband and our children. We have often felt completely powerless to change them or to even protect our children.

Yet God is calling me to remember His consolations, no matter what today’s circumstances are. He’s calling me to remember who He is. His goodness. His truth. His purposes. His love. Circumstances may or may not reflect those things in the moment. But, He is above circumstances, and circumstances don’t change Truth.

The problem is not with the reality of God. The problem lies in the choice before me today. Before all of us in the throes of a struggle. Will we choose His consolations?

It’s hard work, and it’s easy to grow weary. But today I will choose His consolations.

I can’t speak for tomorrow or the next day, only for today. And today I will choose and pray that they really do delight this anxious soul.

Posted in Thoughts from Others

Before the Experience

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

There is a wise bit of advice often given to writers: write what you know. Obviously, knowledge of a topic can come either from experience or research, and there is a very solid place for research. (My amazing hubby’s research for his dissertation, for instance, is giving him a great deal of understanding!). But when it comes to writing about walking through life, it has often seemed to me that research without experience can lead to a sense of untested idealism. Advice is tied up in a neat package, but it leaves readers in the trenches feeling like failures because their experience doesn’t fit into the neat package that a writer presents.

I’m a practical person, so I tend to get frustrated by those who write out of a sense of idealism. This is why I have long felt that I need to have experience before I write. I need to be able to say, “I’ve been there!” Experience shines a light into corners that research never reaches, granting a sense of companionship and camaraderie between the writer and the reader. Because of this conviction, I’ve put certain topics on the shelf, convinced that I really don’t have a solid leg to stand on when it comes to writing on those topics, no matter how passionate I was about them and how much I’d studied them.

Then along came the story of an author I follow, and suddenly my conviction waffled.
Don’t get me wrong — I still don’t like untried idealism. But…well, let me tell you about Shelly Miller, and you’ll understand what I mean.

I first “met” Shelly Miller through her book Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World. I’d been studying Sabbath as my family attempted to begin incorporating it into the fabric of our weekly lives, and Rhythms of Rest provided another source of insight. I found Shelly to be real and accessible, her insights presented from the perspective of one who had pushed through the complications of observing Sabbath in a culture that, well, didn’t. And, to top it all off, she knew what it meant to figure out Sabbath from within the world of ministry. All in all, Rhythms of Rest was obviously a book that stemmed from experience. I could trust Shelly to tell me like it was, not spout of some idealistic nonsense that a homeschooling pastor’s wife like me could never implement.

In late 2019, I started noticing references to a new book by Shelly Miller, one that would come out in 2020. It was entitled Searching for Certainty: Finding God in the Disruptions of Life. I immediately put it on my wish list. I knew the Millers had experienced their ups and downs, their times of struggle and uncertainty. I knew, once again, that I could trust her.

That was proven a few months later when Shelly was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. Suddenly, the book she’d already written — the one that was just waiting to process through the steps necessary to get it to publication — was coming back to strengthen her. She found herself revisiting all that she had explored, studied, and researched to compile this book, almost afraid that it wouldn’t hold up to a real disruption. But it did. All that she’d studied was now proving true in her life, and she was drawing real comfort from the truths she’d written about.

Don’t get me wrong…she’d known before what it meant to find God in disruptions and uncertainties. But she was now experiencing a disruption greater than any she’d experienced before. And the truths were still holding up. God had prepared her. She thought she was sharing with her readers. Instead, she was storing up truths for what she and her family were about to face.

How powerful that the last book she’d ever get to write would also hold the very truths that she’d have to lean on to get her through her final months on earth.

So the question comes to me: Do I trust my God to be big enough to teach me truths before the experience, truths that will hold firm during the experience?

You see, there is research and study and experience. Then there is God. There’s a God who can teach us what we need before we need it. There’s a God who can build in us and prepare us and strengthen us. There’s training and growth that comes from experience, and then there’s training and growth that comes simply because we’re daily immersing ourselves in the Word, allowing ourselves to be taught by the Spirit, and dwelling in the presence of a holy, omniscient God who loves us and desires to equip us in every way.

That’s the God I want to serve.

The God who can teach me through it all.

While on the one hand, I need to be willing to admit when what I’ve said, taught, or written has been rife with idealism (because, trust me, I’ve been guilty of that!). But, sometimes I need to go ahead and say it, then prove that God is who He says He is when the time comes for the lessons to be tested.

Posted in Thoughts from Life, Thoughts from Prayer

Never to Return

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

I occasionally jot down writing ideas, or post starters, to come back to later. Sometimes I come back to them and have no clue what my notes mean, so they end up being ignored or discarded. Other times, the memory of what I was thinking comes flooding back with even greater clarity than when I first had the thoughts. The writing flows in a way it never would have had I written about it back then.

Still other times, though, the post starters feel almost prophetic. It’s in those times that I truly see how the Holy Spirit works in our hearts and minds to not only grow us but to prepare us for challenges that lie ahead.

I recently revisited one such post starter for about the third time. It’s over seven years old, but the implications are profoundly appropriate for right now. Here’s part of what I wrote:

Sometimes, normal will never return. It’s a new normal.

Restoration never involves going back. It involves going forward and realizing that the only constant is Christ Himself. Not normalcy.

I’d jotted down these thoughts as we watched two different dear friends process through losing their spouses. The circumstances and ages of the friends were very different, but the reality was the same: their lives could never go back to what they had previously considered to be normal. It wasn’t possible.

The realization led me to recognize my own struggle with some changes our family had made a couple of years before. We’d made such changes many times before, but this particular time, it was harder to figure out how to make the adjustment. There were just too many differences. We had tried for so long to settle back into normalcy. But, it always failed. Only when we realized that we needed to start from scratch were we able to make some sense of the changes. And in the experience of processing through all of this, we learned what it meant to be able to rediscover routine and normalcy again, even when everything had changed.

Who knew that a global pandemic would require us to fall back on that skill again years later? That was actually the second time I revisited this thought and fleshed it out a bit more. But I still wasn’t ready to put it out there. Everything felt very raw, and I struggled with how I was processing any of it.

And now, as I revisit this thought yet again, my family is in another stage of transition. Long, drawn-out transition that prevents settling into a “new normal.” (I grew to greatly dislike that phrase during Covid, and it’s not much happier now.) Through it all, I’m realizing that we haven’t really hit a “normal” for our family in a long, long time. That forces me back to the last part of my original thought, the one about our only constant being Christ Himself, not normalcy.

That’s hitting me hard.

What if I were to redirect my thoughts and focus on something other than normalcy? What if I were to focus instead on restoration? On truly letting Christ be my constant instead of always seeking after normal?

We often think of restoration as returning something to its former glory, but that’s never the case. We can’t accomplish that because there will always be a newness. Even if the restored treasure looks the same, the materials are always new. They are always bound to the time in which they were restored, no matter what style they may represent. It’s never a return. It’s always a newness.

That’s where we are right now. We’ll never return to “normal.” But, we can move into beautiful restoration. We can move into a newness of life. Of course, that’s only possible when we embrace the Author of life Himself. After all, He is the only constant. The only thing that ever remains the same, no matter the changes. The only One who can never be restored because He can never be damaged. Never changed. Never warped. He is. Continuously and always. He restores us, constantly remaking us into the image He intended from the very beginning. Were we to cling to our sense of normal, we would miss the restoration. We would never succeed in becoming what we were intended to be because our normal is warped. Incomplete. Corrupted. He is bringing us into the incorruptible, but that means that we must go through the refining.

Thinking of this, I realize I don’t want my old normal back. I don’t want to settle for a new normal, either. Instead, I want restoration. It’s a process that will continue until I see my God and Savior face to face, and that’s okay. That means that this “new normal” is temporary as the restoration continues.

May I walk faithfully through it, trusting His work all the way and never hungering to return.

Because what lies ahead is so much better.

Posted in Faith Nuggets, Thoughts from Scripture

He Didn’t Know

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

John the Baptist is a well-known biblical character, but he is also surrounded by mystery.

We experience his life from divine announcement through birth, and then catch a glimpse of him again in adulthood. We know that Mary, mother of Jesus, knows his significance. And we know that Elizabeth, his own mother, knows that Mary’s child is the promised Messiah. She knows that her son John will be the herald for Jesus the Messiah.

But when we get to John 1:31, we discover that John “didn’t know him, but…came baptizing with water so that he might be revealed to Israel.”

John’s mother and father knew Jesus was the Messiah, but they didn’t tell John for some reason. Perhaps, given their advanced age when he was born, they died before he was old enough for them to tell him. Or maybe they just trusted God to handle the details.

Mary knew who John was and what his job would be, but she didn’t tell him either. Again, we don’t know how the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth played out over the years because the Bible doesn’t explore those details. Maybe in the process of traveling to Egypt and then back to Nazareth she lost connection with Elizabeth and never interacted with John after his birth. We just don’t know.

All we know is that John didn’t specifically know that his distant cousin Jesus was the Lamb of God. The “One.”

Not until this moment in John 1 when God reveals the truth to John.

And yet…

John acted anyway. He taught anyway. He preached anyway. He baptized anyway. All he had was this strange compelling, this command to “prepare the way.”

The idea of a herald preparing the way was not an uncommon one in John’s day. The people hearing his message of repentance would have understood John’s role. Heralds came early to declare the king’s coming. The people were then supposed to literally make the roads smooth and straight for the king’s arrival.

The difference between John and these other heralds was that they’d met their kings. Or at least seen their kings. They knew, without a doubt, who their kings were and what they were about.

John didn’t.

He just knew the King was coming, and he was the herald.

The Pharisees and other Jewish leaders had a lot of questions that he couldn’t answer. I can imagine the doubt that must have seeded in his mind, leading to his later questioning whether or not Jesus really was “the One.” But it didn’t change his work, even when he couldn’t exactly answer the questions other than to say, “He’s coming!”

What about me?

Is there anything I am refusing to start because I don’t have all of the details yet? Or am I walking forward in obedience despite all of my unanswered questions? In what areas do I need to just obey, trusting that the information I’ve already been given is enough? Trusting that the fullness of the story, the complete information, will come in Almighty God’s timing, not mine?

Jesus is coming. May I be bold enough to prepare the way, leaving the details to Him.

Posted in What I'm Learning, Work & Life

New Habits First

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

I was recently part of a book study group that processed through Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Donald S. Whitney. I already knew I struggled in so many areas of discipline. That study confirmed and enhanced that realization. A few of the disciplines are things that I have worked on in recent years and turned into habits – of sorts. But, I still have a long way to go.

One of the most immediate convictions was in the area of Scripture memory, probably because I’ve tried to start memorization efforts multiple times over the last few years, only to fail miserably every time. Since processing through the chapter on memorization, I have tried to restart the process and have had great intentions. There are note cards in my planner and I have a system. But, I still struggle to make progress.

I run out of time in my quiet time.

I forget to pull the cards out during the busy flow of the day.

I let multiple days go by between recitations, forcing me to backtrack and relearn.

After weeks of frustration, a realization hit me: last year when I wanted to start a new habit, I put it first. I wanted to read more books during my morning time. I knew I would dive into my Scripture reading every morning without fail. I didn’t want to diminish the importance of that in any way, but I knew how much time it typically required, so I read other books first, then switched over to the Bible at the appropriate time. Over the course of the next few months, I developed a habit of reading at least two different spiritual training books in additional to my Scripture and devotional reading.

Now I love it. Now it’s a habit. Now I will read additional books no matter when they fall in the morning routine. In fact, I have since returned Scripture reading to an earlier slot in the morning so as to ensure plenty of time for meditation. If I miss a day or two of my other books because I spend extra time meditating on the Word of God, that’s okay. The other reading is enough of a habit now that I know I will return to it.

Pondering this, I have realized that Scripture memory has always been at the tail end of my quiet time. When I run out of time because reading takes a while – which it always will! – it is too easy to drop the memorization off the end of my morning routine. So, I never make progress.

Could it be that easy? Could that truly be the simple, practical solution to establishing a habit of discipline?

It’s certainly worth a try! I can tap the voice recorder on my phone and recite those verses, playing them back later to check them. I can even work on it while pouring hot water into our French presses for coffee and Choffy – or while waiting for them to brew. Who knows? I might even end up taking a few notes here and there as I process what is being written on my heart and mind.

Discipline is often a matter of simplicity. Removing the gimmicks and tricks to try to apply something new and choosing instead to simplify. To shift details. To put new habits first on the list, knowing that everything else will fall into place behind it.

Posted in What Works for Me, Work & Life

Diving

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

Reading has long been a part of my life. I will never forget the first book I could truly call my own. I started second grade in a school in Georgia while my parents participated in missionary orientation to prepare for the mission field. When my parents wrapped up their orientation and the time came for us to leave Georgia and await our field assignment, my teacher pulled me aside and told me how much she would miss me. Then she handed me a gift – a book. The book was Puff the Magic Dragon, and I read and reread that book more times that I could count. It was my very own, and it was a constant over the following year of change.

I have progressed a great deal in my reading since then, but it still amazes me how much there is to learn, not just from reading, but also about reading. I’ve mentioned before the commitment I made in 2016 to step up some of my reading, and since then I have discovered many new ways to help myself – a not-so-fast reader – process through my book pile more steadily.

One discovery that I’ve made is that some books require a deep dive just to read a small section. These books take a while to read – months, if not a year – because I plunge into a short section then need time to put the book down and slowly process in order to avoid the suffocation that comes from trying to stay that deep for too long or the mental bends that hit me when I surface too quickly. Those are the books that require reading, journaling, and pondering before reading again.

Other books spend an entire chapter diving to the same depths. They let the reader down gradually to the greatest point of depth, then slowly work their way back up to the surface, allowing mental processing during the reading process. This does not mean they are shallow books (I try to avoid those); they simply walk readers through the process of internalizing. As a result, they tend to pack less into a single book and are quicker reads.

Both types of books are useful. And, I’m learning the value of reading both types simultaneously.

I remember reading Knowing God by J.I. Packer right after reading a Max Lucado book. I enjoy Max Lucado. I learn a lot from his books. But they are quick, easy reads. Knowing God is not. It was like a shock to my system. And, where I had processed through Lucado’s book in a couple of weeks (about a chapter a day), it took me close to a year to read Knowing God. There were so many books waiting for me that I got discouraged and did not process the content like I should have.

How much better to read both at the same time! Half a chapter of Lucado and a small section of Knowing God, allowing each one to engage my brain and spiritual growth differently.

That is what I’ve learned to do over the past year. Not with those two examples (although I do intend to go back and reread Knowing God and all of our Lucado books at some point!), but with other titles. Every morning I have a Scripture reading, a devotional reading, and at least two other books that I read from. Just sections from each. And it has worked better than any other method I have ever tried.

How do you approach different types of diving?

 

Posted in Faith Nuggets

A Blown Mind

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

I enjoy a good, fictional story. Whether it’s a movie or a book, I like the experience of working through the tale from start to finish and enjoying the nice, neatly wrapped package of an introduction, a crisis, a climax, and a resolution.

Yes, I know life is not like that. Life never presents us a concluded story. From birth to death, life is one long, complex, interwoven series of stories that never truly find solid conclusion. They are ever evolving, ever changing, and ever intermingling with one another. When we watch movies, read novels, or even dive into biographies, we are essentially pulling a single thread – maybe even two or three – from a much more complex piece of fabric. We focus on this relationship or that experience, but the remaining realities such as work or extended family or history that, in real life, strongly impact those threads are only side thoughts and setting for our compact story.

And you know what? That’s okay! It is not wrong to enjoy the narrative of a few threads, even learning powerful truths from that narrative if we choose our entertainment well.

The problem comes, though, when we apply the same reading style to Scripture.

Too often, I read God’s Word with a desire for a nicely wrapped package. I enjoy meditating on a passage for days on end, but if I have my preference, each day will bring a thought that I can wrap my head around. Even if the learning grows each day, I want something tangible and solid every time I meditate.

But, it doesn’t always work that way. Some days, what I end up with is the birth of a realization. The first tricklings of learning that completely evade understanding. In a nutshell, my mind is just blown, and it feels like the millions of scattered pieces will never come back together.

Sometimes, the light bulb begins to come on within a day or two, and increased depth of learning follows understanding. But other times it’s a slower development. I’ve hashed through certain mind blowing concepts for years on end, pulling in a piece here and an edge there, assembling the most challenging puzzle I have ever encountered in an attempt to get even the smallest glimpse of what the final picture looks like.

As overwhelmed as I feel when my mind is blown by Scripture – as much as I prefer the nice, neat, storybook package of study, learning, and growth – I am learning to crave this type of open-ended learning more and more. I’m learning to hunger for questions that take weeks, months, or even years of study and exploration to answer.

The written Word that we hold in our hands, creation all around us, and even God’s active work in our daily lives and throughout history are all just a tiny glimpse of the essence of the Almighty King of all existence. He is so much greater. So much more profound than anything we can imagine. His gifts of revelation represent a depth that our hearts and minds will never fully reach, no matter how many years we are given on this earth. But that should never prevent us from diving!

If our minds are not blown at least every now and then, it is not evidence of the vastness of what we know. Instead, it is an indictment against us, showing our failure to even try to plumb the depths of the revelation our amazing, loving Father has so graciously given us.

Oh, may I hunger more and more for a glimpse of just how much I have left to learn.

May I never fear a blown mind.

Posted in Thoughts, Thoughts from Life

Lost Words

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

Earlier this week, I had a great brainstorm for a blog post. Fortunately, I had a notepad handy, and I was able to furiously scratch notes. The notes flowed as smoothly and rapidly as the train of thought, and everything seemed to make clear and perfect sense…then.

I was not in a position at the time to sit down at the computer or with anything more than that little scratch pad, but I fully intended to make writing a priority that morning so I could turn those notes into a blog post immediately. I’m trying to do better about that, knowing how often I wait too long and then lose the context of what I was thinking. But, this week took my by storm. By the time I even had a few minutes to look at those notes again, several days had passed. By that time, the notes might as well have been gibberish.

I have no idea what I was thinking. No clue about the context. No comprehension of the thoughts that were so strong that morning. I can remember the feeling of the thoughts flowing forth with clarity and strength. But I cannot remember the details to save my life.

In a way, it feels like I’ve lost something precious. The thoughts were that powerful.

In another way, though, I am comforted. You see, those thoughts were meant for that morning. I do remember them motivating, encouraging, and propelling me into my day. They planted in me a strength and a determination to face this very full week. I may be forgetting the context right now, but on the morning of the brainstorm, I know I stepped into the day with an internalized lesson.

The words may have been lost, but the lesson – and its impact – remained.

I am married to a pastor, but I frequently cannot recall the points of his sermons from one week to the next. Even when I am intentional about taking thorough notes, I often look at them later with confusion, not sure what I was thinking as I wrote. But, each Sunday as I listen and write, my goal is often to plant in my head one way I can implement the message in the coming week. One way I can actively choose to grow in response to what God has said through my husband.

Again, I may not be able to dredge up the specific points or context, but the lessons remains.

Not everyone is stirred by words. We don’t all process that way. We do, however, all have a method by which truths are best communicated to our hearts and lessons are merged into our lives. But none of this happens naturally. When blog posts create themselves in my head, it’s very easy to tap them out, then forget them. Sometimes I go back and read articles and am stunned to find that I wrote them! They feel so foreign because I never truly internalized the message. It takes an effort and a choice to pour those truths into my soul instead of simply pounding them out on a computer keyboard.

It takes an effort and a choice to decide to act on a sermon instead of simply listening and then walking out unchanged. (Think about it – have you ever said, “Good sermon, Preacher,” because you have already forgotten that what you should instead be saying is, “Ouch!”)

Truths are constantly moving from the mouth of God to our eyes and ears, giving us the choice each and every day. What will we do with them? Will they just become lost words, or will we turn them into lessons internalized?