Journal With Bible Quotes

The horizon changes but the sun does not.

Don’t just read the Bible. Start circling the promises. Don’t just make a wish. Write down a list of God-glorifying life goals. Don’t just pray. Keep a prayer journal. Define your dream.                 Claim your promise.                                   Spell your miracle.

According to a Wall Street Journal article some 59 percent of Americans don t own a single book. Not a cookbook or even the Bible.

The Bible is the Bread of Life, and it never becomes stale.

Allow your mind to be still and rest in His presence.

Truth is the first casualty of war and the war on drugs is no different. Every day both the print and broadcast media bombard the public with a perspective and narrative which has proved to be devastating. This diet of cultural influence and propaganda is unremitting.

Here is individual responsibility and the invention of conscience. You can if you will but it is up to you. This little story(from the Bible)turns out to be one of the most profound in the world. I always felt it was,but now I know it is.

What do these forests make you feel? Their weight and density, their crowded orderliness. There is scarcely room for another tree and yet there is space around each. They are profoundly solemn yet upliftingly joyous; like the Bible, you can find strength in them that you look for. How absolutely full of truth they are, how full of reality. The juice and essence of life are in them; they teem with life, growth and expansion. They are a refuge for myriads of living things. As the breezes blow among them, they quiver, yet how still they stand developing with the universe. God is among them. He has breathed with them the breath of life, might and patience. They stand developing, springing from tiny seeds, pushing close to Mother Earth. Fluffy baby things first, sheltering beneath their parents, mounting higher, spreading brave braches, pushing with mighty strength not to be denied skywards. Tossing in the breezes, glowing in the sunshine, bathing in the showers, bending below the snow piled on their branches, drinking the dew, rejoicing in creation, bracing each other, sheltering the birds and beasts, the myriad insects.

When highbrow critics accused Time of practicing personality journalism, Luce replied that Time did not invent the genre, the Bible did.

The Holy Spirit acts as an agent of TOTAL RECALL. One of his jobs is to bring to memory the word of God.

One of the worst things a woman can do, is to destroy herself with her own words.

Life did come with a manual.

Much of what is going on and will go on could be learned by the outside world from Mein Kampf, the Bible and Koran together of the Third Reich. But—amazingly—there is no decent translation of it in English or French, and Hitler will not allow one to be made, which is understandable, for it would shock many in the West. How many visiting butter-and-egg men have I told that the Nazi goal is domination! They laughed.

Images are taking over, and writers are a dying breed. The Norman Mailers of today are reduced to writing pun-filled captions for paparazzi photos. Blogs--which were threatening enough to professional writers--are being replaced by video blogs. We writers need to embraced the Second Commandment as our rallying cry for the importance of words. In a literally biblical world, all publications would look like the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Or the way it used to look, anyway.

I must write about the things of the world with no glazing.” She fought doggedly against the great suction into her own subjectivity: “I shall perish if I can write about no one but myself.” Something like this went through nearly every entry in her journal over long periods. In

I began realizing it was okay to just sit with Him instead of always reading and journaling prayers or hustling off to the next bible study. It was okay to just be still. It was possible to find Him in the immense stillness, the hidden parts of my heart. He was always there in my hiddenness.

So it was a bit of shock, years later, when P.T. delivered a sermon, one of his few memorable ones, in which he told us all that the word "Word" was translated from the Greek word *Logos,* which didn't really mean "word" at all, but rather something closer to "plea" or even premise." It was a small betrayal for my little apostle's heart to find out that I had gotten my journal entry wrong. Worse still, I felt then, was the betrayal of language in translation. Why didn't English have a better word than "Word" if "Word" was not precise enough? I started to approach my Bible with suspicion. What else had I missed? Even though I felt ambushed, I did like the ambiguity that the revelation introduced into that verse. In the beginning there was an idea, a premise; there was a question.

Integrity: The leader’s life and words match. Justice: The leader rejects dishonest gain. Convictions: The leader’s values won’t allow him or her to accept bribes. Positive focus: The leader refuses to dwell on destructive issues. Pure: The leader disciplines his or her mind to remain clean and pure. Secure: The leader is firm, stable in his identity and source of strength. The Maxwell Leadership Bible

1. Experience: People who have been down the road of life and understand it. 2. Heart for God: People who place God first and uphold His values. 3. Objectivity: People who see the pros and cons of the issues. 4. Love for people: People who love others and value them more than things. 5. Complementary gifts: People who bring diverse gifts to the relationship. 6. Loyalty to the leader: People who truly love and are concerned for the leader. The Maxwell Leadership Bible

We didn’t understand why Cecilia had killed herself the first time and we understood even less when she did it twice. Her diary, which the police inspected as part of the customary investigation, didn’t confirm the supposition of unrequited love. Dominic Palazzolo was mentioned only once in that tiny rice-paper journal illuminated with colored Magic Markers to look like a Book of Hours or a medieval Bible. Miniature designs crowded the pages. Bubblegum angels swooped from top margins, or scraped their wings between teeming paragraphs. Maidens with golden hair dripped sea-blue tears into the book’s spine.

The newspaper is a Bible which we read every morning and every afternoon, standing and sitting, riding and walking. It is a Bible which every man carries in his pocket, which lies on every table and counter, and which the mail, and thousands of missionaries, are continually dispersing. It is, in short, the only book which America has printed and which America reads. So wide is its influence. The editor is a preacher whom you voluntarily support. Your tax is commonly one cent daily, and it costs nothing for pew hire. But how many of these preachers preach the truth? I repeat the testimony of many an intelligent foreigner, as well as my own convictions, when I say, that probably no country was ever rubled by so mean a class of tyrants as, with a few noble exceptions, are the editors of the periodical press in this country. And as they live and rule only by their servility, and appealing to the worse, and not the better, nature of man, the people who read them are in the condition of the dog that returns to his vomit.

Daily: staying in touch with your life as it unfolds History: reconstructing the contours of your past Dialogue: journaling a “conversation” Pilgrimage: exercises to promote personal growth Bible study: analyzing and applying Scripture Dreams: recording your nightly images Musings: recording insights, thoughts, and reflections Family: marking key events in your family’s development Work: keeping notes and materials related to your job8

Vanishing cream for the mind, English writer Jeremiah Creedon calls it. It's beholding the mote in your brother's eye, says the Bible, while disregarding the beam in your own. Denial is refusing to listen to the voice that awakens you in the night and whispers, "You know, you really are an incredible jerk and you ought to do something about it!" "Beware thoughts that come in the night," cautions William Least Heat Moon at the start of Blue Highways, his evocative journal of self-discovery on the back roads of America. "They aren't turned properly. They come in askew, free of sense or satisfaction, deriving from the most remote of sources." Samuel Taylor Coleridge called those remote sources "an aching hollow in the bosom, a dark cold speck at the heart, an obscure and boding sense of something that must be kept out of sight of the conscience, some secret lodger, whom they can neither resolve to reject or retain." Denial is keeping from ourselves secrets we already know. It's choosing to forget what we can't bear to remember. It's making people tell us what we want to hear so we can keep believing the lies we've told ourselves, keep punishing those who dare to make us listen to the truth. Denial is the psychology of self-deception, the mind's deliberate failure to see things as they really are in order to protect ourselves from ourselves, says Donald Goldman, author of Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception. Familiar words of denial: It's not about the money. I am not a crook. I was only obeying orders. Business is business. I can quit whenever I want. I don't remember.

In the case of Adam and Eve, the deeper truth is that it never happened, but it is always happening. It never was, but still is. It is both primitive and postmodern. The Bible is a Metaphor made up of metaphors, and the point is not to organize a search party to find a garden that never existed or Noah’s ark on a mountain in Turkey, so that we can “prove” that the Bible is true. Our calling is to graduate from a definition of truth that is too narrow and embrace the reading of scripture as sacred, normative poetry—not ancient journalism or objective history. This does not mean we stop “believing” the Bible. In this case, just think how timeless is the message of an archetypal woman duping a clueless, archetypal man and then passing the buck down to a talking snake!

the shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory. That’s why I keep a prayer journal. Next to my Bible, nothing is more sacred to me than my journal.

God of compassion, you suffer in the grief of your people, and you are present to heal and forgive. May the sun of your justice rise on every night of oppression, and may the warm rays of your healing love renew each troubled mind; for you are the God of salvation and new life, made known to us in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Our meditation practice, as Christians, is dedicated to three main priorities: welcoming the Holy Spirit, living a more Christlike life, and building His kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven.

The Spirit only needs the smallest amount of openness to enter into our hearts.

The depth of your sincerity and openheartedness are the most relevant factors in meditation for spiritual development.

Meditation and prayer work together to facilitate an active two-way relationship between ourselves and God. By adding journaling and reflective writing, we find that the Holy Spirit will use our thoughts and reflections to guide and inspire us, enriching and deepening our understanding of any challenges or difficult circumstances.

Allow the Spirit to work through you as you journal.

Any time God performs a miracle in our life, we should show our appreciation by being about the Father’s business. We should help others and meet their needs as best we can. We should care about the things that God cares about and look for ways to minister to God and God’s people out of thankfulness for all of His many miracles He has performed in our lives.

Father, forgive them; for they know now what they do

The Pew Research Center reports that Christianity is declining sharply in America. In 2014 about seventy percent of American adults identified as Christians.1 But this figure is misleading. According to a study by sociologists C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler published in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, less than twenty percent of Americans regularly attend church on a weekly basis.2 This statistic gives us a better indication of actual Christian commitment.

Mary could be your go-to prayer journaling partner. And during those times in your life when you are being asked to do something that makes you shake in your boots, or that you do not want to do (even though you know in your heart it is the right thing), turn to Mary’s wisdom. At the wedding feast at Cana, we hear her say some of the few words recorded in the Bible as hers, but which happen to be some of the most profound: “Do whatever he tells you.

We cannot look like what people are running FROM though…No… We must not only Look like HOPE we must BE HOPE…we cannot just Sound like FAITH…we have to BE FAITH…we cannot just Look like LOVE…we have to BE LOVE…

Destined to die without issue,” added Terry, who fancied himself a wordsmith. His real name was Something the Third. As if that wasn’t bad enough, “the Third” translated to “Tertius” in Latin. Then “Tertius” shortened to “Terry.” So obviously that was what they called him. He kept a private journal in which his feelings were recorded, possibly. The possibility was widely mocked.

I’m drawn to music that’s more earnest than tidy, art that’s more ragged than orderly, people who are just a touch more honest than is strictly appropriate for the situation. I’m finished hustling for perfect. It didn’t deliver what they told me it would. And so, instead: present. If perfect is plastic, present is rich, loamy soil. It’s fresh bread, lumpy and warm. It’s real and tactile and something you can hold with both hands, something rich and warm. Present is a face bare of makeup, a sweater you’ve loved for a decade, a mug that reminds you of who you used to be. It’s the Bible with the battered cover, the journal filled with scribbled, secret dreams. It isn’t pretty, necessarily—it isn’t supposed to be. Present is living with your feet firmly grounded in reality, pale and uncertain as it may seem. Present is choosing to believe that your own life is worth investing deeply in, instead of waiting for some rare miracle or fairy tale. Present means we understand that the here and now is sacred, sacramental, threaded through with divinity even in its plainness. Especially in its plainness. Present over perfect living is real over image, connecting over comparing, meaning over mania, depth over artifice. Present over perfect living is the risky and revolutionary belief that the world God has created is beautiful and valuable on its own terms, and that it doesn’t need to be zhuzzed up and fancy in order to be wonderful.

Deliver me, O God, from too intense an application to even necessary business. I know how this dissipates my thoughts from the one end of all my business, and impairs that lively perception I would ever retain of thee standing at my right hand. I know the narrowness of my heart, and that an eager attention to earthly things leaves it no room for the things of heaven. O teach me to go through all my employments with so truly disengaged a heart, that I may still see thee in all things, and see thee therein as continually looking upon me, and searching my reins; and that I may never impair that liberty of spirit which is necessary for the love of thee.

The Arabs ask many questions about the Bible, and want to know how many prophets have appeared, and probably say that they believe in them all; while we believe all but reject Mohamad. It is easy to drive them into a corner by questioning, as they don't know whither the inquiries lead, and they are not offended when their knowledge is, as it were, admitted. When asked how many false prophets are known, they appeal to my knowledge, and evidently never heard of Balaam, the son of Beor, or of the 250 false prophets of Jezebel and Ahab, or of the many lying prophets referred to in the Bible.

3rd October, 1871.—I read the whole Bible through four times whilst I was in Manyuema.

May you see the light through the darkness, wisdom through the pain and strength through the suffering.

If perfect is plastic, present is rich, loamy soil. It’s fresh bread, lumpy and warm. It’s real and tactile and something you can hold with both hands, something rich and warm. Present is a face bare of makeup, a sweater you’ve loved for a decade, a mug that reminds you of who you used to be. It’s the Bible with the battered cover, the journal filled with scribbled, secret dreams. It isn’t pretty, necessarily – it isn’t supposed to be.

Darwin himself, a member of the RSPCA, was more modest in his views and actually quite empathetic toward animals, often describing in his letters and journals their capacity for misery and happiness alike. But today's evolutionary scientists seem to remember only the survival-of-the-fittest part, just as many Christians and Jews remember only the go-forth-and-subdue part of their Bible.

The Bible teaches us that prayer is about our own inner relationship with the one true source of all things, our Heavenly Parents. This is essentially true about meditation as well.

... It strikes me that if I'm in such a febrile and imaginative mood I ought to take advantage of it with some serious writing exercises or at least a few ideas for stories, if only to demonstrate that I'm not treating this here commonplace book solely as a journal to record my most recent attacks of jitters! Maybe I should roll my sleeves up and attempt as least an opening practice paragraph or two of this confounded novel I'm pretending to be writing. Let's see how it looks. Marblehead: An American Undertow By Robert D. Black Iron green, the grand machinery of the Atlantic grates foam gears against New England with the rhythmic thunder of industrial percussion. A fine dust of other lands and foreign histories is carried in suspension on its lurching, slopping mechanism: shards of bright green glass from Ireland scoured blunt and opaque by brine, or sodden splinters of armada out of Spain. The debris of an older world, a driftwood of ideas and people often changed beyond all recognition by their passage, clatters on the tideline pebbles to deposit unintelligible grudges, madnesses and visions in a rank high-water mark, a silt of fetid dreams that further decompose amid the stranded kelp or bladder-wrack and pose risk of infection. Puritans escaping England's murderous civil war cast broad-brimmed shadows onto rocks where centuries of moss obscured the primitive horned figures etched by vanished tribes, and after them came the displaced political idealists of many nations, the religious outcasts, cults and criminals, to cling with grim determination to a damp and verdant landscape until crushed by drink or the insufferable weight of their accumulated expectations. Royalist cavaliers that fled from Cromwell's savage interregnum and then, where their puritanical opponents settled the green territories to the east, elected instead to establish themselves deep in a more temperate South, bestowing their equestrian concerns, their courtly mannerisms and their hairstyles upon an adopted homeland. Heretics and conjurors who sought new climes past the long shadow of the stake; transported killers and procurers with their slates wiped clean in pastures where nobody knew them; sour-faced visionaries clutching Bunyan's chapbook to their bosoms as a newer and more speculative bible, come to these shores searching for a literal New Jerusalem and finding only different wilderness in which to lose themselves and different game or adversaries for the killing. All of these and more, bearing concealed agendas and a hundred diverse afterlives, crashed as a human surf of Plymouth Rock to fling their mortal spray across the unsuspecting country, individuals incendiary in the having lost their ancestral homelands they were without further longings to relinquish. Their remains, ancient and sinister, impregnate and inform the factory-whistle furrows of oblivious America.

... It strikes me that if I'm in such a febrile and imaginative mood I ought to take advantage of it with some serious writing exercises or at least a few ideas for stories, if only to demonstrate that I'm not treating this here commonplace book solely as a journal to record my most recent attacks of jitters! Maybe I should roll my sleeves up and attempt as least an opening practice paragraph or two of this confounded novel I'm pretending to be writing. Let's see how it looks. Marblehead: An American Undertow By Robert D. Black Iron green, the grand machinery of the Atlantic grates foam gears against New England with the rhythmic thunder of industrial percussion. A fine dust of other lands and foreign histories is carried in suspension on its lurching, slopping mechanism: shards of bright green glass from Ireland scoured blunt and opaque by brine, or sodden splinters of armada out of Spain. The debris of an older world, a driftwood of ideas and people often changed beyond all recognition by their passage, clatters on the tideline pebbles to deposit unintelligible grudges, madnesses and visions in a rank high-water mark, a silt of fetid dreams that further decompose amid the stranded kelp or bladder-wrack and pose risk of infection. Puritans escaping England's murderous civil war cast broad-brimmed shadows onto rocks where centuries of moss obscured the primitive horned figures etched by vanished tribes, and after them came the displaced political idealists of many nations, the religious outcasts, cults and criminals, to cling with grim determination to a damp and verdant landscape until crushed by drink or the insufferable weight of their accumulated expectations. Royalist cavaliers that fled from Cromwell's savage interregnum and then, where their puritanical opponents settled the green territories to the east, elected instead to establish themselves deep in a more temperate South, bestowing their equestrian concerns, their courtly mannerisms and their hairstyles upon an adopted homeland. Heretics and conjurors who sought new climes past the long shadow of the stake; transported killers and procurers with their slates wiped clean in pastures where nobody knew them; sour-faced visionaries clutching Bunyan's chapbook to their bosoms as a newer and more speculative bible, come to these shores searching for a literal New Jerusalem and finding only different wilderness in which to lose themselves and different game or adversaries for the killing. All of these and more, bearing concealed agendas and a hundred diverse afterlives, crashed as a human surf on Plymouth Rock to fling their mortal spray across the unsuspecting country, individuals incendiary in that having lost their ancestral homelands they were without further longings to relinquish. Their remains, ancient and sinister, impregnate and inform the factory-whistle furrows of oblivious America.

There’s a wonderful book, Religious Literacy by Stephen Prothero, which cites a poll that half of Americans can’t name Genesis as the first book of the Bible. This is part of the dumbing down of our culture. One of those books that 50 percent of Americans apparently aren’t reading is the Bible, or they would know that Genesis is the first book of the Bible. It’s sort of like, “I don’t know what Genesis is, but I believe it.

Nevertheless, modern-day naturalists, because of their religiously held belief, widely assume there were no major catastrophes in the past that produced the rock layers, which contain dinosaurs (Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous), but instead believe the rock layers were laid down slowly over “long ages.” This is why the secular world REFUSES to publish technical papers in their journals about a global (i.e., worldwide) Flood on earth. A global Flood totally destroys their “millions of years” story!

Pick a passage. You can do this randomly (my favorite method) or look up a passage that suits your concerns of the day, or go to your favorite book of the Bible. Still your mind and invite God, the Holy Spirit, or whatever you want to call the Divine, to speak to you through your reading. You can say this out loud or within. ​“Then, read the passage until a word or phrase jumps off the page. You may have to read one verse, several verses, or just a few words until this happens. Use your heart to sense it, not your mind. Don’t analyze or think, ‘Oh, I know the origin of that word, I’ll choose that one.’ Let the words do the work of jumping. ​“When the word jumps, take it into your heart. Let it work in there until you start to hear or see something. Let the words or pictures flow in your imagination. Try not to let your analytical mind hijack the flow. Let the words paint the images or realizations via the subconscious, or whatever you want to call that intuitive part of you. When the flow slows or stops, grab your journal and write. Write fluidly as if you are letting the flow continue. Don’t judge your words or ideas. That’s not your job here. You are a pen in God’s hand. Write what comes.

Yes, actually. When I am on the labyrinth or writing to the Beloved in my journal, it’s the most amazing, exciting thing that has happened to me.” ​“So how would the Accuser benefit from making you feel foolish or bored?” ​“I would stop. I would stop walking the labyrinth. I would stop journaling. I would not touch the Bible out of fear-

​Beloved, I realize that I have all the tools I need to be in your presence whenever I want to. I have this journal, I have the prayer of quiet, I have the Bible and lectio divina, I can speak to you in verbal prayer any time I want, and I can walk the labyrinth here or in the park. Thank you for sending me these tools. I will keep in touch with you regularly, so please keep sending me messages of what you want me to do. I am listening. ​Gratefully, Therese, your Beloved

Spiritual foolishness is the willful acceptance of those situations, circumstances, people and strongholds that contradict the Word of God.

Make no mistake, you are in a war. From the constant battle between flesh and the spirit to the wickedness in high places, you are in a fight for your abundant life.

When your adversary turns up the heat, consider it a compliment and the proof that you not only belong to God, but are moving in the direction He has called you to. The enemy isn’t chasing anyone he already has.

Grace. There was that five letter word I had scribbled in my journal and sang about in church. It was a familiar word; a word I had heard preached from pulpits thousands of times, but more like an acquaintance than a dear friend. Grace was a beautiful but vague word adorning the pages of my Bible and the hymn books I grew up with. I knew I was saved by grace, but that didn’t mean I understood the depth of its meaning or how amazing it really was. I didn’t know all the dimensions of grace; the shades of glorious wonder that grace possessed. I didn’t understand the workings of grace, and the strength of grace. But that night, like the first flicker of light in a dark room, grace captivated my attention.

Throughout our lives, we will often face situations that can be confusing or disturbing. We will also confront tough decisions that can shake our faith. How can we know if our challenges are there to help us grow or if they are signals that we need to make critical changes in our lives? We need the discernment of the Spirit.

I can’t stop thinking about Elijah sitting underneath the juniper tree & asking God to die. God sent an angel who says, “This journey is too much for you.” & that he must eat. Elijah does, then he rests. He wakes up still feeling hopeless, & the angel repeats himself. It took Elijah longer than he wanted to get better. Sometimes we want to move but we can’t. Sometimes the journey is too much. It is not a sin to understand your limitations. Start there, get stronger, then get up.

In a journal entry the famed philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once wrote about some tame geese who, week after week, attended church and heard teachings on God's great gift to geese - wings.  With wings, the preaching gander reminded them, they could fly and experience the many blessings known only through the utilization of that gift.  But, laments Kierkegaard, week after week they waddled home without flapping their way to the flight they were told was their destiny.  In a sobering conclusion Kierkegaard reports that these waddling geese were very well liked by the humans of the land.  They grew fat and plump and were then butchered, and eaten.  And that, says the philosopher, was the end of that.   Lesson?  God gives us wings

The procedure followed in this egalitarian claim troubles me more than most of the other claims that I consider in this book. When no explanations or disclaimers are made alerting readers to the uniform lack of support from scholarly specialists for such an interpretation, this wild speculation (or so it seems to me, after reading these other articles) is taken as truth by unsuspecting readers. Cindy Jacobs, for example, simply trusts Kroeger’s interpretation of this fresco as truthful, and counts it as evidence for women’s participation in high positions of governing authority in the early church.6 Thousands of readers of Jacobs’s book will also take it as true, thinking that since it has a footnote to a journal on church history, there must be scholarly support for the idea. And so something that is a figment of Catherine Kroeger’s imagination, something that no scholar in the field has ever advocated, is widely accepted as fact. The requirements of truthfulness should hold us to higher standards than this. Kroeger’s article therefore uses apparently untruthful claims based on obscure material outside the Bible in order to turn people away from being obedient to the Bible in what it says about restricting the office of pastor and elder to men. And turning people away from obeying the Bible is another step on the path toward liberalism.

Lord, when the alarm clock, stove clock, and time clock demand my presence, When the pace of life is hectic, When I wish there were six more hours in a day, When the traffic light is stuck on red And my family’s schedule demands I be in three places at one time, May I take time to rest, Lord. Lord, when people expect too much of me, When the boss has forgotten about the eight-hour day, When I am constantly at others’ beck and call, When the cell phone, Twitter, fax, and email all go off at once And I begin to hate the human race, May I take time to rest, Lord. Lord, when work occupies all my waking hours, When television commercials say I must have more, When my neighbors flaunt their newest toys, When alcoholic does not apply but workaholic does And I decide to go to the office on Sunday to catch up, May I take time to rest, Lord. Lord, when money means more than people, When I read The Wall Street Journal more than my Bible, When overtime becomes my primetime, When promotions and pay hikes are my ultimate goals And looking out for number one has become my slogan in life, May I take time to rest, Lord. Lord, may I refocus my life on you. May I restore my thoughts in your Word. May I refresh my schedule by meditating on all your blessings. May I relax my activity every week to enjoy the life you gave me. May I take time to rest, Lord.

But there’s also another reason I like to meet for devotions in public places. Think of how many people pass by us as they wait in line for their morning coffee. Most will definitely notice five or six people with their Bibles open, writing in journals. Our favorite meeting place is busy; approximately a hundred people will saunter by us in an hour.

Now, when I read back through my journals of those rocky times, I wonder why my family didn’t just put me in a strait- jacket and check me into someplace called Sunnydale or Happy Hills. Somewhere in a galaxy far, far away. What’s especially peculiar to me as I think back on this time in my life is the fact that I never stopped to realize my depression and frustration might stem from a spiritual problem. I’ve told you before I’ve been a Christian almost my entire life. I’d studied the Bible and attended church and all those other things good Christians do. But none of it seemed to matter anymore.

If we keep our eyes on the mirror of God's Word, we will gradually be conformed to the image of Christ.

Bible journaling isn’t about your writing, but your journey. It is simply a way to quiet yourself as you meditate on Scripture. You can ‘write’ by jotting down prayer requests, recording quotes, illustrating favorite passages, or even through Bible art

Bible journaling is such an intimate process. It’s a secret place where you find yourself alone with God to confess your sins, share your secrets, and truly be yourself because He knows you so completely anyway. No matter how open you are in your relationships, there are often thoughts and opinions you feel inhibited to express. In God’s presence, we feel at ease because He already is fully aware of our thoughts and feelings.

The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.”- A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

You should record as many of your spiritual thoughts, questions, and ideas as you can remember, and apply the same techniques we have already discussed in the previous chapter. When reflected upon, these are the nuggets that will later shine brightly as polished gold, and may eventually be guides to you along your way. If you have no burning issues of faith to record on a given day, try journaling other things like favorite prayers, any struggles you have with sin, spiritual needs, favorite Bible passages, requests for God’s forgiveness, spiritual insights, special times when you were aware of God’s presence, doubts about your faith, special experiences you’ve undergone like retreats, pilgrimages or seminars, questions about the nature of God, and any religious writings you’ve read that impressed you.

If you desire to increase your understanding of spiritual authority, I encourage you to dig deep into the Book of Ephesians. Look for every verse that includes the phrases “in Christ,” “in Him,” “in the Beloved,” “in the Lord,” “in Whom,” “by Christ,” “from Whom,” “through Christ,” and “with Christ.” Highlight those verses in your Bible and write them out in your journal or on note cards. Study them daily, meditate on them, and pray them over yourself. Ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten your eyes to the truth of God’s Word and to everything Christ has purchased for you.