My Spiritual Journey...

(To read my journey up to this point, click here)

Things I've learned this last week:

1.I must schedule time in my day to practice meditation. It will never happen on a consistent basis if I don't.

2.Meditation involves not just my mind but my imagination. This was a hard one for me to admit. I guess the imagination just seems too pagan or something=) But its helpful to visual God on His throne when I'm mediating on His authority and power in my life. Its helpful to visual creation as I mediate on his ability to create all things perfectly. And so on....

3.Meditation will be a journey that reveals to me my depravity as well as the goodness of God. The more I meditate, the more I am aware of how big God is and how much He can and will do throughout the world and in my life. This awareness also humbles me and causes me to fall into confession and prayer. Meditation seems to be the springboard for these other 2 disciplines at this point in my journey.

4.God can and will speak to me; I just need to be still. Meditation, when scheduled into my day, allows me to be still before God on a consistent basis. That stillness, quietness, and listening to God draws my heart closer and closer to Him which allows me to hear his voice clearer and clearer. The more I practice this discipline on a consistent basis, the easier it becomes to quiet my heart and mind before God.

5.Sometimes taking 5 minutes and writing a to do list for the day before sitting with the Lord seems to help clear my mind and allows me greater concentration and quietness of heart, soul, and mind.

6.Meditation needs to be taught and practiced in our family on a consistent basis. I want my girls to know from the very beginning of their life what it means to allow God to speak to them in the quiet of their heart, to sit and think about what God is teaching them, and to think of the things of God as they walk through their day.

7.No matter how long I practice, God will always be teaching me. That's exciting to me. I will never have “arrived” if I just practice enough. God will just keep drawing me closer to Him as I continue to humble myself, discipline myself, and allow Him to speak to me.

8.This spontaneous, unstructured girl is learning how to be spontaneous in the midst of structure! Who knew the 2 could exists side by side =)


How it looked this past week:

1.I spent time every day sitting in complete stillness before the Lord reflecting and meditating on whatever He had shown me that morning in my quiet time. What I need to do better: Schedule in the time of stillness. The stillness happened at such random times that it was hard to focus and sometimes it felt like I was just trying to squeeze it into a busy day. If I evaluate my day and realize that almost everyday, I have a few down moments at 1:00pm and sit down in stillness then, I think I will have an easier time focusing.

2.The girls and I practiced noticing the things of God everywhere we went. The backyard, out the windows, driving in the car. We had a constant conversation about God's creation and His forgiveness of us.

3.Brent and I focused on giving Avery one idea for the week for her to meditate on. Of course we didn't call it meditating to her =) We just told her and helped her think about God's forgiveness all week. By the end of the week, I didn't even have to remind her to ask God to forgive her. She just did it after she served her consequence for whatever behavior she had done. The power of meditation!


Goals for next week:
1. Continue to practice meditation and implement a consistent time of stillness for me by myself as well as for Brent, me, and the girls together.

2.Implement some structure into my prayer life as well. In the journey of meditation, prayer has become more and more important to me. I need to implement more structure though in order to be able to have a conversation with God and not just a me talking to God time.

I'll let you know how it goes next Tuesday =)