A thought by Craig Groeschel from his book, Hope in the Dark: Believing God Is Good When Life Is Not (p. 86). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)
My dad was a very special man and he had a lot of practical statements that he would share over and over. One of them was, “A short pencil is better than a long memory.” That is what Craig is saying here.
He says, “I’ll be wrestling with something I don’t understand and praying about it. ‘God, are you there? What’s going on? What do you want me to do in this situation? What are you up to?’
“Then I often feel like God shows me something, provides direction or speaks to my heart. I’ve learned to write it down, because inevitably, a few days later, I’ll be thinking about it again, and I might talk myself out of it. ‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe it was that late-night snack. Just some divinely inspired indigestion.’ So I begin to doubt what I knew with certainty only a couple of days ago. My awareness of God’s message to me seems to vanish unless I write it down.”
He goes on, “When I record it, though, it becomes a spiritual anchor that tethers me to God and to the consistency of his promises. ‘Yes, I believe that God has spoken.’ And better than that, I have a reference point that I can return to; it doesn’t depend on my mood or what I had to eat the night before.”
Craig continues, “When you develop the discipline of writing down what God shows you and what you’re praying about, you might be shocked over a few years at all that God does. George Mueller was a well-known evangelist who lived in the 1800s. One day, his heart broke when he saw hundreds of homeless children fending for themselves on the streets of Bristol in England.
“With almost no money to his name, he decided to start an orphanage, and over the next sixty years, Mr. Mueller helped care for more than ten thousand orphans. All throughout his ministry, he kept a record of his prayers, in a journal that ultimately filled more than three thousand pages. He recorded how one night there was no food to give the children the next morning at breakfast, so he begged God to do something. Early the next morning, a local baker knocked at his door. When Mueller answered, the baker told him he hadn’t been able to sleep the night before, so he had gotten up and baked three batches of bread, which he had brought for them. Another time, a milk truck just ‘happened’ to break down in front of the orphanage on the exact day they had no milk for the children. Since the milk would have spoiled in the heat, the driver gave it to the orphans. All in all, Mr. Mueller recorded more than thirty thousand direct answers to his prayers. Just imagine how this built his faith, as he saw God’s faithfulness laid out before him again and again in black and white.”
Do you see how developing the discipline of writing down what God shows you and what you’re praying about can strengthen your faith and your relationship with God? Do you?
This just happened to me!
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