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Saturday, May 19, 2007

How God Brought Me to This Point

I have been trying to push myself to do a spiritual journal for a while now, but I have been having a hard time being motivated to actually write. My wife Alise has been out of town for the last few days and starting a journal was one of my goals while she has been gone. I have been praying about it a lot these last few days. Then, today, in the shower God gave me the answer (it seems to happen a lot in the shower doesn't it?) Do a journal online. It won't be easy because honestly, I am not doing this to show off, I am not doing it to get approval from others, I'm not even doing it to get other people's opinions (though I am not opposed to that either.) But understanding why I am doing this is not an easy explanation, it's part of the journey itself and needs to be written down so I can remember it later. (I have the worst memory and writing things down seems to help.)

Last year I started pursuing my Master's Degree in Intercultural Studies at Simpson University and the first class that I took was Spiritual Formation. One of the main lessons that stuck with me from that class is the definition of Spiritual Formation; it is "a process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others." I could go into detail on each part of that definition but I will spare that for now. One of the other subjects of the class was about Spiritual Disciplines. I don't have much spiritual discipline in my life and I need more of it. So what I decided to do was journal. Not just journal about my day or what I cooked for dinner, but journal about where my conversations with God went. My spiritual thoughts for the day. Why journal? Because based on the definition of Spiritual Formation I knew it was going to be a journey, and it needed to be recorded so I knew where I came from. But who cares? if they are my thoughts, they are all up here right? Well, the other point of keeping a journal, especially a Spiritual one, is so somewhere down the road I can help people on their journey by reflecting on my own. But why post it online? Two reasons: one is accountability: if I slack off or am thinking the wrong thing everyone knows and can smack me around a little. If anyone reads it. The other reason is that maybe, someone out there can benefit from my journey; whether it be by something I write or just by reading a journal they decide to journal as well. Isn't a journal personal? Yes, very, but we'll see where that goes. This journal was something I was going to do anyways, so might as well do it online so anyone who reads it can go along the journey with me. This could get interesting.