Writing the Unwritten

Unwritten.

So many words are unwritten. Unknown things. Things I have yet to pray. Things I have yet to hope for. Things I have yet to thank God for. Things I have yet to know. Things I have yet to love. Things I have yet to be.

Prayer journaling has been such a huge part of my life since I was 16 years old. A friend gave me a journal which in the past I had used for sermon notes. But something or rather God prompted me to start writing down my prayers. My 16 year old prayers were nothing special but they were the outpouring of my heart. In the midst of 16 year old craziness, it was the one place I could bare my heart and my soul with no judgement and no criticism.

As I started to see prayers answered, hurts healed, and miracles happen, I was overwhelmed by the value of my prayer journal. It became a daily part of my life. Prayer journaling taught me that there is power in prayer and that God hears me when I pray.

Naturally, my love for a new journal runs deep. Something I hold in my hands each and every night in order to meet with God and process my day. It is a safe place for me. And those old journals hold in them now my longings, my desires, my surrender, my hopes, my dreams, my heartaches, my prayers, my pleading, my begging, and my interceding.

So when I look at blank pages in my current prayer journal, I know there is so much unwritten. Not my story. God has written my story, but it's up to me to write my part. It's up to me to follow in obedience. To surrender my desires and dreams. To say yes. To say no. To listen. To speak. To pray. To intercede. To love. To become who God is shaping me to be.

Blank pages used to overwhelm me. But now I see them as an opportunity to jump into the life God has created for me. To run through open doors. To learn how to close doors for myself. To go big and love even bigger.

Hope spills over into my heart that I still have 4 more months of 2016 to make the most of my unwritten. To fill in the blanks that God has left for me to live life for His glory because I have chosen to surrender my all and live this life with abandon.

Let the unwritten inspire you to seek God. Go deeper in the things of God. Fill in those blanks with words of peace, hope, rest, love, joy, kindness, and action. Take heart and have courage, God is in your midst and He is calling you to follow. To trust Him and to write in the unwritten. You do have control over how you will respond. How you will react. And how you will love.

This is our challenge. Enjoy writing the unwritten God has given us.

When the Words Won't Come

Nothing.

It all swirls around in my head. Words about life. Words about adventure. Words about experiences. Words about devastation. Words about heartbreak. Words about injustice.

They are all just individual words with no course of action. I think I have a potential blog post, but when I open up the text field, nothing comes.

Nothing.

Silence is usually seen as a negative thing. Someone gives you the silent treatment. When someone is silent, we assume something is wrong. Silence makes us feel ignored. It provokes unwanted feelings and thoughts. Silence has a way of opening up the floodgates for all things bad. At least it does for me.

But at the same time, we crave silence. We long for the chaos in our own personal worlds to be quieted. Moms will go to great lengths to get some silence. Teachers will plead with their students for just a minute of silence.

We love it and hate it all at the same time. Silence. It's either exactly what we need or the last thing we wanted.

Silence is no easy concept. Seasons of silence from God are the hardest for me. Times in life where I'm so wrapped up in me that I continue on in my good endeavors without my great God. Times in life when God is teaching me, refining me, or testing me.

Silence hurts. In this season of life, I have prayed unceasingly for two very specific things.

Nothing.

No answer. No progress. No signs. No clarity.

So I wait. And I hope. I take the silence as a sign to keep pressing on. To keep reading God's Word. To keep loving the people God has put in my life. To keep praying even in the silence.

Silence is teaching me endurance and perseverance and patience. And a host of other things that I didn't even know I needed to work on. I'm also learning that maybe what I perceive as silence is just God inviting me deeper to find him in the smallest of life's moments.

God has never spoken more loudly in my silence than when I'm watching the sunset as I drive through New Orleans. Or when I'm swinging in the park watching the people walk around me. Or when that friend reaches out and asks how I'm doing. Or when the exact song I need to hear comes on the radio. Or when a passage of Scripture keeps coming back to mind. Or when God holds off the rain for you to move.

Even in silence God is all around us. God is in everything. God is here with us. He is here with me. Always.

Nothing. Nothing comes together like I expect it too, but everything comes together the way God had planned all along. Even this blog post.

So when the words won't come, I trust that God is teaching me something through the silence.

Have you ever felt like God was silent? Have you ever, like me, equated someone else's silence in your life or unanswered prayers with silence from God?

I pray that God speaks into all of our hearts today and every day even in what feels like silence.