In my previous voice note I talked about some imagery you can use in your meditation time to help with learning to submit to God’s will. Well, it’s imagery and a journaling exercise. Journaling the events of the day can help you process your day. And then in this exercise, if you write out 2 columns…in 1 column you write out what you were hoping would happen that day, and in the 2^nd column you write out what did happen. When you do that you will find in the events of the day that both painful things happened that you didn’t want to have happen and pleasant things happened that you didn’t expect to have happen…and some things will go the way you were hoping they would. When you see that 2^nd column as being God’s will for the events of the day, and start conforming to that…it can help get your mind working differently. The point of the exercise is to see that we are supposed to conform to God’s will for the day instead of trying to make God conform to our desires for the day…trusting in God’s sovereignty, His providence, and His plan for our lives. You could think of it this way: envision God walking with you hand in hand as He guides you on the pathway He has laid out for your life…your journey through this world. And then when something happens that is painful…or didn’t go the way we were hoping…we start pulling on God’s hand and trying to pull Him off the pathway with us as we try to go in a different direction. Instead, we should let God lovingly pull us back onto His pathway…and trust in Him to guide us through any dark valleys or times of pain.

While God does expect us to let Him guide us…to stay on that pathway He has laid out for us…He doesn’t expect us to not have any feelings or emotions about it. Instead, He knows when we are feeling pain and distress and He wants us to tell Him everything we are thinking and feeling…to pour out our hearts to Him. As I’ve been talking about on here, I did not know how to process my emotions until after I got sick. I would just stuff everything down or set it aside. But during those years after I got sick, I learned to cry out to God…I learned more about how to pray. When you read books about trauma healing, they emphasize releasing energy and transforming energy and reshaping the way you see an experience in order to resolve it. Prayer is a very powerful way you can do that. When you lay out everything you are feeling before God, it helps to clear your mind…and then God will answer you. He will speak a word of comfort to you. He acknowledges your pain…and then shows you a way to process it that you hadn’t been able to think of before. If you’ve had a chance to listen to one of my hymns that I’ve posted on here called, “His Ways Are Higher,” that’s what the words are talking about in the first verse when it says, “He knows your pain and He sees your wounds. If you will seek Him, then you will find Him, He’ll hold you close and He’ll comfort you.” Sometimes just having your pain acknowledged can really help towards being able to feel it and release it. I had been used to stuffing it down, but to have it acknowledged really helped me to start healing. To know that God cares about what you are feeling…that “He knows exactly how you feel” makes you feel comforted, loved, and supported…it makes you feel safe. And feeling safe is necessary to be able to go through a healing process.

So when you are doing this exercise, after you have written out both columns…remember to practice with that energy of letting God’s hand hold your hand and keep pulling you closer to Him…and envision any resistance to Him dissolving as you get in the habit of turning to Him and looking to Him for help when something happens instead of feeling as much distress or pulling away from Him. Then pour out your heart to Him about how the day went. Ask Him, “Why did this happen?” if something is confusing to you. Or tell Him, “I feel sad because…..” And remember also to praise Him and thank Him for walking through that day with you. That’s important to remember to do that because it will get a different energy flowing. If you had a difficult day, it can help so much just to say to Him, “Thank You for walking with me today. I don’t understand what happened today, but I know You were there with me. I know You love me. I know You have all the answers. Can You please help me process what happened today?” And then wait to get a sense of His response. When I get an answer from God, I do not hear His voice talking to me outside of my head. I get a sense of an answer in my heart…or maybe I will start seeing an image in my mind…or I will start having new thoughts in my mind…a new way of seeing things through His eyes.

I think it was John Owen, a pastor from the 1600s, who was talking about how God guides us through this life on a pathway He has laid out for us. And then at the end of that pathway… when we get to heaven…Jesus will sit down with us, and we will look again at the pathway we traveled to get there…and He will tell us all about why that was our pathway through this life…what all of His hidden purposes were for us…and how He has worked everything together for our ultimate good and for His glory.