Spiritual Gold in “Desert Times” ~ Journey Notes

The first time I read Proverbs 2:1-6 I was blown away by its apt description of my experience with Scripture.  Here is what Solomon wrote:

 I was attending my first Bible study and was continually amazed at how God’s Spirit showed me something new every time I read the Scriptures.  (I had tried to read the Bible for myself before this and found only discouragement, so I knew it was not me.)   I regarded every new insight or piece of wisdom gained as a “nugget” because, for me, it was like discovering pure spiritual gold after having lived in a desert for most of my life. To this day, I still get chills when I reflect on this portion of Proverbs.

Last week I was reminded of how Journey Notes Praise Journaling stimulates the excitement of discovery of such spiritual gold.   I had not seen one of my newer clients for several weeks, so I was very anxious to find out how she was doing.   She reported that she had done her Journey Notes almost every day and was amazed by how writing out her daily praises to God combined with her prayer concerns made it next to impossible to get as anxious or depressed.  Combining that with gaining God’s perspective on her and her circumstance through reading the Scriptures resulted in giving her an enduring peace.  She also reported an added bonus:

• When we set up her Journey Notes Praise Journaling in our first Session, I asked her to evaluate each day on a scale of “one to ten” with “ten” being the best and “one” being the worst.   I asked her to do this to see if the negativity about her daily life I observed made her think things were worse than they actually were.
• During this last Session she beamed when she told me, “You were right!  When I actually evaluated each day I had mostly eights and nines!  After writing out my praises and concerns along with reading Scripture, God helped me to see that things were not nearly as bad as I thought they were!”