Journeying and Journaling with God

Waiting: When God Says “Not Yet”

Note: At the end of each chapter of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting, I include two reflection/action sections. One is Your Journey and one is Your Journal. Today, I’m sharing a few sample Waiting Journey and Journal interactions to help you on your path of grief and growth—of finding God’s healing hope.

Your Waiting Journey

1. In waiting, you refuse to take over while refusing to give up. Where would you rate yourself on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being demanding immediate, self-sufficient gratification—changed feelings and circumstances, and with 10 being waiting on God by delaying gratification through faith?

2. Think back to a time when God brought hope, joy, newness, and “resurrection” into your life after a casket experience.

a. What did God use to bring about your spiritual victory?

b. How did you begin to see God differently? How did you begin to experience more of His goodness? How were you able to love Him more deeply?

c. As you found His strength in your weakness, what was God able to accomplish through you? How was He able to use you as a hero/heroine in His grand adventure narrative?

Your Waiting Journal

1. Hope waits. What are you waiting on God for? How are you trusting God’s future provision without taking matters into your own hands?

2. Waiting is refusing to take over while refusing to give up. Where are you finding the strength to “keep on keeping on”? How are you resisting the temptation to “curse God and die”?

3. Paul considered that his present sufferings were not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us (Romans 8:18-19). What future glory are you focusing on?

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Which of the interactions/questions/reflections most resonate with you?

Journeying and Journaling with God

Complaint: A Lament for Your Loss

Note: At the end of each chapter of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting, I include two reflection/action sections. One is Your Journey and one is Your Journal. Today, I’m sharing a few sample Complaint/Lament Journey and Journal interactions to help you on your path of grief and growth—of finding God’s healing hope.

Your Complaint/Lament Journey

1. Biblical complaint/lament trusts God’s good heart enough to bring everything about us to Him. Where would you put yourself on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being anger that pushes God away because you doubt His good heart, and 10 being complaint/lament that invites God in because you trust His good heart?

2. How would you compare your response to your suffering to Job’s? Jeremiah’s? Jacob’s? David’s? Paul’s? Jesus in the Garden?

3. Perhaps you’ve begun to face your losses and crosses. Where does Christ fit into your picture? What are you doing with Christ in your suffering? Have you been able to share your heart with God? If so, what have you said? If not, what would you like to say?

Your Complaint/Lament Journal

1. What do you think the Bible teaches about expressing anger and disappointment to God? What passages could you ponder to discover how God’s people have talked to God when they experienced loss?

2. Read Psalm 88—The Psalm of the Dark Night of the Soul.

a. What does Psalm 88 suggest about expressing your anger, disappointment, or complaint to God?

b. If you were to pen your own Psalm 88, what would it sound like? What would you write?

3. Read Job 3:1-26; 7:1-10; and 10:1-22. Have you been here? How so? Pen your own Job-like expression of lament to God.

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Which of the interactions/questions/reflections most resonate with you?

Journeying and Journaling with God

Candor: Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

Note: At the end of each chapter of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting, I include two reflection/action sections. One is Your Journey and one is Your Journal. Today, I’m sharing a few sample Candor Journey and Candor Journal interactions to help you on your path of grief and growth—of finding God’s healing hope.

Your Candor Journey

1. True faith faces all of life. Where would you put yourself on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being total denial and 10 being facing all of life?

2. As you reflect on what you are grieving over, what are your external losses—what has happened to you and around you?

a. What is missing?

b. What has been robbed from your life?

c. What are you grieving over the most?

3. As you ponder your suffering, what are your inner crosses—your feelings about your loss and the trials of your faith?

a. What feelings do you associate with these losses?

b. Have you ever faced anything like this before? How did you feel then?

c. How has your suffering impacted your relationship with and your attitude toward God?

d. How has your suffering impacted your faith, hope, and love?

Your Candor Journal

1. Read Matthew 27:45-46 and Luke 22:39-45. How can Jesus’ candor with Himself, His disciples, and with God influence you?

2. Read Psalm 13 and/or Psalm 88. Write your own candid psalm expressing your feelings.

3. According to Job 17:11-16 and Proverbs 13:12 how do dashed dreams impact us? How have they impacted you?

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Which of the interactions/questions/reflections most resonate with you?

Quotes of Note about God’s Healing, Part 10

Note: The following Quotes of Note are excerpted with permission from Chapter 9 of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses.

“Worship is wanting God more than wanting relief.”

“Worship is finding God even when you don’t find answers.”

“Worship is walking with God in the dark and having Him as the light of your soul.”

“Every problem is an opportunity to know God better, and our primary battle is to know God well.”

“If we want our suffering to lead to worship, we have to ask ourselves a primary soul care question, ‘How are these problems influencing my relationship to God?’”

“Problems can either shove us far from God or drag us kicking and screaming closer to Him.”

“In crying, you cry out for God’s help. In worship, you cry out for God.”

“In comfort, you receive God’s strength. In worship, you receive God.”

“In wailing, you long for heaven because you’re tired of earth. In worship, you long for God because you miss Him.”

“In weaving, you glimpse God’s perspective. In worship, you glimpse the face of God.”

“Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25).

“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” (Psalm 42:1-2).

“Suffering’s ultimate goal is worship: exalting and enjoying God as our Spring of Living Water—our only satisfaction and our greatest joy.”

“Satan schemes to use suffering to suck the life out of your soul. God intends to employ creative suffering to enliven your soul.”

“The mini and major caskets of your life losses do not have to lead to the death of faith, hope, and love. Through God’s grace, you can choose life—abundant life—life lived with engagement for God and others.”

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Which quote most impacts you? What other quote brings you comfort during times of suffering?

Quotes of Note about God’s Healing, Part 9

Note: The following Quotes of Note are excerpted with permission from Chapter 8 of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses.

“Faith is entrusting myself to God’s larger purposes, good plans, and eternal perspective.”

“Faith is seeing life with spiritual eyes instead of eyeballs only.”

“Through faith, I look at suffering, not with rose colored glasses, but with faith eyes, with Cross-eyes, with 20/20 spiritual vision.”

“Instead of our perspective shrinking, suffering is the exact time when we must listen most closely, when we must lean over to hear the whisper of God.”

“True, God shouts to us in our pain, but His answers, as with Elijah, often come to us in whispered still small voices amid the thunders of the world.”

“God’s eternal, heavenly story doesn’t obliterate my earthly, painful story; it gives it meaning.”

“God heals our wounds as we envision a future even while all seems lost in the present.”

“Grace math teaches us that present suffering plus God’s character equals future glory. The equation we use is the Divine perspective.”

“We erect a platform to respond to suffering as we stand on a Divine faith perspective on life.”

 “How we view life makes all the difference in how we respond to life’s losses. ‘The Holy Spirit knows that a thing only has such value and meaning to a man as he assigns it in his thoughts’ (Martin Luther).”

“The spiritual consolation offered by Scripture is a new vision, the power of faith to see suffering and death from the viewpoint of our crucified and risen Lord.”

“As you respond to your loss, are you struggling to believe that God has a good heart? Look to the Cross. The Cross forever settles all questions about God’s heart for us.”

“The Christ of the Cross is the only One who makes sense of life when suffering bombards us.”

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).

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Which quote most impacts you? What other quote brings you comfort during times of suffering?

Quotes of Note about God’s Healing, Part 8

Note: The following Quotes of Note are excerpted with permission from Chapter 7 of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses.

“In Christ, we move from victims to victors.”

“God is a ‘time God.’ He does not come before time. He does not come after time. He comes at just the right time.”

“In all our suffering, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us so. We are Nike Christians—spiritual Olympic champions in Christ!”

“Christ empowers us to long ardently for heaven and to live victoriously on earth.”

“In suffering, we long fervently for heaven and live passionately for God and others while still on earth.”

“Paul neither deadens his longing for heaven nor minimizes his calling on earth (Phil. 1:23-25).”

“I ache for Paradise, but I’m pulling weeds until the day I die!”

“Designed for Paradise, we live in a desert. No wonder we are thirsty. No wonder we groan for heaven.”

“When we groan to God, we declare how deeply out of the nest we are, how far from home we’ve wandered, and how much we long for heaven.”

When we groan to God, we admit to ourselves and express to God the pain of our unmet desires, the depth of our fervent longing for heaven’s joy, and our total commitment to remain pregnant with hope—labor for a lifetime.

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Which quote most impacts you? What other quote brings you comfort during times of suffering?