The Perfect Storm
Have you ever heard of a 5-Year Journal? I hadn’t until Craig Groeschel mentioned it in a book our small group read together called “Dangerous Prayers.” It’s a regular-sized journal, but it’s cut up into five sections on each day of the year. You only have around five lines to fill out for each day. And then the next year, you come back to the same page and have five more lines to fill out for that day until you’ve done it for five years in a row. Sounds totally doable, right?
One of the reasons I usually shy away from journaling is because I feel like if I’m going to, it needs to be a sizable entry, like a real three-paragraph description of the whole day’s events. Or, it needs to be every detail of everything the Holy Spirit said to me during the day. If it’s not one or both of these, it feels like I’m not really journaling.
Then, please tell me I’m not the only crazy person who has to have the perfect pen. I mean, it needs to be the precise amount of ink, the right color, and glides on the page. And don’t even get me started on staying with the same pen for the whole notebook! Oh, that’s a given. No mid-page, mid-book ink changes for me. If all of these factors do not ideally line up, why even start journaling!
This crazy, perfect storm is sometimes how I view prayer.
If I don’t have 45 minutes of uninterrupted quiet time sitting in my bedroom chair with my eyes closed and head bowed, then I’m not even going to try.
During this 21 days of prayer, the Holy Spirit has been so persistent in His attempt to get me to change my thinking on this. Every single time something comes up that is either concerning, confusing, or challenging, the Holy Spirit kindly says to my heart, “You know you could pray about this right now, right?” And every time I pause my thoughts long enough to ask Him to take it, whatever it is, I ask Him to help me see it from His perspective, know what to do, and have the strength to do it. Echoing what Paul prayed for the Ephesians, “I ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ… to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing Him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is He is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life He has for His followers, oh, the utter extravagance of His work in us who trust Him— endless energy, boundless strength!”
Prayer is not journaling. It is not a to-do task that memorializes our day for personal enjoyment later on. It is communication with our Father, both ways. And it doesn’t have to be formal with the perfect setting, words, or traditions. Even when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, His example prayer was five sentences! He told them in Matthew 6, “The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and He knows better than you what you need from Him. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply.”
I can no longer let a set of perfect circumstances keep me from praying, even if it’s only five sentences. The more five-sentence prayers I pray, the more my heart becomes intertwined with my Father’s and I can hear His heart back to me. I don’t expect Him to speak to me in thirty minute increments. Just a couple sentences would rock my world! How much more then should I regularly speak to Him.
As for the journaling, you’ll be happy to hear that the five lines I have on each day of my 5-Year Journal is just enough. And after a year like 2020, a pencil seemed the best choice for 2021.
