Thursday, February 9, 2012
Day 8
Let me get straight
to the point: if you don't have a prayer journal you need to get one! You need to journal like a journalist. Why?
You need to document your prayers so that you can give God the glory
when He answers them. Think of your journal as a prayer genealogy.
I know that journaling isn't
technically a spiritual discipline, but I think it could be and should be. Habakkuk 2:2 says, "Write down the
revelation." When you get an
impression from the Lord, you need to put it on paper. When God gives you revelation on some
situation or some Scripture, you need to jot it down. When the Holy Spirit puts
a prayer in your heart, you need to journal it.
I recently got one of the most
well-documented testimonies I've ever read.
No surprise that it was from a journalist. She is a part of the press corp that covers
the Whitehouse. In fact, she is part of the travel pool that accompanies the
President on Air Force One. Her first
trip was April 29, 2011, the morning President Obama gave the go on the Osama
Bin Laden mission. This was her dream job.
She wanted to work for a major network and cover politics. "Of course, God did one better and said,
not only that but you’ll work at the network with the biggest audience, so your
work will have a reach farther than you can imagine. And then He said, I’ll do even better than
that, you’ll cover the most famous address in the country, 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue.”
Let me retrace the
circle and let her share her prayer genealogy.
She went back through all of her old journals and shared her story with
me. The seeds of the vision trace back
to 2001 as a college senior when she penned this ten year-old prayer: “Dare I ask for my dreams. Dare I see the
imagination of the soul. Dare I risk.
What if I ask and receive. So
then, I risk. I ask of my King, may I
impact others with news and knowledge…"
Out of college she
got a job in Wisconsin. She thought
about grad school, considered pursing library science, and thought about moving
to Chicago or New York. It was during
this time of wandering that she created a prayer map. It was one sheet of paper with verses at the
top and prayer requests written below.
She circled Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give
you the desires of your heart.” That was
a a critical promise and a critical prayer at a critical time. On November 4, 2003 she wrote out this
prayer: “Where do you want me to go? Where can I represent you? Where is your will? Tug at my heart. I am willing and waiting.”
Fast forward to
April 15, 2004. She was sitting on a bench overlooking Lake Michigan, depressed
by how much money she wasn't making, when the dream of working for a major
network was birthed in her spirit. She knew she needed to move to Washington,
DC and that's exactly what she did. She
slept on a friend’s floor for months.
She sent out hundreds of resumes and made hundreds of cold calls. She worked for a temp agency filing
papers. Then she got her first break
working for a small bureau, but it was the graveyard shift. Her first night as a full-time journalist in
her new job was the day Hurricane Katrina hit.
“As awful as those overnights were, turns out those overnights were the
best thing to hone my journalistic skills.
This was also the height of the Iraq War so everything was happening
overnight. I got to see how the early
morning shift can set the agenda for the entire news cycle.”
About a year into
the overnight shift, she wanted to get a day job so she could get a life! It was killing her body, her social life, her
spirit. She applied for a network job and
she got an interview. She thought the
dream job was finally at her fingertips, but the door closed. It was
devastating. And that’s when many of us give up on the dream, but she kept
circling. “Nothing like not getting
something sure has a way of getting you back on your knees praying harder.” She kept working her job for another
year. Then she got another interview
with the same network! This time she got
the job!
Long story short, it took a decade
of working like it depended on her and praying like it depended on God for her
dream to come true! But because she
journaled her prayers, she was able to document her faith, document the
faithfulness of God.
One last reflection on journaling
from a journalist.
“It’s funny, as I
was looking through my old journals this week in preparation to write this—I
also found a journal entry from 2000, when I was leaving my internship in DC
that summer in college. I did not AT ALL
remember this—but I found this entry about the internship that read, 'I fasted
to get here and I fasted to end here.' Apparently,
when deciding if I should take the internship in DC, I fasted beforehand and
then fasted when it ended.”
That is precisely
why you need to journal--so you don't forget what God wants you to
remember! So you can give him praise
when you look back on your journal prayers!
So you can trace your prayer genealogy!
I love this ending.
“I’m the
granddaughter of farmers. One of my
grandmother’s only got an 8th grade education because she had to leave school
to help out on the farm. She was told,
“all you’ve ever do is milk cows.” Now
her granddaughter works at the Whitehouse.
She can be in the Oval Office and say, “Excuse me, Mr. President?”
What a country. What
a God
