How did you do with your beginning journey into writing the Word?
Remember, no pressure here at all. Write as little or as much as you are led by the Spirit of God to write.
Today, I want to briefly introduce you to a little more of what I sometimes do when writing the Word.
As you may notice in my snapshots of portions of chapters 1 and 2 of Joshua, I often underline (and sometimes even circle) words and/or phrases that stand out to me as I am writing and reading. Sometime, as in chapter 1 above, I even write in ALL CAPS. Those words/phrases are very important to me.
Occasionally I even put a star or a question mark next to something to indicate importance or something I would like to follow up on and look into further.
Also, as you see in several verses above such as chapter 2 verses 21 & 24, when the portion I am writing is part of a dialogue, I write in the margin (prior to the actual verse) who the dialogue was between. Again, you don't have to do it this way, but I found it to be a helpful new thing for me to try as I was writing through Joshua.
And finally, as you see at the bottom of the chapter 2 page, you can see that sometimes (especially as I wrote my way through Joshua) I write one concise statement that to me sums up what jumped out at me most throughout that portion of Scripture I wrote during that specific session. Sometimes I write more than one statement. Sometimes I even let the Scripture simmer a bit in my heart and pray about it quite a bit then come back a day or two later and write the take-away at that point.
I have enjoyed doing that last piece lately, as it has brought to my attention many things I never before would have noticed or pieced together through some fairly well known scriptures.
So, with that little bit of extra guidance for you, I would also like to briefly share with you what I learned and gleaned through Joshua 1 & 2.
BE STRONG AND COURAGEOUS! It is repeated frequently (another thing I underline or circle is repeated words/phrases). Repetition is not by accident in the Word of God. PAY ATTENTION to what is repeated! Thankfully Joshua did pay attention to these words. Not sure if you realize this, but the fact that this is repeated to Joshua is an indication that he was afraid and felt weak often and therefore needed these reminders often. So do I. So do you.
See? God's great men and women He shows us in His Word were people just like us. They were fearful, felt weak, and needed encouragement just like us. They needed God to BE their strength and courage and hope...just like we do. They were His people for that day and our models for today. We are His people for this day and His models for those to come.
BE STRONG AND COURAGEOUS!
Also, in chapter 2, my main takeaway was, "The LORD has surely given us the WHOLE promised land."
Does something stand out to you that before you might have breezed past? Yep. WHOLE. I have read over that word countless times before, I am sure. But not this time. It really stood out to me that the LORD did not just give them some of the promised land but the WHOLE promised land.
When God makes a promise, He fulfills it IN FULL! You can take that to the bank!
So, now that we have gone a little farther with this, I will let you take these new lessons and try them out a bit with the next section of your writing.
Now, up to this point, I have just written the Word and marked it very minimally. I have not jumped out to any commentaries or dictionaries or any other cross-referenced Scriptures yet. I'll show you some of that later, but don't make it more difficult for yourself now than you are ready for. If those things are helpful to you at this point, then by all means, please use any or all of the additional resources I mentioned. BUT, don't feel pressured to make this more complicated than its most simple form if you are not yet ready for that.
As I close this post, I invite you to share anything you have learned as you #writetheword. You can share it in a comment here or as a post in the FB group. By the way, that group can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/498752836909467/ and it is called #WriteTheWord with Haelie. :)
Until next time, BE STRONG AND COURAGEOUS!
No comments:
Post a Comment