SOAP A Journaling Method to Assist Your quiet Time

Blog entry for Week three of my part in the Lose It campaign. Weighed in today and went backwards on the whole weight thing 1.8 lbs  but lost another .4% body fat. I don't know what I expected so I don't even know if I should be happy or not. I guess I will adjust and keep moving forward. As I review my other Lose It goals I am doing well on most of them. I missed my date with Chelsea this week. We plan to make it up on Monday. I have kept my other commitments and I'm seeing the beginnings of the Lord's movement and I like it.

Last week I talked about the second part of the My Daily Plate that we are using at our church. 

As you will remember, there are four sections to the plate. (spirit, mind, body, and soul). I talked about the body and what I am doing to help me reach my goals for Lose It for two weeks. last week I changed the topic of discussion and talked about the mind and over-coming setbacks. So today I would like to continue the subject of the mind and share with you a Method of Journaling that I have used for a while now. It really assists me in my quiet times by providing a method to record what God is saying to me. Personally I feel that if you expect God to speak to you (and why do a quiet time if you don't) then you should at least be prepared to right it down when He speaks. in other words journaling is a discipline that we all should develop. And this method makes it a whole lot easier.

It's called the SOAP method. No I don't mean the soap you wash with. It's an acronym. It stands for Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer. The basic concept is this: As you are reading your Bible Prayerfully look for a scripture that stands out to you. With practice you will begin to hear The Holy Spirit whisper to you about certain scriptures or passages. This is the scripture that you write down in your journal. Don't just write the reference down either. Write the whole scripture or passage down. Next, write what you observe about this scripture or what you feel God is saying to you about it. As you write this down spend some time trying to clearly communicate what it is that makes this scripture jump off the page. This will help you gain clarity about what God is saying. Third, write down how you are going to apply it to your life. And don't make those ambiguous generalities either, make it have some meat. i.e. Instead of saying, "I'm going to pray more." say something like, "I am committing to pray 15 minutes a day 5 days a week for the next 5 weeks". The more specific you are the more you are setting yourself up to actually do what God is asking you to do. (You know, "Be doers of the Word and not just hearers) Lastly, Write a short prayer that expresses what you are thinking and more importantly feeling in response to what God is saying.

There you have it. It's that simple. I planned on showing you one of my entries but this blog is getting too long, so I will add another blog early next week and show you one of my journal entries. I hope this helps. Remember to evaluate your Lose It goals this week and evaluate how you are doing. Now is the time to make the appropriate adjustments to help you accomplish your goals. You can do it! I know I believe in you and Jesus believes in you. 

Ramblings From Mark: 4 (Parable of the Sower)

This parable has been one of my favorites for almost twenty years. It is a very simple parable with a seemingly simple message but it contains some very profound truths in it. I intend to spend my next few blogs discussing some of the things that stand out to me in this parable and how they have impacted me and my search  for hope.

Jesus begins with, "Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed." This immediately brings to mind a question, and that question is, "What is the seed?" You don't really have to wonder for long what the seed is because Jesus tells us later as he explains this parable to his disciples. The seed is God's Word. When I read this it really rocks my world and is a big reason why I serve and love God today. God speaks! When I say that He speaks, I mean that He speaks to you personally. Jewish tradition says that God's Word is forever speaking from Mt. Sinai. The tradition exists because God spoke audibly form Mt Sinai in the days of Moses and they feel that His voice continues to this day. I like this thought for several reasons but that is not what I'm talking about here. God is speaking to you! He's speaking right now. He is always speaking to you. The coolest part about this is that He is saying something to you at the same time as he is saying something completely different to someone else. What God is saying to you  is a personal message for you. 

God speaks in different ways. The most common way that God speaks to us is through His Word. This is why the Bible is said to be living and active. By itself the Bible is just a book and if you read it and do not hear from God as you're reading, it will not be of much use to you. However, when you are reading the Bible and, all of a sudden, God highlights something you are reading it comes alive and has power to change your life. God's Word spoken to our heart really is like a seed that God plants there. If this work is nurtured and cared for, it will grow and eventually bear fruit in our lives. This fruit is life change. 


There is one final point that I would like to briefly share on this subject today and it  involves this concept of life change. We have all heard the question, "Can a leopard change it's spots?" It is common in our culture today to say that it is impossible to change who we are. This is at the same time both true and discouraging. Everyone has character flaws and bad habits that we wish we could change but the truth is that on our own we are powerless to change them. However, God's Word has the power to change us form the inside out. Jesus tells us that we don't need to understand how this works. We just need to plant His Word in our hearts, cultivate the "seed" of His word, and He will do the rest. This is the subject of the parable of the sower and the point that Jesus is making here. We will need to address the condition of the soil that you are planting in and I will do that in later posts (or you can read the parable for yourself Mark 4:1-20) but the point is that God's Word planted in the human heart has an incredible, unbelievable, miraculous, life changing power.