This is part one in our series called “Breaking Down Your Quiet Time.” This week we are breaking down the daily sections in the Give Me Jesus Journal to help you better understand how to journal the Word and study Scripture. The new Give Me Jesus quiet time journal releases September 16th in the Well-Watered Women Co. We hope this series is edifying and encourages you to open the Word each day! (Note: You can use this daily breakdown in any journal if you are unable to purchase a Give Me Jesus Journal! Our mission is to equip you to study the Word, and we hope this makes that possible.)

An Excitement for the Word

As a 50-something grandmother who deeply loves the Lord and his Word, I’m still amazed that I lived the majority of my Christian life not reading my Bible. Sadly, I grew up with some misconceptions about Scripture. I thought it was probably irrelevant and boring since it was written so many years ago. If I’m honest, there was even a time when I felt that the Bible was essentially nothing more than a good book of stories to tell children in Sunday School.

I’m so grateful that God graciously opened my eyes to the truth. I’m blessed to now know the beauty, the power, and the absolute necessity of God’s Word. It is no exaggeration to say that meeting God daily on the pages of his Word has radically changed my life. He is much more real to me, and my relationship with him is so much more personal.

My enthusiasm was off the charts when I first established the habit of opening up Scripture and getting to know more about God and his will for my life! I couldn’t get enough of Bible study. Suddenly, I was reading it every day and sharing with others all the amazing things God was teaching me through it. But then something strange happened: I lost my joy.

A Helpful Understanding

One day I realized reading my Bible no longer excited me. I didn’t feel any different for having read it. This troubled me, of course, and I distinctly remember asking God, “Why do I feel this way? I’m reading your Word daily but I don’t feel the way I did in the beginning. Why is that?” I was really confused.

Just as I knew he would, God answered—but in a very unique way. Not long after I prayed, I pictured a scenario, which I believe was prompted by the Holy Spirit to teach me. In this scenario, I was with my husband at a romantic restaurant. My husband was smiling, trying to make eye contact with me, declaring his love for me, but I didn’t notice. I was preoccupied.

Instead, I was busy making a lot of notes on paper about how he looked, how he acted. I was writing down what I knew to be true about him. At one point, I even turned away from him so I could share with others about how great my husband was. But the whole time I was doing those things, I was missing our time together and not hearing the loving words he was seeking to communicate to me. I wasn’t enjoying our time together at all.

Fact-Finding or Fellowship?

Through this imagined scenario, it’s clear God was showing me that I had been treating my morning quiet time more like a fact-finding mission than fellowship with my Savior. Suddenly I realized I had stopped worshiping. I stopped adoring and was no longer seeking to know my Heavenly Father more personally. Instead, I was simply collecting information about him from what I was reading. That was what happened to my joy.

I realized then, that before I open my Bible, I really must first pause and prepare my heart to worship him as I meditate on his Word. Having learned that, it makes perfect sense to me that the very first section of the Give Me Jesus Journal daily page is specifically for writing down “Today’s Gratitude.”