Guest Post: “Keep Your Eyes on Jesus” by Hopie

Today, I’m thankful to share my blog with my 11 year old, Hope.

She came to me last night with something she’d written. She zapped it to me via google drive because kids are tech savvy like that now-a-days.

I’ve always kept a journal and my kids are “writers”, too.

I still cringe when I read some of the shallow things I recorded in high school journals, but it’s a reminder of where I’ve been and how the grace of God has changed me.

Donald Whitney, in his extremely helpful book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life says,

“The simple discipline of recording the events of the day and noting my reactions to them causes me to examine myself much more thoroughly than I would otherwise.”

and

“Edmund S. Morgan cites an entry from the journal of a godly young man during an illness from which he dies in the late 1600s. In it the young man evaluates whether he had shown sufficient love to others. Then says Morgan,

“The fact that many Puritans kept diaries of this kind helps to explain their pursuit of social virtue: diaries were the reckoning books in which they checked the assets and liabilities of their souls in faith. When they opened these books, they set down lapses of morality with appropriate expressions of repentance and balanced them against the evidences of faith.”

I’ve personally benefitted from reading the journals of long-ago Christians like Jonathan Edwards, David Brainerd, Charles Spurgeon, Matthew Henry and others.

Not only does journaling help you solidify what you are learning, it  reminds you of all of the former blessings of God. I love paging through to recount His watch care in our life, His provision and leading, and the many, many answers to prayer that we’ve had as a family. I’m glad that I wrote it down because sometimes we forget!

And I wholeheartedly agree with Augustine who said, “I count myself one of the number of those who write as they learn and learn as they write.”

So, without further ado, here’s a devotional thought from Hopie:

Have you ever been on a balance beam? If you have, then you know how hard it is to keep your balance.

Well, last year I went to gymnastics and the very first day I went on the balance beam. While I was on it I fell to the left then the teacher, whose name was Lindsey, told me to look at the end of the beam so I wouldn’t fall off. I did and I got across.

When I was driving home I was thinking about the balance beam and thought, “That balance beam is just like my Christian walk with God.”

Life is like a long balance beam. On both sides are sin, so you have to look away from the sin and look to Jesus at the end. He will help you cross the beam. If you don’t look at the end (Jesus) then you will fall into all the sins of the world.

That’s why you have to look to God our Savior.