100 Days of Discipline / I Want To Write More

When I was in middle school and full of teenage angst, I used to write a lot.  By write, I mean like poetry, stories, and journaling.  Basically, in my free time, that's what I'd do.  Lately, I've been receiving more and more of a passion to do more of that (thus, for those who know me very well, I'm going to try to accomplish NaNoWriMo starting in a couple days) and to start to express myself more freely through writing poetry and lyrics.  I don't know, I've always enjoyed it and it's something that I want to expound upon and become more affluent in doing.

Let me also bring you up to date on my spiritual life as well.  Lately, I've really been struggling with reading my Bible.  By struggling I mean, "Oh, I haven't really had a personal quiet time with God in about 3 weeks."  I am beginning, well, not beginning but seeing, the lack of a personal time with God effect the rest of my life as well as my picture of the future isn't quite as clear, it's harder to fight temptation, I'm a lot more cynical and less loving, etc.  I have an app on my iPhone that lets me start Bible reading plans, and also reminds me on a daily basis about getting in The Word.  It's a tool that I've been wanting to effectively use for a while, but just never built up the self-ambition to do so. 

With all that being said, today's a new day.  I found a Bible reading plan this morning (on aforementioned app) called 100 Days of Discipline.  All it is, is going through Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts reading one chapter a day, every day, for 100 days to build up the spiritual discipline of reading the Bible.  Once you read the chapter, you journal about it.  The journal entry can be as little as, "Hey, this verse really stood out to me," or as long as, "Woah, okay, so this is what God said to me this morning..."

And that's where blogging comes in.  In the marriage of the two ideas (creative writing, or writing in general, and spiritual discipline) I have decided to make my blog here my journal.  For the next 100 days, I will be posting every day my journal.  Not only is that for me to continue to build up my writing skills, but also to make my journal public for two reasons:  1. Maybe something I say hits somebody else and speaks to them, and 2. Keep me accountable.  If there is someone out there in the wide world of cyberspace who just happens to be reading this, keep me accountable.  If you stop by one day and see that I haven't blogged yet, send me a little reminder to do it.  It's going to be a struggle, going to be hard, but it's something that I want to do. 

So yeah, without further ado, here's the journal entry for today.

Verse:  Matthew 1:25, "But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son.  And he gave him the name Jesus."
This verse in context is talking about Joseph and Mary.  Once Joseph got the "okay" from God to continue his relationship with Mary, he took Mary home to be his wife.  But then this verse comes along and basically says, "They didn't have sex until Jesus was born."  What a man.  Seriously.  If you can be married  but not have sex, you are such a man in my opinion.  I don't know, that verse just shows a lot of integrity in Joseph and gives me a newfound respect for him because he had enough strength to say, "Hey, what I want isn't important."  Humility.

--DyingAnOriginal