“Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”
─Luke 5:4
When she was six, my daughter Sheridan would freeze before jumping into deep water. “Don’t be afraid, Sheridan,” her swimming teacher Sarah would encourage. “It’s just like being in shallow water. The water will hold you up!”
When you’re a new swimmer, jumping into deep water can be absolutely terrifying. You just know you will either drown or, at best, flail around in water over your head, gulping, gasping, and grabbing for life. But if you relax, breathe deeply, and stop fighting, you’ll float and discover that the water is your ally; it will indeed hold you up.
If you don’t think you write well, jumping into your prayer journal can feel just as intimidating as diving into deep water does for a beginning swimmer. Taking the plunge can be risky. You may fear you will drown in a whirlpool of unexplored emotions. You may dread thrashing about in an undertow of incoherent thoughts, misspelled words, grammatical errors, or simplistic vocabulary. You may think it’s futile to splash around nervously on the page, getting nowhere fast.
Don’t be afraid. Jump in now and write to God about wherever you are in life. Get your pen wet, and let your thoughts flow freely from your head to your heart to your hand and onto the page. Remember that God is a writer and that you, made in His image, are a writer too! Be encouraged! Because God has created language, He can give you words with which to pray about your feelings, fears, sins, mistakes, questions, joys, praises, passions—words that will draw you close to Him, words that He will not correct like a term paper but will cherish for their heartfelt sincerity. He loves you and will treasure whatever you write.
So take the plunge. Dive in. It’s safe. You won’t drown. Words, like water, will hold you up. You won’t need to grope for them because the current of God’s Spirit will gently move you along to wherever He wants you to go—whether to write a little or whether to write a lot.
Remember that “the deep waters of the Holy Spirit are always accessible, because they are always proceeding.” The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel saw a vision of such “proceeding” water trickling from under the temple door. In Ezekiel 47, a man measured the water, which was at first ankle-deep. It rose to knee-deep and then to waist-deep. Before it reached the Dead Sea, it was a full-flowing river. Amazingly, when the river emptied into the sea, the saltwater became fresh. The man said, “When [the river] reaches the sea, its waters are healed…. There will be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters go there; for they will be healed, and everything will live wherever the river goes” (vv. 8–9, NKJV). This miraculous river changed a sea of death into a sea of life.
Similarly, when God guides our prayer writing—and He does—we float on streams of living water that bring healing to our soul. We are always moving into life because when God moves us into the deep waters of prayer, we will always catch “fish.” As we take the plunge and flow along with the words, we’ll catch marvelous new insights with our pens, insights that feed our souls and strengthen our hearts.
What God enables to flow will be unique for each person and circumstance. For me, writing my prayers is sometimes like swirling in a raging emotional river. But more often, it is like floating on a mellow, meandering thought-stream. God leads me gently, one petition, one praise, one confession at a time. Yet each of us must start somewhere. The easiest thing to do is to abandon fear, take the risk, jump straight into your journal, and simply let your thoughts flow. The water is fine. You can trust God; He won’t let you drown.
Elisabeth Elliot tells the story of her little brother, Dave, who was terrified to jump into the ocean, though their father was prepared to catch him. “Dave was sure it would mean certain disaster, and he could not trust his father.” Finally, on the last day of vacation, he got up nerve and took the plunge straight into his dad’s waiting arms. He had so much fun that he burst into tears and howled, “Why didn’t you make me go in?”
No one can make you jump into your prayer journal—into the deep waters of your soul. But when you do, rest assured that God will catch you. I suspect before long you will joyfully exclaim, “Lord, what took me so long?”
Your Invitation . . . Take that special notebook and pen you have purchased, head for that “room of your own,” and take the plunge into the water of words. Write to God about anything on your heart, whether a little or whether a lot. For what are you waiting? The water is fine! Next time, I’ll help you with some specific writing tips and timed exercises just in case you feel a bit stalled. Until then, do your best and . . . write on!
“Take the Plunge” reprinted from Love Letters to God: Deeper Intimacy through Written Prayer © by Lynn D. Morrissey. Multnomah Publishers.
© Lynn D. Morrissey. Permission to reprint any or all of this material is required
