Isaiah 30:15 reads:

In returning and rest, you will be saved.

        In quietness and trust you will find strength.

Digging into scripture by looking at the original Hebrew can bring deeper understanding to a verse. The English language causes us to miss much of what the writer actually intended. Looking up words from scripture in their original language can be transformational and cause the Bible to come alive in a whole new way!

In December of 2022, the Lord led me to this verse and after I looked into the Hebrew word meanings, I read it this way:

In withdrawing and resting you will be delivered. In being undisturbed and in trusting by abiding with God, you will find strength.

It rang in my ears for a few days—I couldn’t get away from the impact the additional insight had on my heart.  It led me to pulling out my journal I had kept that year. I wanted to return, so I withdrew; I came away from the noise of life, quieted my spirit, and returned to all the things God said and did throughout the year. I looked through the pages for the ways that He led me and the things He brought me through. As I read, I started tabbing my journal where I had recorded all the ways God spoke or showed up, where He answered prayers, where I was emotionally and spiritually, and where I had grown. I can be quite forgetful, but when I went back and read all the ways that God had been faithful and present, it was really encouraging.

I read to remember.  Remembering gave me a reset. It reminded my heart of God’s faithfulness through all of life’s highs and lows. It blessed me tremendously!

•••  •••  •••

Remembering  is a powerful exercise.

Before you look ahead to the future, go back and make a log of all the ways God was present in the past. How has He been a part of your story? He promises that He was there and that He is never going to leave. No matter how hard or how good it was—He was there. 

Let us set our hearts before the Lord with a spirit of thankfulness and gratitude for being with us in the past before we look to the future.

THAT is how we are going to be delivered. In returning and rest, I will be delivered—I will be saved. It’s in the quietness and the trust that I will find strength for the coming season. I have to withdraw and really look back at all the ways he has been present if I want to successfully move forward.

If you don’t already journal, maybe this can be an encouragement for you to start. It doesn’t have to look any certain way, and it doesn’t have to be every single day. It can be stream-of-consciousness writing, bulleted lists, sketches or doodles… words from the Lord, personal prayer, people you are praying for… No matter what it looks like, invite the Lord into it because God is in every situation and every story. Keeping a record of these things—of life—can be life-changing. Returning to how the Lord was with us in the past is akin to visiting an altar as they did in the Old Testament. We return to our “journal-altars” to remember what the Lord has done. We remember so we can be delivered. 

– Christi