I was once…

given an assignment that sounded simple enough: sit quietly before the Lord for thirty minutes and wait for Him to speak to me.

Thirty minutes? Surely I could do that.

Well… the first five minutes felt like an entire afternoon. By the time I reached ten minutes, I had completely given up!

My mind was everywhere. I thought about the grocery list, the laundry, things I needed to do, things I had forgotten to do, things I might need to do someday, and about a dozen other thoughts that seemed terribly important at the time. My brain apparently had its own agenda—and sitting quietly was not on it!

I felt like a complete failure.

Why couldn’t I simply sit still for ten minutes and focus on the Lord? Why did my thoughts insist on running in every direction except toward Him? I was supposed to be having this beautiful, peaceful time with God, but instead, I was having a full-blown mental to-do-list marathon.

And then came the really uncomfortable part…

I had to go back to the class and report how my time with the Lord had gone.

Let’s just say, I wasn’t exactly eager to stand up and announce, “Well, I lasted ten minutes—and spent most of those ten minutes thinking about everything but God!”

But perhaps that miserable little exercise taught me something I desperately needed to learn: being still is a practice. It doesn’t always come naturally, and it certainly doesn’t mean our minds will suddenly become perfectly quiet.

Sometimes drawing near to God begins with simply showing up—even when our thoughts are noisy, our attention wanders, and we feel like we’re doing it all wrong.

Maybe the goal isn’t to empty our minds completely, but to keep gently bringing our wandering hearts and thoughts back to Him.

I listened as everyone in the class shared about their experience. One by one, they talked about these beautiful, meaningful times they had spent with the Lord. Their stories sounded peaceful, profound, and wonderfully spiritual.

And then there was me.

I sat there completely dejected—and, if I’m being honest, more than a little embarrassed. How was I supposed to stand up and tell everyone that my thirty minutes with the Lord had been an absolute disaster?

I took a deep breath, swallowed my pride, and finally began to speak.

“I found this exercise to be a complete failure. My time with the Lord was one of the worst times I’ve ever had. I feel like a complete failure. It was miserable, and honestly, I feel like I don’t have a relationship with God at all!”

There it was.

I had said it out loud.

I braced myself for the awkward silence, the sympathetic looks, or maybe even the thought that everyone else must have figured out something about God that I had somehow completely missed.

What I didn’t realize in that moment was that God was about to use my miserable experience to teach me something I could never have learned from someone else’s success.

One of the instructors took one look at me and said something that completely caught me off guard.

“You are so gifted and talented in so many areas,” she said. “I wonder if God might want to spend time with you in a completely different way.”

A completely different way?

I had never thought about it that way. I had been so focused on trying to do what everyone else seemed to be doing that I hadn’t considered the possibility that God might be inviting me to meet with Him in a way that was uniquely mine.

She encouraged me to try the exercise again. But this time, instead of simply sitting with my hands folded, trying desperately to quiet my racing mind, she asked me to bring my sketchbook.

“Sit quietly before the Lord,” she said, “and visually record your time with Him in whatever way feels natural to you.”

Now THAT sounded a little more like something I could do!

I didn’t have to force myself to sit perfectly still. I didn’t have to worry about whether I was praying the “right” way or whether my mind was wandering. I could simply sit with my sketchbook, my pencil, my paints—and invite God into the creative process.

This was a complete game changer!

For the first time, spending quiet time with the Lord didn’t feel like an assignment I was destined to fail. It felt natural. It felt inviting. It felt like me.

I picked up my sketchbook, began to draw, and simply stayed there with Him. As I sketched, my mind began to settle. The noise quieted. I wasn’t struggling to not think—I was simply allowing my thoughts, my creativity, and my heart to turn toward God.

And somewhere along the way, I realized something that would change the way I approached my time with Him forever:

God had already given me a language for worship, reflection, and connection with Him. It just happened to be visual.

I didn’t need to become someone else to spend time with God. I didn’t need to pray like someone else, journal like someone else, or sit quietly exactly like everyone else.

I simply needed to meet Him as the person He created me to be.

That little sketchbook became an unexpected doorway into a deeper relationship with the Lord—and what had started as my “miserable failure” became one of the most meaningful lessons I had ever learned.

Ever since that class, I have carried a sketchbook with me to church and Bible study. As I listen to whoever is speaking, I visually record what I’m hearing, what catches my attention, and how I sense God speaking to my heart—in a way that feels natural to me.

And you know what? I’ve discovered I’m not the only one!

Over the years, I’ve shared this experience with so many artists, and I’ve watched them discover their own unique ways of connecting with God through creativity. Some sketch, some doodle, some paint, some write, and some combine it all. There is no “right” way. The beauty is discovering what helps you slow down, listen, and engage with what God is saying.

That experience eventually inspired me to create my own Sermon Notes Journal.

I’ve titled it The Cross Before Me, The World Behind Me—a simple reminder to keep my eyes focused on the One who is truly important and who is ultimately in charge of my world.

Inside you’ll find 75 pages designed to help you capture your time with the Lord. There are prompts to record who is speaking, Scripture verses, key points, what you want to remember, how you can apply what you’ve heard, prayer prompts, and action steps to follow up on. And, of course, there is a dedicated space for the thing that started it all for me:

a page to sketch.

Now I have an organized place to record whatever God may be stirring in my heart—whether I’m sitting in church, attending Bible study, listening to a podcast, or simply spending quiet time with Him.

I’ve decided to make The Cross Before Me, The World Behind Me available in my shop for anyone who would like to try connecting with God in a more creative and personal way.

So grab your journal, pick up your favorite pen, pencil, or paintbrush, and give yourself permission to listen differently.

Have fun. Let God do the talking… and you do the sketching!