The more time I spend with the Lord, reading and praying on the Word, the funnier He is. I don’t mean funny as in sense of humor, like I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. This time, I mean funny as in mysterious and deliberate. Stay with me, and I will tell you what I mean.

For the last year and a half, I have been blessed to be a part of a Tuesday morning men’s group with five other Christian men. We have done Bible study, book studies, and numerous video series. Sometimes we just talk and share life – the blessings and the concerns. There is a lot of wisdom in the room that has aided me more than once with struggles I have had. Currently, we are doing a video study of Louie Giglio’s Built series. Each installment is a video of approximately 45 minutes filled with insights that have stayed with me. Today I would like to write about one such insight.

First, let me say that a 45-minute video that doesn’t have explosions, car chases or machine guns will have a difficult time holding my attention. Louie Giglio is a terrific communicator, but it is still difficult for me to focus on every single thing he says. This week was no different, but he did touch on three important words that have followed me the rest of the week (so far). Those words are Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom. I don’t normally take written notes during videos, but this week I wrote these three words down in the Notes app on my phone as something to think about.

On the surface, they could seem somewhat interchangeable. Yet beyond the initial glance, they are much different. To me, they come listed in an increasing order of intensity, or maybe depth is a better adjective. At the end of Louie Giglio’s video this week, he challenged us to read a chapter of Proverbs each day and write down the one verse from each chapter that speaks to us the most. This is where the Lord snuck up on me, in a mysterious and deliberate way.

So far, I have read the first five chapters of Proverbs, averaging a little over a chapter a day so that I would be finished with the 31 chapters by the end of May. Invariably, in each chapter thus far has been a scripture directly addressing knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Here is an example:

“For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.” – Proverbs 2:6 (Holman CSB)

Not being very smart, nor able to pick up on subtleties, my prayer is always for the Lord to make things He wants me to learn really obvious. The verse above qualifies for obvious, does it not? Yet this is not the only verse speaking plainly and simply enough for me to digest.

Here is what else the Lord has put in front of me this week, all from the Holman CSB:

Proverbs 4:17 – “Wisdom is supreme – so get wisdom. And whatever else you get, get understanding.”

Proverbs 5:1-2 – “My son, pay attention to my wisdom; listen closely to my understanding so that you may maintain discretion and your lips safeguard knowledge.”

Am I the only one that sees an obvious pattern here? These are certainly not the full collection of verses I’ve encountered in Proverbs dealing with this topic, but a large enough sample to insure that it isn’t accidental that He is putting these scriptures in front of me. By the way, if you’d like to view the entire list, I suggest dusting off that Bible on the coffee table or downloading a version of said book on your mobile device. :)

It is still early in the process, and I’m not quite sure where this is leading, this study in Proverbs. One thing I do know is that the Lord does indeed give wisdom, and spending time in the Word is a perfect way to obtain this gift. Thus far, I am gaining the knowledge of what He has to say. The more I read and pray about what I’ve read, the greater my understanding. My biggest hope is that the cumulative effect will be that I will gain in wisdom and become a wiser man, instead of being a wise guy.

Have an amazing day, y’all, and remember:

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” – Proverbs 1:7 (Holman CSB)

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“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”

-Benjamin Franklin

Writing is something I have–like most people–been doing since grade school. Only recently, however, I’ve begun to take it very seriously. I can’t believe how long this has taken me, but the other day I discovered a trick which will help anyone who ever writes.

Unless you are illiterate–which you mustn’t be if you’re reading this–then this post will apply to you. Let me begin with some basic physiology about the brain, and how it operates during writing, and then I will give an analogy to better illustrate the point.

The basic distinction I would like to start with is writing vs. editing. When writing we are using the creative aspect of our brains. This is the right hemisphere for those familiar with neurology.

During editing we utilize the logical part of our brain, which is the left hemisphere. These are two very different processes, and it is almost as if you are an entirely different person when performing these two tasks.

Perhaps you’re saying, “Big deal, how does this apply to me”? Well, the simple fact is that when writing and editing at the same time, we slow ourselves down drastically by switching back-and-forth between the two separate processes.

I have been guilty of this for my entire life. I am a very analytical person, and I enjoy living in the logical portion of my brain to interpret the world around me. It bothers me to no end when I see that little red line appear beneath a word, indicating that I have misspelled a word. I have to go back and edit it.

There are myriad distractions we can find on our computers besides spelling errors. Social media is one of the worst, which is why I have a free extension called “News feed eradicator for Facebook.” It gives an inspirational quote in place of your news feed, but is also fairly simple to turn off if you consciously choose to scroll through Facebook.

Often, I also get distracted by things on my computer; for example the time. This is why I have found a way to turn all of these things off, so that I can write in an uninterrupted stream of consciousness.

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

-Ernest Hemingway

I’ll conclude this post with the exact method I have developed for doing this, but let me first introduce the analogy I promised to drive this point home.

Imagine that your writing is like a car, and the gas pedal is the right hemisphere of the brain, while the brake is the left. Conveniently, this is how the pedals are situated in America, so this shouldn’t be too much of a stretch of the imagination.

Now, in order to get the car going–or to get words on the page–you need to get some speed. This occurs by utilizing the gas, or creative process. By stepping on the brake–or editing–you slow yourself down.

Switching between braking and accelerating in the car analogy should be fairly apparent how this slows you down. But this also occurs in your brain when you switch between the two hemispheres.

The only way to get any momentum going with either aspect is to stick with one. As you continue to get more in a stream of consciousness the processing becomes faster and faster, because you aren’t slowing it down.

Perhaps you’re wondering right now, “What if the brain doesn’t operate in a binary system (on or off) like he’s describing? I can have both at the same time; I don’t need to choose one”!

Okay, let’s consider that for a moment… What would happen if you were to apply the gas and the brake simultaneously in a car? Granted, you might be able to move forward if you gave it enough gas, but you would be holding yourself back with the brakes.

This is analogous to how the brain operates as well. By giving your attention to both hemispheres simultaneously you are essentially giving only a percentage of your brain power to each process, thus slowing yourself down.

Hopefully it has become clear now why when you are writing, you want to focus all your consciousness on writing. And when you are editing, you are only editing.

Now let me explain my process I have found for doing this. I began by researching programs that do this for you, and the best one I found was OmmWriter (which costs a minimal fee; they ask for a minimum of $4.11). The problem is, I have a Chromebook laptop, that doesn’t let me download programs like that.

What I did discover was that Google Docs can do everything I was looking for, and is absolutely free. To do this all you need is a Google account, and Google Chrome installed on your computer (this would probably work with Internet Explorer or Safari, but that’s not what I use).

Once you have opened up a new document, you need to do 3 simple things:

Turn the spell check off in Google Docs, by going to “View,” then click “Show spelling suggestions” so that it is no longer checked.

Hide the toolbar on Google Docs by once again going into “View,” and select “Full screen” (to get out of full screen, just press the escape button).

Finally, turn Google Chrome into full screen also, by simply pressing F11.

At this point, you will have a blank document with no distractions, so that you can write to your heart’s content. This has drastically improved my writing, both in quality and speed.

Then after you’re finished writing, you can go back and turn on the spell check and start editing. I normally like to take a break by walking around for a few minutes before I begin this, however, just to allow my brain some time to reset (a good time for a bathroom break!).

You can even give it another round of spell checking by copying and pasting the document into Microsoft Word or any other writing program you have, because that will pick up different grammatical errors.

I personally like to go through 3 rounds of spell check with my posts; first using Google Docs, then Microsoft Word. And lastly, when I’ve pasted the text into Prose, a free extension I have installed called “Grammarly” will go through and find even more errors.

By going through and reading the text at least 3 different times, in 3 different formats, I’ve found I pick up on a lot more errors than if the words always have the same style. Now, I’m not saying I’m perfect–in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you found a grammatical error in this post!–but this is the most effective way I’ve found to write.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot; one last thing: coffee!!! Writing without caffeine is like running on fumes with an empty gas tank.