From starting a prayer journal with no success about eight years ago, and after six of those years trying again…. I now have two journals for prayer, and they serve different purposes. It’s time to get more use from your journal (so that you keep praying and don’t get distracted or drawn away).
If you are curious about the “journal” (it’s more of a small binder) that changed my prayer life and made me start a new prayer journal after the journal-free years mentioned above, Prayer Journaling Transformation not only explains why I changed my mind, but HOW it changed my prayer life and what the small prayer binder looks like in practice/how it functions.
Why I Started a Second Prayer Journal
After reading Prayer Journaling Transformation (linked above and again one more time HERE), this will make more sense… so go on. Read that article. It will open in a new tab. I’ll be here.
Are you back? Good.
I started a second prayer journal because the first journal was simply a way of remembering the prayers God had answered (and how he’d answered them) – with less of a focus on day to day activities and less focused prayers.
This second journal has a reminder for me on the cover every time I open it. “My Hope is in You”, written beside an image of a cross. This is the journal for my daily (or random) prayers, the ones that are less specific and have less of an answer that would be known to me.
How This Journal Gets More Mileage
It’s easy to say I’m going to start a prayer journal, write for a few days, and then forget the whole project altogether. And that’s the trend I was noticing. So in order to make sure I kept picking up my journal, kept writing, and kept building that Christ-focused relationship, I found different ways to use my prayer journal (that aren’t just vague/random prayers).
My counselor made an excellent suggestion recently, and after some slight modification I’ve included it in my prayer journaling.
She suggested that I write down what I’m angry/irate/upset about, and then let it sit. After awhile (a day or so) read it again. If it’s still a problem, address it. If it’s not a problem anymore, cross it out and let it go.
Taking that suggestion to heart, I started praying (in my second prayer journal) about these issues. Then as suggested, I let them “marinate”. When it’s been long enough I’m no longer angry, I follow through with either addressing the problem or I literally cross out just those words (the problem I was angry about) in my journal.
It’s still legible, but therapeutic as well. I can still go back and read it, if needed/wanted, but it has a sense of completion.
If it really needed to go a step further, I could write the problem that needed solving as a prayer in my first journal/binder set up, and see how God moves by later writing down the answer He gave.
How This Increased My Journal Use
As Christians we are supposed to “never hang up the phone” so to speak… we always have a line to our Savior.
But do we use it?
I found it very easy to only write in specific circumstances, instead of keeping the line “open” and staying in communication The One who created us. Getting busy throughout the day, not making time to sit in the quiet… it’s easy for us to get distracted.
Using my journal to help me in a therapeutic way while still keeping that line “open” (He knows everything whether we tell Him or not, but would you want a friend who didn’t speak to you?) allows me more moments to pray, become more Christ-like, and show more fruits of the Spirit in the process.
Do you use a journal for prayer? Is it more like my binder, my second journal, or something else entirely? Let me know in the comments below!
Christian, wife, “hybrid” mama, I run the site All Behind A Smile to help others like me.
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