SPIRITUAL JOURNALING: Why Journal

WHY JOURNAL. Your white page is a space to explore a concept and flesh out a thought. It’s a place to weigh decisions and evaluate everything beside God’s Word. There, you can store nuggets of truth that speak to your soul and revelations that stand like milestones in your life. It’s a safe haven to be real and raw and deep. It is a record of your faith journey and a reminder of answered prayers. It is a mechanism for staying your mind on a prayer when you might otherwise be distracted, a lens to look inward, a tool for practicing solitude, a gauge for how you are doing spiritually, a place to reason through possibilities and a spot to create beauty. The habit reels God into crannies of your life where you previously stood alone. Through it, God chips away at assumptions and entitlements, lifts off burdens, uncovers lies, dismantles idols, probes motives and gradually transforms you into a more discerning person. Call it a system, an instrument, a channel or a method. Call it a ground for encountering God and a means for developing Christlikeness. Call yourself a journaler.

MY JOURNALS: I began my first journal at age seventeen as a strategy to break my yucky gossiping habit (I decided to only write things I would say to God, then to only say things to others that I would write in hopes that I would eventually only think things I would say). It worked- at thirty-three I am still slow to gossip.

More than that, journaling surprised me by becoming my most treasured and formative habit. I truly cannot imagine life without it. Most mornings, you can find me curled up by the window in the early light with my mug and stash of colored ink reading scripture slow. When I write out verses, prayers, and my innermost thoughts on my waiting pages, God teaches me. I write as I learn and learn as I write. One verse reminds me of another and I flip back and forth through my Bible connecting them together in a growing mental web which I track in my journals. The Lord corrects me, comforts me, frees me, molds me and reveals both His character and my identity to me during these morning rituals. The habit gives a beautiful experience with a fruitful outcome.

Some days I journal out of joyful inspiration; some I push on with sheer self-discipline. Occasionally I don’t write for a week or few. During those times my journal fills with back-to-back sermon notes and to-do lists or worse, complaints. I notice that I feel less content, less controlled, more irritable, more anxious. I know how desperately I need God’s guidance every day and how much He desires to spend that precious time with me, so I press on full of gratitude.

GET STARTED. If you are like me and reading ideas on the internet excites you about things you promptly forget the next day, then just seize a stack of printer paper, fold it in half and staple the fold. You’ve got a makeshift journal! Do it right now. If you’d like some guidance, I have created a series of Little Guides to Journal by! Start here.