Journaling over the years has been widely encouraged and prayer journaling for believers can never be overemphasized. If you’ve ever wondered why journaling is so important or what the benefits of journaling are, then you are in the right place.
A journal is defined as a daily record of news and events of a personal nature; a diary. A prayer journal is a record of your conversations with God in writing which includes your worries, your prayer requests, your testimonies, and the progress of your spiritual life as well as communicating all your thoughts to God in writing.
There are two major benefits of prayer journaling;
- Journaling helps you track your progress. Imagine what it would be like reading through your prayer journal five years down the line and seeing how far you’ve grown, some of your worries would have become testimonies and some testimonies would equally have become better. Writing out your thoughts is one of the best ways to track your spiritual growth and reflect.
- It is a form of constant communication with God. Writing in a journal and sharing your thoughts specifically to God is a form of communicating with God because our God is omnipresent, he is everywhere. If you constantly journal daily, you would have successfully kept constant communication with God all day long.
How to effectively prayer journal
- Get a cute journal and pen: We are here to spice up journaling in the best possible way. I would recommend getting a physical journal and not an e-copy to enable you to express your thoughts better. Invest in beautiful journals and luckily for us, journals are being sold in pretty designs. Get a journal that best reflects your mood.
- Set out a specific time for journaling: Put a structure to your journaling time, this can either be done in the morning after your morning prayers or at night before you go to bed. Pick a time you best deem suitable to journal and be consistent with it. Over time journaling would become a habit for you.
- Put a date on each journal page: Before you input your thoughts entry for a day, but a date at the top of your journal. It is best to start by putting a date because it is amazing when reading through your journal years after to know what date such an incident had happened. Keeping a date also helps you track your testimonies as well, how beautiful this is.
- Start with a cute name to God: This is different for everyone, the aim of this prayer journal is to ensure that it feels like you are communicating with God. Just the way you would start your dairy with ‘Dear Diary’, with your journal you can start with something cute to God. For example, I always start each journal entry with ‘Dear Abba’, how beautiful it is to know I have my own Abba. I know people that call God Papa, it is left to you to choose something, God loves when you have a special name for him too.
- Do not restrict your thoughts when writing: You are not trying to keep your journal formal, no. Write out every single thing on your mind and do not worry about how long what you write would be. Just the way you would communicate to God if you could see him physically or when you pray, this is how you should write. There should be no limits to whatever you write, please dear, write without restrain, this is the purpose of having a prayer journal. Prayer means talking to God, I know typically, prayers always come as a request to God, however, I want to let you know that when you even share your thoughts with God, this is simply you praying to your daddy.
- Spice things up with music: If you are someone that easily gets bored while writing, you can always spice up journaling time by adding some jazz music or calm piano sounds which you can get either on Youtube or Apple music. All you need to do here is add music to your background and you would end up having all the fun in the world.
- Pray: The aim of this prayer journal is to enhance your communication with God. After you’ve written out your thoughts or even prayers in your journal, open your mouth and pray over them. Writing is not always sufficient, also learn to pray afterwards because this is a great way of enjoying intimacy with the father.
With your prayer journal, write words you’ve heard God say to you, write what you are grateful for, write your goals and visions, what you are worried about, scriptures you are holding unto and put basically all your thoughts into writing.
Do not forget to journal today, it is a really fun thing to do.
