Keeping a journal is popular these days, and that goes for Christians who keep a daily journal as well. Keeping a journal filled with your favorite prayers can be a benefit to any believer, and especially those just starting out on their journey toward spiritual faith. Learn how to start a prayer journal that will get you started on your path toward salvation.
How to Start a Prayer Journal for Beginners
‘Journaling’ is a popular and growing method of jotting down one’s feelings or experiences through the day. It can also be a diary of sorts of your religious beliefs, questions, and prayers as well. A prayer journal often contains a variety of favorite prayers or phrases or teachings found in the Bible, but can also be used to record your most private thoughts, concerns, and even blessings about your new relationship with God and His son Jesus Christ.
Starting a prayer journal isn’t hard, nor expensive. A daily journal, whether you call it a prayer journal, an event journal, or a good old-fashioned diary, is a perfect way to stay focused with your devotions at home, at work, or at church. People use their prayer journals for different reasons. Some like to write down their favorite prayers or lessons that they’ve learned from numerous books in the Bible or from a sermon. Others keep a daily journal to support their growth and spiritual faith and devotion.
A prayer journal doesn’t have to be a fancy book. It can be a regular wire-bound notebook. It can be a diary or simply a bound book with blank pages. There are no set rules about what to write in your journal. When learning how to start a prayer journal, put your most important questions or thoughts about God and His son, your faith, your weaknesses, or whatever else is uppermost in your mind down on paper. In this way you can delve deeper into Biblical scripture to learn how to deal with those issues.
For many, that’s the foundation of a prayer journal. When spoken or written with focus and diligence, your devotions will be conveyed to God. When you speak out loud or write down a prayer in your journal, you are already communicating with your Heavenly Father. God knows what’s in your heart before you even speak or write it down. That too is a form of communication.
So when learning how to start a prayer journal, keep it simple. Keep it true to your heart and your diligence in increasing your spiritual faith through prayer, to reading your Bible, and putting those lessons into practice in your everyday life.
What Do You Write in Your Prayer Journal?
You can use your prayer journal to not only write down your favorite verses, prayers, or lessons from the Bible, but also your own thoughts on gratitude, on blessings that the Lord has provided for you, and for the protection of yourself or others, for strengthening your faith - anything. Many people use their prayer journal to write down questions, not only about faith and devotion, but about life in general. Some write down their most private thoughts and requests of God or His son Jesus Christ.
Your journal can also be used to help focus your thoughts when you’re praying. Writing down your prayers or lessons about praying and devotion from your Bible in your prayer journal are also a good way to teach patience as well as perseverance in your growing faith.
You can write down your personal images, thoughts, and feelings in your journal as well. There is no right way or wrong way on how to start a prayer journal. It’s up to you. Do what feels right for you based on your needs and questions, or even uncertainties.
Some people organize their prayer journals into separate sections. For example, one section can be for prayers. One can be for reflections, and one can be for favorite Bible verses, and so forth.
Enhance Your Spiritual Faith With Your Prayer Journal
It’s beneficial to make an effort to write in your prayer journal every day, but it doesn’t have to be at a certain time. You can write in it more than once a day if you’d like. If you run out of room, get another one! Some people may find that it does help to set aside a certain time of day or evening to write in their journal. The important thing is to be diligent and earnest in your efforts.
Some people who keep a prayer journal keep their deepest, most innermost questions to God written down and then leave a space after it. Why? Because someday in the near or distant future, you may realize that you have received an answer to your prayer.
The same goes for your worries or fears. Writing down your concerns for each new day and then reflecting on those concerns at the end of the day or even days later, you may find that your prayers have been answered. These answers will further increase your faith and gratitude as well as knowledge that God does hear you.
Use Your Prayer Journal for Support
Journaling is a tried-and-true method of maintaining one’s focus, overcoming challenges and difficulties, and can be used in a wide variety of situations, not just spiritual or faith-based situations. Your prayer journal can chart your growth in faith; its lessons, its personal difficulties or challenges, and your successes and joys as you gain in spiritual faith and strength. The written word is filled with power, especially when it comes from the Holy Bible and the testaments, experiences, challenges, and joys found within its pages.
Your prayer journal can do the same for you. So it’s not so much as how to start a prayer journal as it is about just starting one. Your journey toward knowledge, strength of faith, and devotion to God and His son Jesus Christ will be rewarding. You can count on it.
