As early as I can remember I have loved writing. I have been writing - stories, dialogues, essays and even poems for my high school paper. Growing up and getting busy with life I sort of put off writing but later on, a burning desire to do it in every possible way I can.
"Journaling is a written record of the more notable — and, in retrospect, often hilarious — ups and downs along the way." - - Hayley Phelan, "What's All This About Journaling" The New York Times
Journaling can take many forms. In my search of a better way to journal I have stumbled upon lots of kinds of journaling. In the secular world journal takes every kind of artistic and creative forms and styles. Journaling could be as simple as a day to day account of your activities written down on a notepad, a spiral or bounded notebook either lined, dotted (which I love!) or blank pages wherein you can freely express yourself. It can also be as complicated as an app for jounaling nowadays, if you are someone who loves to write down big happenings all around you, may it be social, economic or political opinions which you can quickly capture and record immediately from your phone or ipad/tablet anywhere you are. In bookstores we can find lots of kinds of journals according to your preference - those for setting your goals, those for focusing on the progress of a project, some are for travel experiences or journaling one's hobbies. It can also be a tracker for one's daily grind and something they need to accomplish each day like diet, exercise, chores or any type of routine activities that needs to be followed through or measured. Even in the Christian circle, journaling has taken it to the next level. Some of these are journals focused on its use or specific purpose like Prayer Journal, Gratitude Journal, Verse Mapping, Scripture or Bible Journaling.
I listened to "Made for Hope" podcast with guest Kristin Vanderlip, where she talked about Journaling as a practice for better mental health. According to Vanderlip, Journaling helped her face reality. Writing her own inner feelings in the light of God's Word has been saving grace for her through the toughest times in her life. In the podcast she shared the benefits of writing for our mental health, she identified five things from the book called "The Power of Writing It Down" by Allison Fallon, and they are as follows:
Names our experiences so we can understand them.
Builds a bridge between what we're experiencing now and the future we want to create.
Helps find perspective for life challenges.
Finds new solutions to old problems.
Cultivates gratitude and contentment
Kristin have utilized journaling as a therapy to help improve her mental health. She writes down her feelings and experiences, then she goes to God's Word to meditate and be renewed again. She came out with her own version of a journal called "Life Worth Living" and a FREE weekly journal prompts every Monday on her Instagram or you can subscribe through her website. These Monday prompts are very good practice in journaling and even just plain writing. Kristin finds this rhythm life transforming as she keeps pushing on and practicing it with the best intentions.
A little trivia here, "Did You Know That Martin Luther Practiced Bible Journaling?"
Click and Read the article by Crossway.
Nichole Nordman, author of "Slow Down: Embracing the Everyday Moments of Motherhood" said of Journaling as a life rhythm; it is recording one's life in small pieces as she writes her thoughts and sometimes a two-sentence gratitude for the day. It is where she "recognize the good in those season". She writes when she feels like writing with no rules to follow in journaling. She loves how she can look back at life through the pages of her journal and revisits her struggles, brokenness and God's blessings at the same time. To listen more from Nichole and about her book CLICK HERE for more of her interview with Annie F Downs in her "That Sounds Fun" Podcast.
Now talking about Bible Journaling, it can also be an artistic and creative outlet for others. For some it can be as simple as jotting words and special symbols or just merely dates on the margins of their Bible to actually "remember" something significant on that time and passage or even from just a single verse from the Bible. Some make it like a work of art with painting on the pages of the Bible or as plain as the use of different pens, colors and highlighters to mark the Word. Look and click at the video down below to have a glimpse of the artful and creative side of Bible Journaling (for those artistic expressions). Bible journaling is a trending hobby at the moment and this whole idea can be a topic for another whole blog, for now let us just explore "Journaling" in general.
As I explore ways to cultivate the love of God's Word and my walk with Jesus, journaling is another way I have found to fuel that. This discipline is still a struggle for me but it is an everyday progress. As a Jesus follower, my journal is filled with Bible verses that I meditate and pray, a gratitude list of answered prayers, it is also full of my prayer requests both personal and for others. My journal is not limited to a certain pattern or way, I am exploring and developing my own rhythm in this form of writing and cultivating my growth in Christ. I am not a seasoned journal keeper but I am continually learning and cultivating this new skill in my spiritual growth.
"The goal is the glory of Christ, not your own, in your ongoing progress in his likeness, for the expanding and enriching of your joy." - David Matthis, "Journal As a Pathway to Joy"
According to David Matthis in an article on Desiring GOD entitled "Journal As a Pathway to Joy", a journal is what you say it is. There are no rules to journaling. It should not be a catalog of adventures and accomplishments for the purpose of showing off to others or to your generation to come. Instead, it is a recording of God's goodness in your life, you could be writing prayers (lament or thanksgiving), it could be an account of how God has answered your prayers, this could be your most intimate moments with the LORD and even your testimony of how GOD and His Word has worked in your life all throughout these years or maybe a collection of Bible passage or verses that are speaking to your life at that very moment in time.
"Permeated with prayer, and saturated with God’s word, it can be a powerful way of hearing God’s voice in the Scriptures and making known to him our requests." - David Matthis, "Journal As a Pathway to Joy"
But why do we journal? Matthis said that journaling can be a path to "joy". Again it is a path to joy, not happiness. And so he gave us three reasons how journaling can lead us to joy.
First one, journaling "captures the past" and as Christians we see evidence of God's providence everyday, His goodness and faithfulness should be captured through the pages of our journal. Our gratitude and gratefulness are expressed through the experiences we write or even through looking back at past journal entries and seeing how God has blessed and answered our prayers.
This reminds me of Moses' unrelenting insructions and encouragement to God's people to keep His laws in their hearts and lives everyday. He repeatedly left this reminder to Joshua and the Israelites- "And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not." (Deuteronomy 8:2). It was a command for them to remember God's faithfulness and goodness to them from getting them out of Egypt; to crossing the Red Sea while walking on dry land; to forty years of journey through the wilderness without getting their sandals worn out; to seeing miracles of manna every morning, quails raining down on them and water coming out from the rock; to defeating stronghold kingdoms on their way to the Promised Land. Moses was adamant that each and every Israelite should remember how they were saved by a Sovereign God and brought to what He promised them, and that they have to tell the generation after them all these stories of God's providence. Imagine if Moses kept a journal at that time? How thick would that be? Every single day can be a challenge for him leading the Israelites who never stop complaining, but GOD shows His Providence through and through. These are the exact moments that Moses wants them to "remember" and to pass on to their children and their children's children by words of mouth. (Deuteronomy 11:19-21) Meanwhile, Joshua before he passed away and left the Israelites living in the Promised Land already, wrote down the law word per word to leave with them so that they will "remember" God's commandments and never forget His saving grace and to live as people "set apart" (Joshua 24:26-27)
This "remembering" is one reason we want to capture our past through words in a journal, so that we can go back to it and recall God's goodness and faithfulness in our lives and share it as testimonies to our own children and their children and their children's children.
Second point taken is "to build a better future". When we write down our thoughts on the Scripture we read - what we are learning more about God, how we are living in the current world - these experiences are opportunities for growth. It is a check and balance of looking and reflecting how we can better live as children of God going forward. According to the writer, journaling can benefit aspiring writers (like me!) where we can practice our words, style and our platform without the fear of being wrong as we continue to improve in this new craft.
Lastly, journaling is to live the present with joy. It should be "preaching the gospel to ourselves" first of all; then make journaling your meditation of the Scripture in written form and it also to be able to write down our most raw emotion and feeling. Journaling can pull out the best and worst of our feelings, our dreams and our experiences written down without boundaries.
After a short and a special Online Bible Study (OBS) by Proverbs 31 Ministries using the "Cultivate What Matters Scripture Journal", I have loved Bible Journaling. I must confess I don't get to do it everyday but I do it more now. Cultivate What Matters have a collection of different focused scripture journals that you can choose from called "Write The Word" journals. Their journal will have the Bible passage focused on a certain word (ex: faith, wisdom, kids, refresh. etc.) there is a space for you to actually "write the word of God" then on the other side there is a whole page for you to write your prayer or your thoughts on the passage you just read and write. I find this a very helpful tool in cultivating a love for God's Word and intentional time with God in worship and prayer using His own words.
How do we do Bible Journaling better? I found this article from Desiring GOD that gives us three questions we can use for Bible Journaling. Pastor Carey Hughes suggested to keep these three questions in mind (and maybe write them down on a sticky note too placed strategically in your Bible or on your Journal) to help you get started. He said whether you are journaling directly on your Bible or on a separate journal, we should be reminded of the value of "journaling all of the ways GOD reveals himself through His word".
Here are his "Three Questions for Bible Journaling" by Pastor Carey Hughes -
Who is GOD? According to Pastor Carey this should be the very first thing we ask ourselves whenever we open the Bible to read and/or study as every page of the Bible reveals the attributes of God.
How do I fight sin? As our enemy is out there everyday to trap us to fall into temptation and sin, the Word of God is our "sword of the Spirit" (Ephesians 6:17) to help us prepare for attacks by the enemy and "promises to be sufficient in our fight against sin" (Psalm 119:9)
How is my heart stirred for Jesus? I love what Pastor Carey said about this last one and let me quote him here .. "Seeing his providence in the past will fuel our joy as we seek to love and glorify him all the more in the present."
How good are these three simple questions, but at times it might be hard to answer. What do we do then? We just keep going on, keep reading until we get these questions running in our veins as natural as possible. I hope these questions will be a great help to cultivating your love for GOD's Word. Consider Bible journaling as part of your life's rhythm and everything will come naturally. Confession: I have never read the Bible and study it as thoroughly as I am now, considering I have grown up in the church and I can see it helping me grow everyday.
Did you know that journaling is a spiritual discipline? I wrote about Spiritual Disciplines on one of my previous blogs entitled "Training in Godliness". David Matthis came out with a book that talks about three foundational "Habits of Grace" namely Bible reading, prayer and fellowship with others. From this book he talked about a few ways to continually develop your journaling skills, in a nutshell here they are -
Keep it simple - uncomplicate your entries, make it short and do it everyday.
Don't catch up - just be spontaneous with your entries, there are no rules and you are not writing your autobiography here, just glimpses of your everyday life.
Take GOD seriously - David Matthis said, "saturating it with Scripture and permeating it with prayer".
Bring the Gospel - let the Words you meditate on "preach the gospel to yourself", in your current situation.
Stay with it - just keep doing it, even when it feels like its getting old...press on!
Journal keeping is another way to cultivate our love for the Word of God and when done with intentionality it grows our love for the Scripture, develops a rhythm in meditating on God's Word leading to our further growth so that we can look more like Jesus everyday.
All these for God's glory and my joy! Be Blessed!