How I Journal My Time With The Lord
A lot of people have either heard of the concept of journaling their time with God, or are actively practicing it in their lives. It’s a very good habit to have. In this post I want to share my process with you.
Perhaps some of you have never heard of the idea of journaling your time with God. I have written a previous blog post in which I discuss the reasons WHY you would want to start doing this. You can read that HERE.
What I do is a little different than most people. (At least, I think it is. I haven’t heard of anyone else doing it this way).
A common way of journaling your time with the Lord is to have a set-aside “quiet time”. Maybe you pray, read, or do a daily devotional type thing. And then, during that session you write down whatever you feel the Lord is putting on your heart. Or maybe what you learned that day from your study.
This is great! And I am in no way wanting to dissuade anyone from doing this! We are all different, and we are all in different seasons in our walks with God.
I want to share how I journal my time with the Lord, because I have personally found a few things to be lacking about that specific technique….
Number one: We often don’t go back to reflect on, or re-read what we write. It can be forgotten as quickly as we move on to the next thing, or possibly within a few days if it touched up deeply.
Number two: We are limiting ourselves to only hearing God in that set-aside time and space, (and possibly only on whatever topic we are studying). God wants to speak with us throughout the whole day, on any possible topic.
Having said that…. Maybe you are just starting to journal your time with the Lord and you are looking for some tips. Or, maybe you have been doing it for a while but want to switch things up a bit…. Either way, I hope I can help!
SO! HOW DO I JOURNAL MY TIME WITH THE LORD?
FIRST: GET A SUPER AWESOME JOURNAL
You’re probably thinking “Duh Sara!”
But for real! Obviously, you need something to write in. But also, getting a brand new, super cute journal is going to inspire you to do this and stick with it. Ya’ know…. Just like the whole concept of getting a new workout outfit to motivate you to go to the gym. (It works for me anyways *shrugs*).
My personal recommendation for a journal is Growth Roots.
It is a very unique Christian journal company, and I love to support what they do. Their journals are highly customizable. I had never seen anything like it before I found them. Go check out their website and see whatcha’ think! (Growth Roots Journal Yay!)
I’ve been using their journals now for almost two years….. and I have 4 of them. Tehe.
SECOND: INSTALL A NOTE-KEEPING APP ON YOUR PHONE
If you are an Android user like me, you can install Google Keep for free from the Play Store. It’s a very user-friendly note-keeping app that holds a lot of information. It allows you to organize it very well also. I have been using this for more years than I can count; sometimes I feel like my life is in there. I keep personal and work notes, and you can share them with other users as well.
For my Apple friends out there…..
I cannot personally recommend anything. I have never owned an Apple product. But, it seems that an app called ‘Notability’ is currently a very popular one. It costs around $9.00. Or, a free option is simply ‘Apple Notes’.
Ok! That’s it, now you’re ready to start!
This is what I do…..
DAILY:
I talk to the Lord all throughout the day. Anywhere from 1 sentence, to a 30-minute conversation. Whenever I sense or hear that God tells me something, I take 1-2 minutes to write it in my note-taking app, (Google Keep), and date it. (You can also voice text in the app which makes it very quick and easy to do anywhere). ALWAYS date your entries.
As much as I want to be that girl who carries around a cute portfolio with my journal and laptop everywhere…. (Oh…. is that just me?)….. It is just not practical.
Wherever we are during our days…. school, work, raising kids at home…. We will NOT always have the time to stop what we’re doing, pull out our thrifty journal, and jot down what God is telling us.
Being able to pull out our phones, (something we always have with us), is a super convenient and practical way to not only write down what we hear from God all throughout the day, but also to keep all those words in the same place, organized, and safe from being lost.
This takes care of issue #2 at the beginning of this post. Now we’re positioned to hear from God at all times!
(SIDE NOTE: I’m not discussing HOW to hear God’s voice in this blog post. If that is something that you’re interested in, leave a comment below. But, I will say, that even just starting to do what I am talking about here shows the Lord that you are serious about hearing from Him, AND that you expect to. When we give Him the opportunity to speak, we will hear Him much more often).
WEEKLY:
Then, on a weekly basis, I take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to physically write down what God had previously told me. Now it’s time to use your journal! (If you’re like me… this is very exciting).
I will just sit down with my phone and my journal, and write down, word-for word what I had previously typed in my note-keeping app. I start with whatever date I left off with last time, and write a few entries.
Since we don’t have time to do this in the middle of every day, this is the time we get to do this. Pick a day and time that you typically have open every week to sit down and do this, almost like a “quiet time” with God.
Depending on how frequently I have heard from God, I can often be a few months behind in my journal entries. Normally this would bother me and my organized self. But, in this case, I actually quite enjoy it. By the time I get around to transposing something from my phone into my journal, I have usually forgotten it. As I write it, I remember all over again, and it’s exciting!
This can be either an awesome reminder of something that God really wanted you to know. Or…. It can be a good way to start identifying when you could have possibly “missed it”. Yes, we all will have times when we thought we heard Gods voice, but maybe it was just us, or….even the enemy. After some time has passed, we can sometimes identify the difference more easily than when we were actually in the moment.
Also, during this process you may begin to recognize recurring thoughts and trends that God has talked to you about multiple times.
This addresses issue #2 of not re-reading what you wrote down during your time with the Lord. By transferring it from your phone to your journal you are automatically re-reading it and reflecting on it. Oftentimes, God will talk to you even more on a topic as you are writing it down for the second time.
MONTHLY:
Lastly, once a month, I take the time to go back and re-read the entire last month of journal entries. (For whatever month that so happened to be).
This is now the THIRD time that we are going back over what we wrote down from the Lord!
Hopefully, anything you missed, you will catch this time around. There have been times when I thought I received a new revelation from God about something, but then I come across an entry where I had said something almost identical before. I had completely forgotten!
This shows two things…
First, that God is so faithful and will repeatedly speak something to you until it is committed to your heart and memory.
Second, that if I had not been practicing this journaling process, I would have completely missed what God had told me the 1st time! I could have possibly forgotten it and missed it altogether if I was not giving God the space to keep speaking it to me. When we receive an awesome revelation from God, we often think to ourselves, “There’s no way that I will forget this!”
But I am sad to say that we do. I definitely have. ☹
There have also been times that I have gone back and “followed-up” on things. I will write in a new date beside an old entry, and add something that happened after that, something that confirmed it, or something more that God expounded on that word since when I had written it.
So…. that is my process for how I journal my time with the Lord.
I have been doing it since 2017, and have really gained a lot of benefits from it. Before then, I had very little confidence that I knew how to hear God’s voice. While this is still a struggle for me sometimes in certain situations….. I know for a fact that I have come very far, and I hear His voice more than ever.
I believe that Her Life In Season itself may not have gotten started if I had not been writing down what God was telling me. The idea of a blog, (and specific ideas for individual blog posts), started to appear repeatedly in my journaling notes. (God knew I needed to hear it multiple times before I would actually do it. LOL).
I hope this has helped some of you. And I hope that you will begin to implement at least some part of this practice into your life. If you do, I would love to hear from you, and to hear any testimony stories you may have as a result of journaling your time with the Lord.
Until next time, take one day at a time.
Her Life In Season
