JOURNALING with JESUS

Recently I discovered an old spiral notebook from my childhood. The stickers on the cover and the exaggerated cursive writing made me smile. I guess it could be considered a journal, but reading it felt more like a line-by-line record of my tenth birthday. The visit from my grandparents with the cake from a fancy bakery, the friends from school that came over for a party, my favorite dinner that Mom made that night, and the list of every gift I opened–including the notebook–all documented on the faded lines.

I have always liked keeping track of things and organizing my thoughts and emotions on paper.  Journaling comes naturally to people like me. We process as we figure out which words get pressed into the paper, and there they stay:  readable, definable, clear.

Sometimes it helps me to pray this way. I write my worries, my hopes, my trust, and my doubts in a note to Jesus. All the confusion and distraction scatters away as I read what my heart was trying to say. I can write about scriptures, praises, requests, struggles, gratitude, and more. The written record of my prayers is a gift for later when I look back and realize how God has heard and answered me over time.

But journaling is not simply writing words in a notebook. My Life Group at church is opening my eyes to how the Holy Spirit works so very uniquely in our hearts through the journaling process. Individually, the eleven of us are reading from a devotional each day, and responding to journal prompts about a Bible verse. Together on Wednesday nights, we share some of what we wrote. We giggle as we show each other our stick-figure drawings about what we learned. We focus on different words in the same verse and come up with many different ways to apply them.

Some of us have always loved journaling, and some of us are new to it. Some of us follow the format in the book, and some of us go our own way. Some of us find songs that connect to the scripture and share them with the group. Some of us write short answers and some of us go on for pages.

It doesn’t matter how we do it. What matters is that God is with us in it. He knows how to meet us as we read, as we write, as we listen, and as we share. There is no right or wrong way to journal, as long as we are connecting to Him. He shows up whenever we do.

So–grab a notebook, a laptop, or a piece of scrap paper. Read a bit of scripture and ask Jesus to help you process it. Write one line or fill several pages. He will meet you in the writing and show you so much more than you can put into words.

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.

“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.

For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9 NLT