There’s more to life than work and society. Your faith gives meaning and purpose to your life despite this busy world. So, connecting with God by reading the bible, expressing your worship, and reflecting upon your learnings is good practice. Besides this, many people find faith journaling a calming and effective way to deepen their faith and seek God’s direction. If you’re wondering: “what is faith journaling?” this guide explains why you should do faith journaling and offers tips and insights to get you started.
What Is Faith Journaling?
Faith journaling involves writing, scribbling, drawing, or doodling bible verses, sermons, reflections, and other thoughts regarding your faith.
It could also include your innermost feelings, records of special moments or occasions, or daily life.
A faith journal can take many forms and contain different content, depending on your preference or spiritual need.
Ultimately, your faith journal should consist of your learnings and reflections from spending time in God’s presence.
Anyone from any of the types of faith can do faith journaling. For example, Christians can use it for Bible journaling or Bible study, and Muslims can use it to journal about the Quran.
Why Should You Do Faith Journaling?
If you’re unsure why faith journaling is an excellent spiritual discipline, consider the following benefits:
It Helps You Remember Scripture
Do you still remember last Sunday’s sermon? Most people forget what they hear at church or read in the bible.
Faith journaling will help you jot down sermon notes, write bible verses you like, and scribble your thoughts and reflections on scripture verses or sermons.
If you forget them or need to review them in the future, you’ll have a reference you can re-read. More importantly, you have notes to remind you of your valuable insights in times of distress.
You can Express Your Feelings and Find Relief
Journaling can be therapeutic since it allows us to express our innermost thoughts and feelings.
Don’t hesitate to write, doodle, or draw your reflections if you’re joyful, angry, discouraged, or afraid. Whatever you write in your faith journal, consider it as a letter from you to Jesus Christ.
Use faith journaling to help you heal emotionally, mentally, or spiritually and find comfort in God’s word.
Understand God’s Direction
Your faith journal records what God is teaching you in your current season of life. Reviewing and reflecting on the bible verses and sermons in your journal can give you insight into God’s specific direction.
Ultimately, faith journaling helps you align with God’s Will.
How to Do Faith Journaling
Now that you know what is faith journaling, you may hesitate to start faith journaling because you think you’re not good with words. Remember that faith journaling uses creative ways to connect with God and deepen your faith in Him. Here are just some of the many ways you can start faith journaling.
Meditate Using Scripture Journaling
Scripture calls us to delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on His Word day and night. Scripture journaling allows you to read bible verses or your daily readings and meditate upon them.
If a verse spoke to you, you could write it several times on a page to meditate on it. Also, you can write the verse and your insights. Feel free to pray about it after meditating on the scripture.
Try Prayer Journaling
Writing prayers makes them more tangible, real, and powerful in our life. You can write your prayers in bullet points for easy tracking, or let your heart pour out by writing an earnest prayer.
Also, try not to overthink while writing your prayers. Express your thoughts and feelings while allowing the Holy Spirit to guide you.
The best part about prayer journaling is you can track the prayers God answered and see His faithfulness in every season of your life.
Track Habits to Ensure Spiritual Discipline
Many people feel motivated when seeing their progress. So, to establish good spiritual discipline, use your faith journal to track your habits.
The habits you track depend on your spiritual goals. Do you want to spend more time reading the bible? Do you want to ensure you pray every day?
Other habits or goals you may want to track include meditation or quiet time, memorising verses, a gratitude list, your volunteer hours, donations, and tithes.
Sermon Notes
Feel free to write bible verses or quote your preacher during your Sunday church service or any sermon you come across.
Writing during the sermon will help you focus during service, understand the message, and refer back to it when needed.
You can also add your reflection and insights to deepen your understanding of the scripture and see how you can apply it in your daily life. Bring it every time you go to church, and anywhere you go.
Practice Gratitude
Because of stress, busyness, and worries, we must remember to appreciate life’s little moments and be content with what we have.
Creating a list of what you’re grateful for will help you view life more positively, recognise God’s provisions, and see how He helped you overcome challenges.
Your gratitude journal can include a range of praise reports, from miraculous healing to your daily bread. Over time, establishing a habit of gratitude in your life will increase your joy and contentment.
Keep Track of Prayer Requests
You can use your faith journal to track prayer requests. When you meet with a friend or family member who needs spiritual guidance, write down a prayer request to remind you to keep them in your prayer life.
Things You Need for Faith Journaling
To prepare you for faith journaling, consider getting the following items:
Decorative Elements
Faith journaling can be a creative process if that is what you like. Faith journaling can help you be creative and express yourself using different art techniques to help you along your faith journey.
You can use washi tape to stick tags or decorate a page. Meanwhile, rubber stamp sets and stencils help add colour and illustrations to your journals.
Doing a collage in your faith journal is a fun way to do faith art journaling. To create a collage, remember the glue to paste photos, cutouts, and other items on your journal.
Pens
Use any ballpoint pen or pencil you have with you. If you want to decorate your journal, try drawing with markers, colouring pencils, and crayons. You can use calligraphy or hand lettering to add decorative headings to your faith journal. Also, you can use watercolour or any paint if your paper is thick enough.
Journal
Any notebook will do for faith journaling.
However, if you are a Christian, we recommend getting a Christian journal, like the Erin Condren faith journal, since it offers various templates, journal pages and tools to help with your devotions.
If you want more freedom with your pages, any Archer & Olive journal offers a high-quality notebook, perfect for any faith journaling.
Meanwhile, you can choose simple traveller’s notebooks if you want a portable journal with blank pages to carry anywhere and at any time.
Start Your Faith Journaling Today
Faith journaling offers an excellent way to align with God and His will for us. However, remember, there are no rules about journaling.
Start faith journaling according to how you want to worship God and how God leads you to receive His Word. Be consistent in seeking God and allow Him to impact your life. Always remember God’s faithfulness in your journal entries.
Hello Sunelle,
Thank you for the lovely article on faith Journaling.
Very helpful and inspiring. I have been doing this on and off. Consistancy is not a quality of mine.
God bless you and keep you.
Kind regards,
Daniela
Dear Daniela
I am also not very consistent but as long as we keep trying to be consistent we are better off than not trying!
Sunelle