I have always been a big proponet of journaling, although I am not always as diligent about setting aside time to do it as I would like. I have kept all the journals I have ever had and I read through them from time to time. It is fun to see what I was thinking at a certain time and what was going on in my life in much greater detail than my memory often affords.
The other day I read through the journal I kept while I was in Oxford and also the one I kept my first year of college at ACU. Both of these were generic journal entries mixed with prayer journal entries. This was a fascinating thing for me to read - the specific prayers I had prayed at specific times of my life and also the things I still pray about that I was praying about then. As I read through the prayers, something caught my attention - I am now far enough away from the time that I prayed those prayers to see the way God answered them. It was a faith-building exercise for me that I did not intend to have when I sat down with my journals. To see how faithful God has been to me in my specific prayers is amazing. If I had not written these prayers down at the time, I don't know if I would have ever had this kind of reflection on them years later. If you don't write prayer journals, you might consider doing it from time to time because I will never forget the feeling of realization I had as I read the words I prayed to God that he faithfully listened to and acted on.
1 comment:
I haven't kept a journal faithfully since college, but it really is an exercise in faith to read back through the ones I did keep, and to know that even as I wrote back then, that God was shaping me and listening to me.
Thanks for sharing your journaling experience!
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