DAILY JOURNALING PROMPTS TO HELP YOU CONNECT WITH GOD

To say I’m excited to share with you these journaling prompts to help you connect with God is quite the understatement!

I am pretty passionate about journaling as a way to connect with God, and I thought it would be fun to encourage you in something that has brought so much joy and delight to my walk with God.

It seems to keep coming up in conversation when people ask how I got started writing or how I wrote Dreaming with God, and so somehow, someway, today this idea began brewing in my heart to encourage you in journaling. Whether you’ve been journaling your whole life, or maybe you feel a bit stuck, or maybe, you feel like journaling isn’t for you. (that’s absolutely okay!) It’s definitely not for everybody, and that’s one thing I love about God – He uniquely wired us to connect with Him in different ways. But even if it’s not your thing, I pray today encourages you that God is indeed tenderly caring for you, your heart, your life, and your dreams. I want to shed some light on the joy and blessings of journaling to connect with God!

So today, I simply want to give you some easy prompts to get you started or unstuck. This is a great way to just get your pen moving and your heart on board. Sometimes the hardest thing about journaling is just getting started. Before I dive into these easy prompts, first I want to point out a few of the beautiful benefits of journaling. (I could go on and on and on so I’m just going to give you my top three!)

      1. Journaling helps you slow your pace.

If there’s one thing I love about putting pen to paper is that it simply helps you slow your pace. As we all know, life is full and busy and fast-moving. In our insta-everything world, it’s tricky to put aside the distractions to tune into God. Journaling is a great tool to slow down, to cease hurrying and striving, (“Cease striving and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10) and to quiet your heart down to tune directly into God. (all the happy dances for that! And I must add that it’s a great time to savor your coffee or tea!) One of the best gifts we can give to our souls and our health is to simply take quiet moments to slow our pace and rest in the Lord.

       2. Journaling helps you dream with God.

Journaling is a great way to get your dreams, desires, and ideas on paper and to allow God to shape, shift, and sort out your dreaming questions. Journaling can be a place for dreams to be born, nurtured, and prayed over. This makes me plain giddy!

      3. Journaling helps you tune into God.

There’s something about journaling that can help us tune into God more deeply. As we write down our favorite Bible verses or an encouraging word from our morning devotional or just our own thoughts about what’s going on in our hearts, it’s as if we are writing to God. Journaling becomes like a letter to the God of the universe. Journaling is cultivating our relationship with God through our pens. It’s recording the lessons, truths, blessings, and prayer requests of our lives so that later we can look back and see God’s faithfulness. (which brings me to point number 4)

       4. Journaling helps you see God’s faithfulness. 

As you journal, whether it’s daily, weekly, monthly, spontaneously, yearly (choose the pace that works for you!) you will be keeping a record of God’s faithfulness. You’ll begin to see right there on the pages of your journal the ways God is growing you, speaking to you, ministering to you, and encouraging you. You’ll be able to see how He has been faithfully guiding you day by day. And on those days where you need a little boost of encouragement that God is indeed present in your life and working behind the scenes of your prayer requests, you’ll be able to flip back through an old journal and find treasure troves of past words pointing to the faithful and loving character of God. And from there, you will be spurred on by His great faithfulness.

So with no further a due, here are 6  journaling prompts to help you connect with God in a deeper way. You can do them however often you like. Like I said before, this is simply to get you started and get your pen moving. Don’t overanalyze your words, simply write what comes to mind. Don’t worry if you mess up and need to scratch things out, make it messy! Don’t worry about having the perfect handwriting, no one will read this but you. Don’t worry about perfect grammar, God doesn’t care about that stuff. Don’t worry if your answers are long or short, just answer until you feel like you’ve got it all out of your heart and onto the paper. Just write from your heart, sweet one.

• What is one thing you are especially grateful to God for today?
• What is weighing most heavily on your heart today?
• What do you need from God today?
• Who do you want to lift up in prayer today?
• What situation do you need God’s direction on?
• What do you love most about walking with God?

I’m going to stop there today, because like I said, I could go on and on and on! So I’ll save some for a future post! Start there. I believe you will discover such a sweet richness with God as you slow your pace, tune into God, and discover His consistent faithfulness in your life. He’s shepherding your life. (“He tends his flock like a shepherd: he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart.” Isaiah 40:11) You are so loved, (“I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.” Jeremiah 31:3) and I pray today, you begin to feel God’s presence in a deeper way as you simply start putting pen to paper. (“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” James 4:8) And if you don’t have a journal, I give you permission to grab one at Target or wherever you like! It doesn’t have to be expensive – I love a simple spiral journal from the grocery store, Barnes and Noble has a huge selection of beautiful ones, etc. I’m kind of in the camp that the prettier, the more I stick with it. :) But that’s just me.

I hope you enjoy these daily journaling prompts, and do please let me know how they help you connect with God today.

So thankful for each of you!

Love and grace,

Sarah Beth