Why I like journaling

I’ve been journaling, nearly every day, since this past July, so about 6 months now, give or take a few days. And it has been so helpful! This might feed into my near hoarder-like tendencies as a way of holding onto thoughts, events, experiences, but I don’t plan on worrying about it at least until I have a box full of journals. (Could it really be? Is there one thing I’m actually not worried about? Praise The Lamb!)

It’s so nice to be able to go back and read things I’ve written before as a way of remembering things that the Lord has shown me in the past that I’ve forgotten. Sometimes it doesn’t even take me a long time to forget. Just a few days and I can go back in my journal like a time capsule and read as if for the first time, things that blew my mind or made me cry just days before. But that’s not what has me excited today.

Today I realized in what a great way journaling has improved my thought life. It’s amazing to me how many fallacies, intellectual inconsistencies, and wrong doctrines I’ve found even in my own thinking just by writing out my thoughts and prayers on a regular basis. The surprising part isn’t that I have wrong thinking. I became quite aware of the reality of my own inconsistencies during the internship at the International House of Prayer, but what’s surprising to me is that I’m able to detect them on my own. Previously, I’ve been largely un-aware of own false mindsets because they were the lenses through which I perceived everything else. But by writing them out it makes everything more concrete, and once it’s out, I feel like I get a better perspective of it. I’m able to then see the whole thought in it’s entirety and am better able to judge it as biblical or not.

For instance, today I was able to see how I have been subconsciously disqualifying myself as one whom the Lord can/is willing to use to minister to His Bride, the Church. Now I wouldn’t have agreed that I thought this way if you asked me, but looking at how I was processing some thoughts of mine, that’s exactly what I was doing. Last Friday I found a similar fallacy, when writing out my prayers about a job to pay my way through Bible school I asked the Lord if a seemingly shut door “is this Your doing or something else?” Once I wrote it out, I saw how absurd that question was. There is nothing that goes against His will, or can resist His plans. A better question and posture of prayer would really be to ask ‘is this a closed door to protect and shepherd me into Your best, or does this need more perseverance to see if the door is truly closed and not give up too early.’

And truly, most of what I’ve posted here on the blog was filtered through my journal in one for or another. So I hope I’m not the only one benefiting from my journaling, but even if that’s the case, it’d still be worth it.

pb