Thanks for sharing your week’s experience here. I have a dear friend at church that has a whole library of her prayer journals…wish I was that disciplined! I look forward to following your blog, you have sparked a fire in my soul.

Mary

Prayer journaling has been such a powerful tool this week that I am determined to keep using it regularly.

I have found it helpful when starting out the ‘message from God’ part of the journal, that if something doesn’t flow straight away, to just start writing with the revelation from Him that I already know.

Like priming the pump, very quickly I seem to receive fresh revelation and every time I’ve journaled I can look back at one insight or more that has been a remarkable Word from God for me personally.

This insight may be helpful for exercising the gift of prophecy, too.

I didn’t feel like asking questions, so after reading some scripture, I just made a note to the Lord in my journal of how much He means to me and how much I long for His Presence.

Stared at the journal. What am I expecting—a love note back from Jesus? Seems to be an odd thing to do—write your own message from God.

But decided to fire away, and wrote an awesome 1 ½ pages—in part of which the Lord was calling me back to worship and intercession (been a bit light in those for a while) ‘for worship is the language of love and of the throne room of heaven.’

I can see now that prayer journaling really fosters intimacy with God. So its value in terms of sharpening the prophetic gift lies not only in recognising and communicating revelation, but also in getting into that place of communion with Jesus.

My journaling time tonight was made difficult by the volume of conversation happening in the adjoining room (not The Hunk, our younger generation!) I turned my worship music up and put a hand over my ear closest to the door and pressed on.

In spite of these challenges, I did receive and write something of value in response to the question I put before the Lord, and will process it over the next few days.

So far, I believe that prayer journaling will help me develop my prophetic gift, and certainly am encouraged by the revelation I have received. However, until I have an opportunity to put prophecy into practice verbally, I can’t be sure how much writing prophecy has been of assistance… watch this space.

Wrote them down.

Stared at the page for a long time.

Thankfully, had decided to put some great worship music on (God bless Dennis Jernigan) and it helped me get over the hurdle of putting that pen back on the paper.

As I wrote down what I perceived God was saying, at first the answers seemed to be the ‘obvious’ ones, but something about starting to write broke through the barrier.

A couple of pages of scrawl later, there was reassurance, but also some valuable instruction and refocusing.
Why did I think listening to God might be ‘unsafe’?

I console myself with the recent purchase of a shredding machine. If I really DON’T like what I’ve written, or it comes out all wrong, and it’s me and not the Spirit, I give myself permission to shred it. Armed with this sense of liberty, I compose my question and begin to write what I believe God is answering me.

8 ½ pages later….. I review what I’ve written. Funny, my criticism of this kind of journaling was the lack of scripture for a basis, but numerous Bible verses (as well as pictures) are in my God-response. Throughout the ramble, there is a theme in that seems to be God’s word for me. I believe that the Lord has spoken to me through this process.

I would say that I am quite surprised at how helpful this has been! The pages will stay in the journal, safe from the shredder. Thank you Jesus!