Prayer Journal - Deepening Our Understanding

"More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." - Alfred Lord Tennyson
A prayer journal is similar to keeping a regular spiritual journal, except the focus of your writing and other activity is about your prayer life. Some individuals use their regular journals as their prayer journals, while others may keep only a prayer journal or keep two separate journals. A prayer journal helps us to gain a better insight into our prayer life, to examine how we pray, experiment with and learn new methods for prayer, focus on what we pray about, how God answers our prayers, and to develop our prayer practices which help us to deepen God’s presence within our life. A prayer journal helps us to stay objective about our prayer lives. We record the frequency of our prayers, what we prayer for or whom we pray for, how we prayer, the results of our prayers and the different ways God choices to reveal to us God’s response to our prayers. Often how we view our prayer lives depends upon how we are feeling on any given day. If we are feeling optimistic today, we concentrate on the positive results of our prayers or we don’t pray because we are feeling optimistic. Humans tend to turn to prayer more frequently when they are not feeling good about their lives, except when we are praying out of desperation we tend to view our prayer results with a higher degree of pessimism and frequently miss God’s voice speaking to us. Maintaining a prayer journal helps to view our prayers more holistically and objectively.		Other Spiritual Practices Lectio Divina Prayer Tradition Discernment The Jesus Prayer Journaling
"The great thing is prayer. Prayer itself. If you want a life of prayer, the way to get it is by praying... You start where you are and you deepen what you already have." - Thomas Merton	People keeping prayer journals will frequently write out their prayers, write prayers for specific occasions or events in their lives, and write lists of what and whom we pray for each day. We can also record God’s response to our prayers, for example what happened as the result of your prayers for a specific person or event. Record your thoughts and feelings about how God responded to particular prayer requests. Maintaining a prayer journal can be a valuable tool which aids us in understanding our prayer life and how we nurture our relationship with God and reveals to us the multitude of ways that God shows love toward us.