Journaling has always been relatively an easy discipline for me. I am a blogger, and have been since 2005. These days, I consider blogging a spiritual discipline for me, to put into the world wide web my personal spiritual reflections on the interpretation of Scripture and on theological issues. This is fairly natural to me, but still I feel like there’s an elephant in the room if I have not written anything substantial to journal/blog about after three days or so. It is just so a part of my spiritual life that to not do it means I’m not reflecting biblically about the things that go on in my life and in the world, or that I’m not applying what I’ve read in God’s word to my life. Thus, all things considered, being in Personal Spiritual Disciplines has fueled my blogging even more, for it meant that I can get some academic credit for my writing! Yay=D

On a more serious note, I have become more and more disciplined in journaling – on paper, in my moleskine notebook — every other day, if not daily. Before, I really need a heavy heart issue or a significant “emotional” problem in my life in order to write anything substantial, but these days, putting pen to paper is so much easier and inviting, as I have began to jot down my prayers and reflections on the Psalm of the Day. Instead of just praying things to God by voice, I am no writing them down and recording them for future reflection and reminiscing. My thoughts and my prayers look so much different on paper than in my mind or compared to just praying them out loud. In terms of writing on paper, it really forces me to slow down my thought process and analyze what I am specifically thinking and wanting to say. Again, having my prayers in a paper journal has given me the chance to say things to God that sometimes I don’t feel comfortable verbalizing, and things that I want to write down so that I can have a recorded history of it. I guess, I do that in part because I really want to know that God can and will answer that prayer. So far, I haven’t had any check-offs for some of the big items I’ve journaled down… but I’m crossing my fingers and praying daily to God about it all.

Beside myself, I have tried really hard to encourage a fellow student here to start journaling. He is trying to get into the PhD program here at Southern and is a former pastor in his mid-40s. He says he hates journaling and that his writing is a mess, but after my months of prodding and nagging, encouragements and exhortations about the benefits of recording his prayers and answers to those prayers… he finally gave in and told me a couple weeks ago that he started journaling. I’ll need to check up with him again soon to see how regular of an occurrence it is, but I’m glad I was able to get him to start working on a spiritual discipline that has been a tool that many great church fathers have used in ages past!