Prayer Journal

After we began our first digging deep study, I realized a great need to improve my personal prayer life. This led to some discussion with our study group and I realized I was not alone in feeling spiritually inadequate with my prayer life.  While I pray daily, I found that between all of the daily grind of activities, much of the time, my prayers lacked focus.  All too often I have been guilty of praying as my head hits the pillow only to wake up the next morning realizing I never even made it to "Amen".

In my journey to become more intentional with my prayers I decided to set up a prayer journal/notebook. Being a visual person, what better way to increase my faith when I could visibly see answers to prayers on the pages of my notebook.

I completed setting up the structure of my notebook mid-August and honestly I am still tweaking the method and process flow but wanted to share here in hopes of encouraging others and to help hold myself accountable as using this journal requires a great deal of discipline.

While you can just as easily use a spiral, or pretty notepad I wanted the flexibility of adding or removing pages so I purchased a small notebook like this one.  I went through my scrapbook stash and designed a pretty cover to slip into the front cover and spine.

Now, breaking it down into categories.  I purchased page protectors like these to make my main categories.  I loosely used the A.C.T.S. model described below for my category pages.  On the backside of each category page I typed up some scriptures and jumping off points.

Behind each category page I placed some loose leaf paper  along with a binder pockets so it enables me to slip index cards or notes from my bible or purse in the pockets.  This enables the flexibility to use either the paper or index cards.  Right now I'm seeing which option I like using the best - or I may decide to continue to use both options!

Category 1: Adoration & Praise 
On the backside I listed several characteristics of God and my goal is to focus on one attribute for one to two weeks and locate three scriptures that describe or pertain to the particular attribute I'm focusing on and write them out in my journal.

Category 2: Confession 
On the backside I listed prayer prompts to help me focus on areas in my life (ie: wife and mother role, faith, temptations etc) that I need to improve upon.  I am writing out passages that help me to overcome my character flaws or sins.

Category 3: Thanksgiving & Supplication
I did not actually make a Thanksgiving & Supplication category page themselves perse, rather I decorated a page for each subcategory listed below:  (Giving me a total of 8 decorated pages in sleeve protectors).

• Husband
• Children
• Family & Friends
• Church Family & Ministries
• Reaching Beyond (Our country, political leaders etc.)

This seemed to be the most logical solution as I have daily thanksgiving and supplications that fall under some or all of these categories daily.  Once again, on the backside of each subcategory page I typed up scriptures with prayer prompts.

Category 4: Answered Prayers
Lastly, I created a category page where I can place answered prayers here in the extra page protector sheets I have.  I believe seeing my answered prayers in one place can help bolster my faith when I need encouragement.

I would love to see how others set up and use a prayer journal and I'm eager to utilize this tool.

dbcfa63f26300b1dfc2275b04a76cba4456073a5e4e2d9da6f