What I've Learned From My Prayer Journal

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 John 5:14

Although I’ve spent 40 years in ministry, there’s a lot about prayer that is still mysterious to me.

To be sure, I know that God isn’t a wishing well or a divine butler that we ring when we need help finding the car keys. I’ve witnessed prayer being abused, sometimes damagingly (when prayer request time is used as a thinly veiled opportunity for gossip) and sometimes humorously (when Darla calls out to God during movie night that He would help Rocky Balboa win the boxing match).

And yet, despite our human failings, Scripture is clear that God can and does act in response to our supplications and intercession. I know there’s no part of our life in this world that is too big or too small to bring to the Lord!

So I endeavor to follow the guidance of Scripture in my prayer life, even in prayer’s most mysterious moments, and one practical tool for doing so is my prayer journal. After I start my prayer with the Daily Office, I open my journal and write as I talk with the Lord.

Here are three things I’ve learned by keeping this particular spiritual discipline:

1.    It is easy to see how many prayers God has answered!

When I go back and read previous journal entries, I can see where God’s hand has been at work in our family, on behalf of Malone, and in other aspects of my life. I am reminded of moments when I had no idea how something could work out for good, literally crying out to God, and then moving on and subsequently forgetting it was an issue. At times I’ve been embarrassed by how brief my thanksgiving was before I petitioned God about the next crisis. This has prompted me to actually go back through previous pages and write “Thank God!” beside each answered prayer—and there were so many occasions of His faithfulness that this small gesture quickly seemed redundant and overwhelming.

This observation changed my daily practice, and now I make sure to write down at least one thing each day for which I am grateful before jumping into my list of specific needs or concerns.

One of the key imperatives of the Hebrew Scriptures is the word for “remember:” zakar. It’s used a remarkable number of times (more than 220), many of them to remind the Israelites of God’s miraculous provision. How quickly we all forget! This observation has taught me that remembering God’s loving care will ground my faith in Him.

2.    Sometimes my prayers change as God and I walk through life together.

I know both theologically, and from personal experience, that prayer changes the heart of the one who prays, even more often than it changes actual circumstances, but it’s been so eye-opening to watch this occur across the pages of my prayer journal.

James 4: 2-3 tells us that, “You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives,” and I ask myself how I can have so many blind spots even after following Christ for as long as I have. More often than I’d like to admit, I still pray for my own will to be done rather than God’s will.

Scripture says that we can confidently approach the Throne of Grace when we pray according to God’s will because He hears us. So how can we know if we’re praying according to God’s will? I watched it in my journal: as God changed my heart and my desires, the tone of what I wrote down began to shift. At first, I was praying for what I wanted and not what God wanted, and I watched as my prayers for one particular circumstance pivoted over a period of months until it was in alignment with God’s will—then I watched Him do it!

In this instance, I was what changed! And now, almost every day, I double-up on one line from the Lord’s Prayer: After I pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” I add “Your will be done at Malone (or in my family, or in my church) as it is in heaven.”

3.    Some prayers remain unanswered.

Although some of my prayers have changed over time, I haven’t crossed all of them off; several just remain unanswered.  

In Luke 18, Jesus tells his disciples the parable of the persistent widow to show them that they should always pray and not give up (verse 1). I need to be that widow, and so do you. If this was a teaching moment of Jesus’, it indicates to us that we shouldn’t be surprised if there is a long delay in answers to prayers. That delay may even extend beyond our lifetimes on this side of heaven, but that doesn’t mean God is unfaithful or His timing is wrong. We know from Romans 8:28 “that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose,” so we can trust that He is still working even when it takes longer than we’d like or in a different manner than we would choose.

Spiritual warfare is all around us, and Christians are on the front-lines to show Christ’s love to a confused and hurting world. Your kingdom work may look different from my kingdom work at Malone, but no matter how we spend our hours we need to take prayer seriously because it shapes and forms us to be more like Him.

Kingdom work is worth fighting for, so it’s also worth praying for.

Additional reading: Luke 18:1-8