For the last week, I’ve gone back and begun reading through my journal. I started in October of 2008, and I’m now up to October 2014. It has taken me hours, but it has been worth it. It’s reminded me of the importance of journaling.
I’m not sure why I started journaling. I suspect some Christians journal because they want somewhere to freely express their thoughts, feelings, hopes, and dreams. Others journal because they like writing, and journaling is a way to practice the discipline of writing. Still others journal because they want to record the events of their life for prosperity’s sake.
All these are valid reasons to journal, but there is a more important and more fulfilling reason to journal for Christians, and that is to record the Lord’s work in and through their lives.
As I’ve read through my journal entries over the past few weeks, I’ve been amazed at how many times the Lord spoke so clearly to me in prayer or through the Bible and then confirmed that word through circumstances or others. I would have forgotten most of them–I had forgotten most of them–had I not recorded them when they occurred.
And then there were the difficult seasons: one lasted for nearly a year between 2013 and 2014, until I finally had a breakthrough when the Lord showed me three principles through His word and prayer that made sense of it all.
Then there was the time in early 2012, when I recorded how I was praying because I felt the Lord wanted me to change the business side of my employment law practice because the economics weren’t working, but I didn’t know how to change it. Then the very next day I recorded that I was at a wine tasting with my wife and found ourselves by coincidence sitting next to the oldest and most prominent employment lawyer in town. He told me about his business model, which I subsequently adopted. It was the answer to my prayer from the day before. I had completely forgotten, and would have forgotten, but for journaling.
As I was reading my old journal entries, the image of a tree, with its limbs and leaves being rustled by the wind, came to mind. Our lives are like that tree, and the Holy Spirit is the wind blowing through it. We only recognize His presence by seeing the movement of the limbs and the leaves. Journaling is a way to record the movement of the limbs and leaves, so we can look back and see He was there. GS