A Guide to Journal Keeping for Inner Growth & Personal Discovery

It’s been a long time since I outlined and summarized an entire book for my own benefit and growth, but I did just that with this excellent little book by Ronald Klug. It may be 41 years old, but it’s timeless in its call for Christians to journal their lives as a tool for spiritual growth. I’ve been doing it for decades now, and I can attest to its value. This book gave me tons of new ideas for how to expand my daily habit even further.

Klug breaks the book down into 15 chapters, explaining the basics of journal-keeping and digging deeper into how Christians can use this tool for introspection, prayer, Scripture study, sermon preparation, and more. He describes how people can use their journal-writing time to look back at their day (or lives) and make goals for the future, and I honestly can’t imagine why more people don’t take advantage of this incredibly simple practice!

Obviously, like everyone else, I use my phone and computer for just about everything, but through all the technological changes, I have never given up on the intimacy of using pen on paper. I take all my sermon notes and write virtually all of my journal entries in a black, spiral-bound sketchbook (I’ve adjusted book styles over the years to be sure!), and it’s been one of the healthiest practices of my life. I get scatterbrained like anyone, but the opportunity to sit down and “defrag my mind” is an ever-calming invitation that I don’t think I could live without.

Klug fills this book with practical information and quotations from other authors as well as some scriptural justification for the practices he recommends. Also helpful (especially to the beginning journal-keeper) are the many lists of questions one might consider answering as a way to stoke the fires of memory and introspection to get the most out of their writing. I particularly enjoyed his section on paraphrasing the Psalms, a devotional exercise I took advantage of this week (Psalm 34), much to my heart’s delight.

I’d love to just copy-paste the summary of the book I now have in my own records, but that wouldn’t be fair to the author (or whoever’s getting his royalties these days). Instead, I’ll simply recommend this book and close with Klug’s introductory thoughts on journaling:

“Journal writing should never become a grim chore. If you see it that way, you probably will not do it for long. Remember that writing in your journal is not a task you must perform perfectly. Go at it in the spirit of creative play. Think of your journal as a loyal friend. Let your journal-writing time be a sabbath time for you, an enjoyable, quiet time, even a gift you give yourself. Think of the solitude connected with the journal as part of the abundant life God wants you to have. So relax with your journal, and enjoy it.” (5)

©2023 E.T.