Our journals can assist us as we seek to grow deeper in our love for the Lord and for others. Journal Keeping is full of strategies for how to use writing to grow spiritually. If you're looking for a book on journaling, it may be just the resource you are looking for. To view section summaries and chapter titles see below. To view a full excerpt of Chapter One go to the InterVarsity website.

  To contact the author, send an email message to <LBudd@sjsu.edu>

Journal Keeping--Writing for Spiritual Growth includes:

Broad Purposes for Writing in our Journals

Journal Keeping--Writing for Spiritual Growth is divided into three main sections: writing to discover, writing to enjoy, writing to learn. Each section in the book shows ways to use writing to help us live as Christ's followers.

Writing to Discover

Most journal keepers write to discover truth from their own reflection and inquiry. When we use writing to discover, I write to reflect and to sustain focused inquiry. It is the process of determining something for ourselves while thinking about it from various perspectives. We observe what we experience and consider it. We inquire. We turn it over in our hands and ask questions. We seek to answer our questions as we write. Sometimes we conclude our thoughts in one sitting; sometimes we continue to discover our thinking on a topic over the course of weeks.

Writing to Enjoy

Many of us believe that being creative is really playing, so we don’t give ourselves the freedom to be creative during our devotional times. We think that journaling must be serious business, so creativity isn’t invited. Journal Keeping challenges these unwritten rules and encourages readers to be creative in their journal. Even if you know that you aren’t a “creative kind of person,” if we give ourselves half a chance, we’ll discover new insights as we create. Artistic touches are not a waste of time.

Bringing creativity into our devotional time may lead us to write a short story, a drama, a poem, a song; you may create a picture or a design, you may want to dance or create music. This section of the book helps all of us to be free to be creative and see if it helps us to enjoy the Lord and his word.

Writing to Learn

We can learn to embrace the love of Jesus and to live transformed, holy, devoted lives. Journal writing for the purpose of learning from others helps us to integrate into our lives what others teach us about walking with God. We have the opportunity as we journal to spend time carefully considering what they have written and to allow the truth they teach us to change our lives. 

Books, good books, can bring the most incredible people into our homes for dinner. They can share a lifetime of learning with us, teaching us truth, teaching us what they have learned about following Christ.

Dallas Willard encourages us to “read well the lives of disciples from all ages and cultures of the church, building a small library as we make them our friends and associates in The Way.” This section of Journal Keeping focuses first on how to glean insight from what we read in books. We can use writing to incorporate truth from many sources into how we think and thus how we live our lives. This section concludes by focusing specifically on how we can write to learn from reading the Bible.

We write to learn from what we read. Journal writing helps us to understand an author’s insight. Writing in our journals to learn from what we are reading helps us to understand and to integrate into our thinking truths from books and to approach, reflect, and converse with the biblical text.

The purpose for journaling as we write is to learn and to imitate those who have gone before.

Chapters in Journal Keeping-Writing for Spiritual Growth

Chapters include ideas for how to get organized and principles that writers find important to keep them writing. Some chapters discuss strategies for surviving spiritually dry times and how to use a journal as a writers notebook. Chapter titles include: