Recently I decided to that wanted to focus more on praying serious effective prayers. I felt my prayers were shallow, and left over. I want people to know that if i said I was going to pray for them I was going to pray for them. So i set out to create the effective prayer journal – somewhere to document my prayers and His answers, but not create a monster with 30 tabs. I got a little overwhelmed watching some of prayer journalers talk about their process. I thought that that bullet journaling technique might be a solution.
Do you all know what bullet journaling is? Its a journal that’s a planner, a list keeper, sketchbook and what ever you need it to be. I keep a bullet journal in an attempt to keep my daily life organized. I had this great idea that I could incorporate my daily quite time in this journal. I was motived to do this as I felt my quiet time and daily prayers were getting put to the back too often and my prayers were too short and too shallow. I wanted to make this more of a priority. I tried incorporating my daily prayers and quite time into my bullet journal After a month I realized I was on the right track, but in the wrong book. Keeping my prayers and quite time in daily bullet journal just became another thing to check off the list and they were just as dry and shallow.
If you want to know more about bullet journaling, you can watch this quick video by Wendy who does a great job of explaining the bullet journal concept.
But the concept of keeping my quite time journal in a SEPARATE Bullet Journal was the right answer. So what is a Bullet Prayer Journal? It’s my illustrated faith journey in my walk with God. I keep prayer requests, verse doodles, bible study, sermon notes and whatever else the Lord uses to speak to me. The key to the bullet journal is the INDEX page and numbering your pages. The INDEX is typically the first or second page. As you journal pages you go back and fill in the index so can flip to the page you need quickly. Over the next several weeks I will be sharing several page ideas for your Quite Time Bullet Journal. This week let’s talk about the materials you will need and let’s get our title and index pages done.
I decided to title my journal My Grace Book – because after all we serve a gracious God and He entreats us to remember all the good things He had done for us. I want to document His gracious hand in our lives. I want to remember the big and small miracles so I can share these stories with others so everyone can know how awesome the Lord is.
To get started here are the materials you will need:
A sketchbook or a note book with a graph or dot grid paper. Avoid a lined notebook as you will tend to write more and draw less. You can get a spiral bound book at the big box stores ore you can get a hard bound book at the art store. I like to choose a book with a heavier paper – over 80lbs. I would encourage you to get a half size journal rather than a 9 x 12 sketchbook. This will travel better and will not take as much time to doodle a whole page.
A permanent ink pen. At the office supply store you might like the Uniball Gel Bold line, or the fine line sharpie pen. At the Art store you might like the Prisma, Le Pen or Mircon Pigma Pens. I would suggest you start with a fine line .03 point and a bold point like .08.
Let’s Get started
Over the next several weeks, I will present a page layouts that you can use for your Bullet Prayer Journal. Today let’s get started with the title and index page. My journal has a blank cover, but if your journal is not blank, you can doodle a the first page as the title page.
How I did the cover:
I took a round lid from the pantry and drew a circle. I purposely positioned it outside the borders to make it more interesting. Then I found a “g’ that I liked. I used g as this is my Grace Book. I increased the font to 400 and printed it, cut it out and traced around it. I then doodled in circle making the “g” negative space. Feel free to choose your initial instead of a G or name your prayer journal any thing you want.
For the index page I used a chisel calligraphy marker. I just wrote Index at the top. Here’s the before and once I started using the journal.
Next week we’re going to talk about George Muller.
I have also written a book Prayer Patterns, about all kinds of prayer with tons of ideas for spreads in your prayer journal. You can find that in the store on my website.
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