J - O - Y Prayer Journal

Several months back I was thoroughly inspired by a link I discovered that featured a tutorial on how to put together a personal prayer journal. It spoke to my heart as this is something that I had wanted to put together for myself. So I bookmarked it.

But unfortunately there it sat. Enter a book I picked up at the library recently entitled Eat That Frog! which I had originally reserved for some ideas on dealing with procrastination in my children. But at this point the most value came for myself. Did I have any goals set? Were those goals able to direct my day-to-day activities and priorities? Well, no, to be honest. So there I came full circle again to my desire to have a more structured prayer life.

So back I went to my bookmark and some searching through Pinterest. And yes, I came up with something even more inspiring for me. A simple composition notebook, decked out in scrapbooking papers and personalized tabs. So off I went to pick up these simple supplies. I decided that this would also be a great opportunity to introduce this concept to my ten-year-old, so she selected her themed papers as well. The original post does a fantastic job of outlining the steps to put together this personalized journal...hers was a Christmas planner...but here are the basic steps that I followed:

 
basic supplies...composition notebook, scrapbook paper, ribbon to tie journal with, glue, and scissors

 

although hard to see here, ribbon is glued to outside of book so that it will wrap around it and be able to tie. front and backs are covered with a piece of patterned paper cut to fit.


 

more embellishments are added to the front and back covers to conceal the remaining surfaces. 

The journal was finished up by glueing another sheet to the inside and back covers to conceal the printed information. And lastly, I doubled over small scraps of patterned paper and glued them to the outside edge of individual sheets to divide the book into roughly thirds in order to have some tabbed dividers. I know, hard to visualize but the link to the original post is very clear if you check it out.

So the big question...how to use this beautiful little journal? And then it came to me. The Sunday School song "J - O - Y" whose chorus lyrics are:

Jesus first,
Yourself last,
And Others in between.

How perfect.

The tabs would be labeled J - Jesus...a place for praise and thankfulness for what Jesus has done.

The second tab would be O - Others...listing of ongoing prayer requests.

And the last tab would be Y - Yourself...how would you like Jesus to work in your own personal life.

So simple that even a child could understand which is exactly what I wanted for H-Bob. We decided to start a new page for each time the month changed and then review her entries weekly and add happy faces or hearts to those items that were answered prayers. Best idea in a long time.

If you've wanted something structured for yourself that you can use to track answered prayers and to keep others' requests in the forefront of your thoughts, this just might work for you. Plus it's a chance to be just a tiny bit crafty and creative even if you think you aren't. Have you put together anything similar? Has it helped? Would love to hear your thoughts.