Prayer Journal Ideas
These prayer journal ideas are some things you can use during your prayer time with the Lord. Prayer is so vital in our relationship with God and is expressed in the Bible as something important that we need to do every single day.
Luke 6:12-13 says, “One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night.”
If Jesus, the perfect, and Holy son of God and who is God, prayed all night, this verse truly shows the importance of our need of communication with our Heavenly Father. And that is called prayer!
“But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.” – Matthew 6:6
Your time in prayer keeps your eyes on the Lord in all situations and grows our relationship with Him. Your prayers are powerful, and a prayer journal is such a great way to keep you focused, organized, and dedicated to your prayer time.
“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” – James 5:16
There are many ways you can utilize your prayer journal using these ideas.
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Prayer Journals I Love and Use:
- When you’re thinking of prayer journal ideas, and how to use these ideas, you will first need a prayer journal. This one is so good. It’s organized and has so many features to it. I absolutely love it. It has a spot for prayer tracking, a place to copy scripture, adoration (giving thank to God), confession, things on your heart, a “guide me” and “teach me” space for you to write what you need God to guide you on and teach you, answered prayers, prayer requests, what you are grateful for, and application. It is amazing and I use it!
- You can also use just a blank journal for a prayer journal. I love, and use both!
Other Prayer Journals and Supplies I love:
- Prayer Journal for Women
- If you’re willing to spend a little more, this Coffee and Bible Time Prayer Journal is gorgeous! I think this is my next purchase!
11 Prayer Journal Ideas
Down below are a list of 11 possible prayer journal ideas. Sometimes I use a prayer journal with set spaces to do certain things, like the one I showed you above, but sometimes I like to do my own thing in a blank journal!
These are great prayer journal ideas that you can do in any journal during your prayer time!
1. Bullet Prayer Requests
During your prayer time, writing down your prayer requests can help you stay on task, and stay organized.
This doesn’t have to take long it can be a bullet point as short as “family”. This way when you pray you know what topic you needed to pray for, and you can just let God lead you in praying for your family, or whatever bullet points you have!
This keeps everything organized, and that way you aren’t as easily distracted when praying!
2. Writing Out Your Prayers
Instead of using bullet points with a short description of what you want to pray for, you can write out your prayers sentence by sentence.
This is the best when you can’t get a word out and are upset, or you want to document what’s going on in your life. You can just pour your heart out to your Heavenly Father.
This is one of my favorite prayer journal ideas because you can look back on your prayer in a few months or even years and see how God answered your prayer.
It has definitely increased my faith in the Lord!
3. Write Down Your Short-Term Goal
In your prayer journal, you can write down your short-term goals, such as what do you want to accomplish in the next year, or the next 5 years.
Do you want to start a healthier lifestyle? Start a hobby? Maybe you just graduated and would love to get the job you have always wanted!
Once you have a short-term goal down, pray and write about how God speaks to you on how to accomplish this goal. You can also write verses that you want to meditate on as you try to work on this goal.
This is great to look back on as well and see how God has worked, and how God has made a way for you to accomplish this goal!
4. Write Down Your Long-Term Goal
This prayer journal idea is similar to the short-term goal, but a long-term goal would be 5 years or more. So where do you want to be in 5 or 10 years?
Do you want to write a book and become an author? A worship leader? Whatever dreams you have, give the to God! He is the one who will help you fulfill it as long as it fits His will for your life.
I have so many dreams that I get so overwhelmed by, and have no idea how I will accomplish them, but I know that God is the one who will help me get accomplish those dreams He has set in my heart.
Apart from Him we can all do nothing, but with Him working in us, He can do so much more than we could ask or imagine!
“Now all glory to God, who is able through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” – Ephesians 3:20
5. Write Out a Verse and Meditate On It
This is a prayer journal idea I love to do in the mornings. And it works really well with busy mornings! Because let’s face it, mornings can be crazy!
You write down a verse, and just write what you learn and take away from it. Then pray about how you can apply this verse throughout your day. It’s powerful, and an excellent way of starting your morning off with God’s word!
You can also pray God’s word. I love to pray verses over my family, and friends, and myself.
It also helps in memorizing scripture! If you write it down, then write about it, you are so much more likely to remember it!
6. Write Out Godly Characteristics
When you study the Bible, you come to know who God is, and all that He did for us. A prayer journal idea that has really impacted my prayer time, is writing out characteristics that you see in God, and what characteristics he tells us we should portray.
For example, “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” – Galatians 5:22-23
You could write this down, and even draw this out for 9 days! You could go through each fruit of the spirit, write down the definition or your own definition of them, and then ask the Lord to show you how to have these characteristics.
You can do this with any verses, or any bible study you are doing.
7. Doodling or drawing
Now this is not my thing! I can barely draw a stick person.
But for some, including a few of my friends, this is an excellent way of expressing prayers and thoughts in your prayer journal. It’s absolutely amazing. They just doodle whatever they want to pray!
Whether it’s an actual picture, or a prayer/verse in calligraphy, this is a gorgeous idea to use in your prayer journal. You can do with this whatever you want to. You are the artist!
8. Notetaking
During church, writing down sermon notes is a great prayer journal idea. This is something you can go back to as a reference for the week, and pray on how to apply this sermon to your life!
There have been so many times that our Pastor has talked about things where the timing is absolutely orchestrated by God. I’ve either needed that particular sermon right then, or something in the week made me go back and reflect on it.
9. Using Daily or Morning Journal Prompts
Daily or Morning Journal Prompts are just already thought-of topics or questions that you pick and just start writing about.
I use daily or morning journal prompts, but love to tie them around Jesus. Almost like a letter to Him!
I can show you how I use these here!
10. Dreams You Want To Accomplish
This is very similar to the goals you want to accomplish, but I just love expressing to the Lord the deepest desires of my heart, and what I want to do to help people come to know Him on paper.
Maybe, just like how I wrote in the long-term goal sections, you want to write a book, become a worship leader, or start a blog!
Maybe you have the desire to be a wife, but God hasn’t introduced you to the right person yet. I still have these in my prayer journal from high school and college, and it is an absolute treasure to look back on. Now that I am married to my best friend, the one God without a doubt put in my path, it is so precious looking back on those prayers and seeing how God orchestrated us meeting and getting married.
Or maybe you want to become a mom, but God hasn’t brought about the perfect timing.
Whatever it is, bring it to God. Cry out to Him about your desires, and what you need from Him. He is so faithful, and he hears the prayers of the righteous.
“The Lord is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayers of the righteous.” – Proverbs 15:29
Pray that your desires would match His will and ask him to guide you and lead you through these dreams and desires.
11. What You Are Thankful For
This is so important during prayer. Thanking God, and giving him gratitude for all He has done, all He is doing (even when we don’t see it), and all He will do is so not only important, but it is right there in God’s Word where we are told to do so!
“Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.” – Colossians 4:2
“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done. Then You will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 4:6-7
There are so many more verses about prayer, but Philippians 4:6-7 sticks with me. How amazing is it that we have communication with our Heavenly Father?
I am forever grateful that Jesus died on the cross, and 3 days he rose again defeating the grave!
After defeating the grave in Acts 1:1-11 it talks about how He gave the Holy Spirit when he ascended into Heaven. Now we have direct communication with Him no matter what time it is, or where we are.
In Conclusion to Prayer Journal Ideas
I hope you will use these prayer journal ideas during your prayer time. I know they have been great in helping me stay dedicated and on task during my prayer time. Have a great day, friends!
Related to Ideas for Prayer Journaling
Morning Journal Prompts to Start Your Day Out With a Better Mindset
How to Have Quiet Time With God