Journaling with Scripture, a simple way to remember what God has said

Journaling is not a requirement of the Christian life. No verse commands it, and many faithful believers have never kept one. But writing with the Bible open is a good and old help, and for a lot of people it is the difference between reading a verse and keeping it. The practice is simple. You write the verse. You write what it says. You write a prayer. You write one thing to do. Four lines, ten minutes, and the word has moved from the page into your hands.

Why bother? Because forgetting is the ordinary condition of the human heart. Scripture says so again and again, and its answer, more often than not, is to remember, and to write it down. Moses told Israel to bind God’s words on their hands and write them on their doorposts. A psalmist wrote so that people not yet born could praise the LORD. Mary treasured up what she had seen and pondered it. A journal is your doorpost, your pile of stones by the river, your quiet place to ponder.

God’s people have always written things down

These words I am commanding you today are to be upon your hearts. And you shall teach them diligently to your children and speak of them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as reminders on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates.

— Deuteronomy 6:6–9

Notice the direction. The words are to be on the heart first; the writing on doorposts and gates serves the heart, not the other way around. Writing is a servant of remembering. That is a good way to think of a journal. It is not the point. It keeps the point in front of your eyes.

When God gave Habakkuk a hard vision, His first instruction was practical: “Write down this vision and clearly inscribe it on tablets, so that a herald may run with it” (Habakkuk 2:2). Write it clearly, so that it can be carried. What is written can travel, into next week and next year, when the feeling that came with it has faded.

And the psalmist knew that writing outlives the writer: “Let this be written for the generation to come, so that a people not yet created may praise the LORD” (Psalm 102:18). Your journal will probably not be read by generations, but the principle holds. What you write down about God’s faithfulness is available to you later in a way that what you merely felt is not.

Remembering is the heart of it

The Bible’s word for what a journal does is remember.

I will remember the works of the LORD; yes, I will remember Your wonders of old. I will reflect on all You have done and ponder Your mighty deeds.

— Psalm 77:11–12

Psalm 77 is a psalm of distress. The writer cannot sleep, cannot speak, and wonders whether God’s love has ended. The turn comes at these verses, when he decides to remember. He does not talk himself out of the trouble. He recalls, deliberately, what God has done before. A journal gives you that material. On a dark morning you can open to a bright one and read what you wrote.

Moses asked Israel to do the same: “Remember that these forty years the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness” (Deuteronomy 8:2). All the way. Forty years of mostly ordinary days, seen in hindsight as one long leading. That is the view a journal gives.

When Israel crossed the Jordan, God had them build a memorial of twelve stones, and the reason given is worth quoting.

In the future, when your children ask, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’ you are to tell them, ‘The waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters were cut off.’ Therefore these stones will be a memorial to the Israelites forever.”

— Joshua 4:6–7

Stones by a river are a journal written in rock. They exist so that a question gets asked and a story gets told.

Mary gives the gentlest picture of the practice: “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Treasured and pondered. Not analyzed, not published. Kept, and turned over. That is the spirit to write in.

The four lines

Here is the method. Keep it this simple for at least a month before you add anything.

Write the verse. Copy out, by hand if you can, one verse or a short phrase from your reading. Not the whole passage; the line that caught you. Writing it out slows you down and makes you notice each word. This is one plain way to hide the word in your heart, as the psalmist says: “I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You” (Psalm 119:11).

Write what it says. In one or two sentences, in your own words, say what the verse means in its context. Who is speaking, to whom, about what. This step keeps you honest. It is easy to take a warm phrase and make it mean whatever you want. Writing the plain sense first protects you from that.

Write a prayer. Two or three lines to God in response. Thank Him, ask Him, confess to Him, tell Him what you do not understand. Address Him directly. This is where reading becomes conversation.

Write one thing to do. One. Small and concrete, something you can do today. Call the person. Forgive the thing. Stop the habit for one day. Say the kind word. If the verse does not seem to ask anything of you, write “remember this” and move on. Do not manufacture applications.

That is the whole practice. Four lines. Over a year you will have a few hundred of them, and they will be a record of what God said to you through His word and what you did about it.

How to begin

Get a plain notebook. Nothing fancy, because fancy notebooks make you afraid to write badly in them. Put it with your Bible so you do not have to go looking for it.

Tie it to a reading you already do. If you read a psalm in the morning, write the four lines after the psalm. Do not add a new time slot; attach it to one that exists.

Date each entry, and every month or so, read the month back. This is where the practice pays. You will see themes you did not notice day by day, prayers that were answered, things to do that you did and things you did not. Psalm 103 tells the soul to “not forget all His kind deeds” (Psalm 103:2). Reading back is one way to obey that.

And if you miss a week, or a month, simply start again on the next line. There is no streak to protect. There is only the next verse.

Where Christians differ

Some believers find that writing helps them pray and remember; others find it turns devotion into homework and would rather sit quietly or pray aloud. Both are faithful, and the Bible commands neither a journal nor its absence. What it commands is that God’s words be on your heart, that you remember His works, and that you do what the word says. Journaling is one road to that. If it helps you walk, take it. If it becomes a burden, set it down without guilt and keep walking another way.

A few Christians are cautious about journaling because in some circles it has been used to record supposed messages from God as if they carried the authority of Scripture. That is a real concern, and the four-line method answers it. You write the verse, not a new word. Your prayer is yours; the Scripture is His.

Keep the stones by the river

A journal, in the end, is a pile of stones by the river. It exists so that on a later day someone, probably you, will ask what these mean, and the answer will be a story of what the LORD has done.

So write the verse. Write what it says. Write a prayer. Write one thing to do. Then close the book, go and do the thing, and bring what you are learning into your church and your prayers. The word is meant to be on your heart. The notebook just helps it stay there.