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I carry my journal with me everywhere I go.

Writing in it has helped me develop a firm faith and deeper relationship with God. There's nothing like being able to go to a quiet place, where nobody can interrupt me, and flesh out everything that's on my mind— even if it doesn't make sense.

That's one cool thing about writing in a closed book. You don't have to tell anybody. It's just between you and God. It's like therapy — it's confessional, it's healing, it's redeeming.

Journaling also helps me process things better, to slow down and take time to listen to God. And it helps me retain spiritual truths because I've written them down, I've thought about them, I've reflected on them.

I talk to God a lot in my journal. Recently, I wrote:

I want desperately to be found approved by You. So then, what do I have but faith in You — that You are what You said: gracious, slow to anger, quick in keeping Your promises. … I put my blind faith in what I cannot see. A crucifix untouched by my hand, yet splintering to my heart. I know that You are!

I cower now at the gentle call of Your spirit in quiet places. I grow frightened at the thought of Your power — healing, loving, resurrecting. How then should I respond when I see Your face? How could I know You more? What could I even begin to fathom?

I am a fool. My tongue, my ambition, my works … all chaff in the wind.

My journaling isn't always that intense. Sometimes my journal just reads like a diary. Sometimes it's like an outline of a book of the Bible. Sometimes it's more artistic, like poetry or tidbits of a song I'm working on.

But whatever I write, I sometimes go back and read it later, just to see how God worked at that time in my life. If I'm struggling with depression or self-esteem, I can go back and see how I dealt with it before— what I was thinking, what Scriptures may have helped.

I was looking through some old journals recently, and it's incredible how my thought processes have changed in the last few years. My character has matured in some ways, and it's completely regressed in others. That's hard to admit. But that's what journaling does for you: It's kind of like looking into a mirror.

Sometimes, something from my journal ends up in one of my songs. I don't usually plan it that way, but I appreciate it when it happens.

And when it does, it's kind of like the fingerprint of God, because I feel like those are his words more than mine.

Jennifer wrote most of the songs on Kansas, her first album, from prayers in her journal when a friend suggested she put them to music.

Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today International/Campus Life magazine.
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