Why Do You Journal?
00:00:00.000 | A listener named David in Bristol, Connecticut writes in, "Pastor John, over the years,
00:00:09.160 | the DesiringGod.org website has published a few excerpts from your decades of personal
00:00:14.280 | journals.
00:00:15.280 | For you, what exactly is the purpose of journaling in the Christian life?"
00:00:19.760 | I think about journaling in two pretty distinct ways, although they overlap.
00:00:25.280 | Number one is the diary kind of journal keeping.
00:00:30.940 | That means that you come to the end of your day and you take a few minutes and you narrate
00:00:36.440 | your life.
00:00:37.440 | You just write down the important things that happened during the day and maybe some comments
00:00:42.640 | about them.
00:00:43.640 | Each day, you sum up what happened.
00:00:46.840 | I think if you reflect on God's hand in all of that, this can be enormously valuable as
00:00:54.440 | a record of God's faithfulness and a record of your own failures and successes for your
00:01:00.920 | own humility and encouragement.
00:01:03.280 | For example, Psalm 105 says, "Remember the wondrous works that God has done."
00:01:10.040 | Well, goodness gracious, how many thousands of wondrous works in my life that God has
00:01:16.000 | done have I forgotten?
00:01:18.400 | But wouldn't it be wonderful if they were recorded and periodically I could dip in and
00:01:23.140 | remind myself of God's wonderful kindness to me over the years?
00:01:28.640 | Or in another Psalm 78, 7, it says, "Do not forget the works of God."
00:01:34.680 | So remember and don't forget.
00:01:37.480 | So yes to the diary kind of journaling for at least those kinds of reasons.
00:01:43.800 | Here's the other way I think about it.
00:01:45.560 | This is mainly the way I do it.
00:01:49.020 | Journaling is a kind of thought notebook for the purpose of insight clarification and insight
00:01:58.100 | preservation.
00:02:00.620 | This is not so much for recording what's going on in your life as what's going on in your
00:02:04.860 | head and your heart.
00:02:07.280 | Not as if they're separable.
00:02:08.280 | In fact, most of my discoveries of head clarification and heart clarification are because of things
00:02:14.440 | I'm going through as a dad or a husband or pastor or friend or something like that.
00:02:21.400 | Now of course, there are every manner of combination of those two ways of seeing journaling, life
00:02:28.280 | narration and thought preservation and clarification.
00:02:32.160 | I see what I do mainly in the second category, but very often it's life issues that prompt
00:02:41.720 | the insight.
00:02:42.720 | Let me just say a word about those two things, clarification of thought and preservation
00:02:48.960 | of thought.
00:02:50.640 | Not everyone is like me in this regard, but I think more are than know it.
00:02:56.520 | I think namely writing out your thoughts helps you know what you think.
00:03:04.320 | In fact, I've gone so far as to say sometimes, "I don't know what I think until I write it
00:03:09.280 | down."
00:03:10.280 | My mind is so muddled until I start to sort it out on paper or on the screen.
00:03:21.440 | Almost everything we're thinking through is more complex than I can hold in my head all
00:03:31.640 | at once.
00:03:33.560 | They say Einstein, I read this a few years ago and I thought, "Yeah, there are people
00:03:39.120 | like that."
00:03:40.120 | But I say Einstein's genius was that he could hold an idea in his mind for days and continually
00:03:50.560 | look at it from a hundred different angles.
00:03:54.960 | Well, not me.
00:03:57.760 | As soon as I'm on the third angle, the first one is starting to fade away and the connections
00:04:06.040 | between two and three and one are becoming so many and so tangled and interwoven.
00:04:15.280 | Everything is becoming an absolute jumble in my head.
00:04:20.040 | I have to sit down and write out the first thought, then the second thought, then the
00:04:27.240 | third thought.
00:04:28.600 | Amazingly, while I'm writing out one, two, and three, the connections between them become
00:04:36.320 | clearer and I can write those down and then those connections create other connections.
00:04:41.760 | Pretty soon, I'm thinking things I never would have begun to think had I not tried to put
00:04:46.720 | this down on paper.
00:04:47.720 | I would have just been lost in one big forest of muddled trees.
00:04:54.000 | Idea or thought clarification is a huge reason for journaling in a thought notebook.
00:05:01.000 | I would stress here that most of what I'm talking about here is Bible.
00:05:07.280 | I'm talking about what's the meaning of this passage?
00:05:11.000 | How does this passage relate to my marriage?
00:05:13.440 | How does this work with my daughter, with my sons in their situations?
00:05:19.040 | It's not kind of random theoretical stuff.
00:05:21.840 | I'm taking time to write about.
00:05:25.640 | Calvin wrote in the preface to Institutes, "I count myself to be among those who write
00:05:33.680 | as they learn and learn as they write."
00:05:36.840 | And I say, "Me too."
00:05:39.280 | So idea clarification is a huge reason for journaling for me.
00:05:44.840 | And then this last point, preservation.
00:05:49.240 | What a sad thing that God would illumine your mind one morning while you're having your
00:05:57.600 | devotions so that you saw something you had never seen before and it had a wonderful implication
00:06:05.200 | for worship and for life.
00:06:07.600 | And the next day, you could not remember what it was.
00:06:13.480 | That's bad stewardship of Holy Spirit illumination.
00:06:18.780 | And journaling is one way of preserving the gifts of God.
00:06:23.480 | And I'll just add one more thing.
00:06:26.800 | I think it's of huge significance for people in leadership to do this.
00:06:32.440 | Not only do leaders need to know clearly what they think, they need to say clearly.
00:06:41.340 | They need to express in clear and compelling language what they have thought.
00:06:46.680 | I think that's the essence of leadership.
00:06:49.520 | Think clearly about the future of your organization and the biblical foundations of it, and then
00:06:54.760 | articulate with compelling, clear, beautiful language the vision for the institution.
00:07:02.160 | Francis Bacon, I can't remember where I first heard this, but I checked it out online.
00:07:07.360 | Francis Bacon wrote, "Reading makes a full man.
00:07:13.840 | Conference," and he means conversation, "makes a ready man, and writing makes an exact man."
00:07:23.040 | Exact meaning, exact.
00:07:26.020 | He uses language with precision, which is the opposite of fog.
00:07:31.260 | Leaders that lead with fog are doing a disservice to their organization.
00:07:38.300 | They're going to drive their boat into an iceberg.
00:07:42.060 | But leaders whose mind is clear and who can express their ideas with precision and clarity
00:07:48.460 | steer the ship in the wonderful, lucid air of truth and openness.
00:07:55.860 | So I count journaling one of the most important habits of my life.
00:08:00.540 | Excellent.
00:08:01.540 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for the very good question, David.
00:08:05.040 | If you'd like to ask Pastor John a question of your own, please email it in to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:08:11.540 | And if you keep your question as brief and to the point as possible, I would be very
00:08:15.820 | grateful.
00:08:16.820 | And of course, we especially appreciate and welcome follow-up questions that come to mind
00:08:20.280 | after you listen to a previous episode in this podcast series.
00:08:23.980 | Well, we hear a lot of talk these days in Christian circles about idols.
00:08:28.820 | We may think of a golden calf or paganism, but what is a contemporary idol?
00:08:33.400 | What does it look like today?
00:08:34.400 | I'll ask Pastor John that question tomorrow.
00:08:36.820 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:37.820 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:08:39.620 | Bye.
00:08:40.120 | Bye.
00:08:41.120 | Bye.
00:08:42.120 | Bye.
00:08:43.120 | Bye.
00:08:43.120 | Bye.
00:08:44.120 | Bye.
00:08:45.120 | Bye.
00:08:46.120 | Bye.
00:08:46.120 | [BLANK_AUDIO]