Do you find that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day? If you’ve got a family, especially young ones, it feels like you’re incessantly forgetting this, late for that, and it’s not as if it gets any easier as they get older. ‘Hey, can you run me here, pick me up from there?’ Sure, if you’re single life may be less complicated, but there’s always work, that nagging feeling that you ought to be working late just to show you’re a serious contender for promotion, or maybe you should be bringing more work home with you. And then there’s your social life, which can be like a runaway wheel, a bunch of stuff that you feel you absolutely have to do. So where does God fit into all this? Once a week at church? Really? Is that it?

We all live in the physical world. We’ve all got responsibilities, to our family, our friends, our work. There is stuff that we simply have to do, but none of it, no, none of it is as important as spending time, one to one, with your creator. You’ve got to carve out that sacred space, a space in your daily routine where nothing is going to interrupt your time with God. How you do this will depend on your commitments. Getting up a little earlier works well. Your mind is fresh and spiritual reflection is a wonderful way to start the day, but if you’ve got young children, that option, of course, is a non-starter. Maybe you can make a space during the day, great, but you’ve got to make sure that anyone who might interrupt you understands that this is sacred time. Turn that phone off, shut that door, it’s just you and the Lord.

Another good time can be in the evening. You can reflect on the day’s events and the peace that the Lord will bring to your heart is sure to make for a good night’s sleep. What you don’t want is to be falling asleep over your journal, so maybe you should turn off that T.V. a little earlier and give your soul some real nourishment.

Do you need to journal every day? Well, there are no hard and fast rules here, expect the ones you make for yourself. Keeping a Christian journal is a spiritual discipline. You know that if you have the attitude, ‘I’ll do it when I find the time,’ you can be pretty sure that you’ll hardly ever do it. So, how long should you spend writing your Christian journal? Again, that’s going to depend on you, but to start with, try a session between 15 minutes and an hour. You may just want to sit for ten minutes or more to allow the noise of the world to subside and your mind to clear. Our journals provide you with a structure that you may find helpful: a daily prayer, a gratitude, a reflection and most importantly a Biblical affirmation. Keep your Bible by your side, keep it open, and listen to the Word of God.