What to write
in a prayer journal

The blank page is not really the problem. Most people who stall at a prayer journal know roughly what they want to say — they stall because they don't know what the book is for, and so every entry has to justify itself from scratch.

What follows is the short answer: there are about seven things that belong in one, and one that quietly ruins it. If you want the setup decisions instead — size, format, where it lives — those are in how to start a prayer journal.

Write it to be prayed, not to be read.

The seven things that actually go in

Requests, in plain language. Not the version you'd say aloud in a group. The plain one. A request you've dressed up is a request you'll be embarrassed to find later, and embarrassment is what makes people stop opening the book.

Answers, when they arrive. This is the entry most people skip and it's the one that makes the whole thing worth keeping — the argument for dating them is in the starting guide, and I won't repeat it here.

One line of Scripture. Not a passage. One line, copied by hand, from whatever you read that morning. Copying is slower than reading, and that is the entire point.

Confession, in as few words as you can manage. Brevity here is not avoidance. A long written account of your own failure tends to become an essay about yourself, which is a different activity wearing the same clothes.

Gratitude — but specific. "Thankful for my family" is a category, not a thought. "Thankful that she called on Tuesday" is a thing that happened. The specific ones are also the only ones that still mean anything when you read them in a year.

People, by name. A list of names you pray through is the oldest and most durable structure in this practice, and it survives the weeks when nothing else does.

Decisions you're carrying. Written as questions, not as arguments. A decision written as an argument is one you have already made and are seeking approval for.

The one thing that ruins a prayer journal

Other people's private business, written down in detail.

It happens naturally. You pray for a friend, the reason is specific and serious, and it goes on the page. Do that for six months and you have a document that cannot be left on a kitchen table — which means it lives in a drawer, which means you stop opening it. Worse, you begin pre-editing as you write, and a journal you are editing for an imagined reader has stopped being prayer.

The fix is small. Names and one word. Dave — work. You know what it means; nobody else does. The page stays honest and the book stays somewhere you'll actually pick it up.

Blank page or prompts

Both work, for different people, and it isn't a question of discipline. If you sit down with a blank page and a sentence arrives, use plain paper and stop reading buying guides. If you sit down and nothing arrives for four minutes running, a prompt isn't a crutch — it's what gets the first sentence out, after which most people don't need it.

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What it should look like after a year

Not tidy. A prayer journal that looks good after a year is usually one that was being performed rather than used. What you want is a book with a few pages you've come back to repeatedly, some entries you'd rather nobody read, several requests you no longer care about, and a handful of answers written in different ink from the request.

That last category is the one that changes how people pray — not because it proves anything, since you can argue about causes as long as you like, but because it is very hard to go on believing nothing is happening while looking at your own handwriting saying otherwise.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. Philippians 4:6