Journaling, a goal for the new year

Journaling allows you to know yourself a bit better-and much more.

"Unless we spend as much time looking at God as we spend looking at our self, our knowing of our self will simply draw us further and further into an abyss of self-fixation."

Thoughts and feelings, inscribed in black and white, allow you the opportunity to step back and be objective enough to move forward, make positive changes, and avoid repeating past mistakes.

Journaling is a practice in itself, but also a method for engaging in other practices: worship, prayer, self-examination, confession.

A journal is a place where we can (among other things) record the activity of God in our lives.
And one easy way to understand yourself is to keep a journal to write your thoughts, your prayers, and your fears. In the very act of writing, you will discover yourself. Things you don't expect will flow out when you put a pen to paper.

Journaling can also be a place to listen to God and practice self-examination-which is an honest, God-guided look at your actions and motivations. Journaling about what we've read in Scripture, or when we've seen God at work in our lives, can help us to get to know God and focus on him-a better use of our awareness. Knowing ourselves through journaling won't do us any good unless we also get to know who God is.

"People who have never developed a deep personal knowing of God will be limited in the depth of their personal knowing of themselves," Benner writes. "Failing to know God, they will be unable to know themselves, as God is the only context in which their being makes sense."

(quotes from)
Who Are You? A Journey in Journaling
by Keri Wyatt Kent