The Spiritual Practice of Journaling
A conversation with my friend Ben Lee
This summer I’m working on a new resource for churches that includes some new guides on Listening to God. So, this month you’ll get a sneak preview of four practices for listening to God!
I was visiting a church this past year and sat near a sweet older woman who I quickly realized had lost the ability to think quietly to herself. Instead, her impressions of worship were spoken out loud and not particularly quietly. As the acolyte walked by, she said, “Wow, she’s tall!” After another observation she said, “I didn’t know I was going to say that.”
In my experience with spiritual journaling, this is one of its great gifts. As we begin to write, the inner thoughts that have stayed buried become uncovered, and we find ourselves proclaiming, “I didn’t know I was going to say that.”
The Interview
I have to admit, spiritual journaling is not a practice that I have done consistently beyond specific seasons in my life (like when my spiritual director guided me through the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises). So, for this newsletter I thought I would interview a friend who I know has a consistent and transformative spiritual journaling practice.
Ben Lee is the Pastor of Midway Locust Grove Church on the outskirts of Columbia, Missouri and the founder of Simplify Project. Ben and I met in our doctoral program and became fast friends. We share a love of the outdoors, particularly hunting and fishing. He’s been a thoughtful friend and the more I get to know him, the more I admire how his relationship with God drives his life and ministry in Columbia. Ben’s church is working through the Spiritual Listening Plan and taking the Listening to God section particularly serious.
Here’s our conversation:
Ben, thanks for being willing to share about your spiritual journaling practices. After you told me about your experiences, I knew others needed to hear about it. Can you give a brief overview of the daily spiritual journaling practice your church is doing?
Thanks, Luke. I’m grateful for the opportunity to share. After a full day of in-person training with you, our leadership team felt deeply compelled to enter a focused season of listening to God. We committed to 38 weeks of spiritual journaling, using the Ignatian Examen as our guide. Specifically, we drew from Mark Thibodeaux’s Reimagining the Ignatian Examen, adapting the prompts to use communal language by replacing “I” and “me” with “we” and “us.” We hoped to cultivate not just individual discernment but shared spiritual sensitivity.
Each member of our team received a printed set of prompts and a personal journal to use. The ask was simple but significant: set aside at least 10 minutes a day in stillness, silence, and solitude, not to speak, but to listen. The day’s examen prompt served as a kind of anchor, helping to re-center our attention whenever distractions arose. After this time of listening, we encouraged everyone to write a few lines about what they sensed, what they heard, felt, noticed, or experienced. Some days, the journaling might be a paragraph or more. Other days, it might be a single sentence: “I didn’t receive anything today.” And that’s okay. This isn’t a formula or a task to complete; it’s simply a posture of openness.
Ultimately, our daily journaling has become less about achieving insight and more about practicing availability, creating space to hear the gentle voice of God amidst our leadership and our lives.
That sounds amazing. What an awesome practice for a church leadership team to go through together. A lot of this idea emerged from your personal practice of spiritual journaling. Can you share a bit about your personal experience with spiritual journaling and how it's impacted your relationship with God and your approach to ministry?
Absolutely. My personal spiritual journaling practice actually began out of a struggle. As a 20-something, I found myself wrestling with both comprehension and retention when reading Scripture. I wanted to know God’s Word more deeply, but I often walked away from my Bible reading unsure of what I’d just read. So I started paraphrasing—taking 15 minutes or so each morning to rewrite the passage in my own words. That simple act helped me slow down, pay attention, and internalize what I was reading. It gave me a foothold in Scripture I hadn’t experienced before.
A couple of years later, as I began to implement more intentional times of prayer into my daily rhythms of grace, my journaling evolved. I started jotting down whatever I sensed the Holy Spirit might be speaking—sometimes just a phrase or a feeling, other times a fuller thought. Over time, this became a quiet and consistent rhythm: paraphrasing Scripture, followed by a few lines from prayerful reflection.
Those two practices—rewriting Scripture to better receive it and writing down what I discern in prayer—remain the mainstays of my spiritual journaling to this day. They’ve shaped the way I engage with God personally, and they’ve deeply impacted how I approach ministry. I lead more slowly, listen more carefully, and trust more fully that God is already at work—my job is to pay attention.
I love this. It's simple, but so powerful. Last question: what advice would you give to someone who is just getting started in spiritual journaling?
That’s a great question. My biggest piece of advice is start simple and stay consistent. You don’t need the perfect journal, the perfect words, or a profound experience every day. Just show up.
If you’re just getting started, I’d recommend beginning with two small steps—exactly where I started:
Paraphrase a short passage of Scripture. Pick a few verses and rewrite them in your own words. Don’t worry about getting it “right.” The goal isn’t to be clever—it’s to slow down and listen.
Jot down a few lines after prayer. After spending a few quiet moments with God, write down anything that stands out—a thought, a question, a phrase, a feeling. Some days it may feel like nothing. That’s okay. The point isn’t productivity—it’s presence.
Over time, these small practices create space for deeper awareness of God's presence.
Spiritual Journaling is one of the activities of the Spiritual Listening Plan. Click the link below to download the plan and look for the journaling activity in the left column.