"The great thing is prayer. Prayer itself. If you want a life of prayer, the way to get it is by praying... You start where you are and you deepen what you already have."
- Thomas Merton

"More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of."
- Alfred Lord Tennyson

He prays well who is so absorbed with God that he does not know he is praying.
-Francis de Sale

"There are four ways God answers prayer:  No, not yet;  No, I love you too much;  Yes, I thought you would never ask;  Yes, and here's more."
Anne Lewis

Spiritual practices are specific exercises, methods, or techniques one engages to learn and keep a more general discipline. For example, one might be engaged in discernment and the spiritual practices they might use to discern God’s will would be prayer, lectio divina, journaling, or spiritual direction. It is important to understand that disciplines and practices, like those on this site, are not understood as a means to make God love us more than God already does; there is no earning God’s love. Spiritual exercises do open to us to hear more clearly the depth of love God has for us and help us to put our trust in it. Spiritual practices help us consciously develop the spiritual disciplines of our lives. Spiritual disciplines help to open windows into our relationship to God and openness to receive God’s grace.

The descriptions of practices on this site are only here to introduce you to these practices, they are not meant as complete knowledge or instructions. All Christians who desire to grow in their relationship with God should participate within a faith community which can provide guidance and spiritual direction in using these practices. One spiritual practice many have found helpful in giving focus and direction to their spiritual journeys is a prayer journal.

A prayer journal is similar to keeping a regular spiritual journal, except the focus of your writing and other activity is about your prayer life. Some individuals use their regular journals as their prayer journals, while others may keep only a prayer journal or keep two separate journals. A prayer journal helps us to gain a better insight into our prayer life, to examine how we pray, experiment with and learn new methods for prayer, focus on what we pray about, how God answers our prayers, and to develop our prayer practices which help us to deepen God’s presence within our life.

There is evidence of a significant hunger among us, a hunger of the heart and mind. ...It is as if many of us were becoming aware that something is missing from our lives ...a yearning for something which could and even should be ours to have and to enjoy.
Hungry Hearts, Hungry Minds: The Quest for a Reformed Spirituality

A prayer journal helps us to stay objective about our prayer lives. We record the frequency of our prayers, what we prayer for or whom we pray for, how we prayer, the results of our prayers and the different ways God choices to reveal to us God’s response to our prayers. Often how we view our prayer lives depends upon how we are feeling on any given day. If we are feeling optimistic today, we concentrate on the positive results of our prayers or we don’t pray because we are feeling optimistic. Humans tend to turn to prayer more frequently when they are not feeling good about their lives, except when we are praying out of desperation we tend to view our prayer results with a higher degree of pessimism and frequently miss God’s voice speaking to us. Maintaining a prayer journal helps to view our prayers more holistically and objectively.

People keeping prayer journals will frequently write out their prayers, write prayers for specific occasions or events in their lives, and write lists of what and whom we pray for each day. We can also record God’s response to our prayers, for example what happened as the result of your prayers for a specific person or event. Record your thoughts and feelings about how God responded to particular prayer requests. Maintaining a prayer journal can be a valuable tool which aids us in understanding our prayer life and how we nurture our relationship with God and reveals to us the multitude of ways that God shows love toward us.

"Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy."
(1 Peter 1:15-16)

Spiritual discipline is about being intentional in our learning, so we are formed, conformed, and transformed, in order to share in God’s holiness. We need daily spiritual disciplines rather than sporadic bursts of inspiration or enthusiasm. Spiritual disciplines are a means of receiving grace, not exercises in self-improvement. For example, a disciple of Christ can be compared to an apprentice learning a trade or craft from a master. Such learning requires a relationship between the master who knows the way of life (discipline) and the learner (disciple). The master leads the disciple through a process of learning (the discipline) until the disciple can imitate or live like the master. In general, Christian spiritual disciplines would be things, such as, prayer, study, honoring the body, hospitality, sabbath keeping, discernment, forgiveness, healing, worship, etc. Spiritual discipline is about the approach we take to ground ourselves in God and what we do with God’s way of relating to us and how we respond to God.