Who are our prayer journals for?

Hi! Nice to meet you! This post is like a first date where we get to see if we’d make a good match. Can you see yourself taking our prayer journal home to meet your pens and post-its? 😂Or should we cut our losses and find you a cab home? We aren’t about to waste your time so we’re diving into the things you really want to know. Who are our prayer journals for? And does it fit your goals? 

Let’s grab a table for two, some delicious bread, skip the small talk, and get down to it! 

Our new brand and inspiration hold a lot more than just a pretty aesthetic. It paints a picture of what excites me about the possibilities of prayer. 

Besides the fact that I just love the aesthetic of a preppy library, I love the idea of going far back into the rows and rows of shelves of books and just getting lost in them. I can still remember going into our old downtown library as a kid and finding the perfect spot to perch and look at books. It was often by a sunny window on the second floor in a section where people didn’t go much.

It’s like this secret place that is quiet and full of possibilities. We don’t know what we’ll get when we get there, but we come expectant that it will be good.

We know you’re likely praying with kids waking, laundry beeping, text messages going off and I’m really thankful that our journals were designed to help prayer happen anywhere, but what we really hope is that you’ll feel invited into a deeper place of being alone with God. 

In my book Pray Confidently and Consistently, I closed it sort of apologizing for implying that prayer can always happen off the cuff over the years. In an effort to encourage someone in a busy season, it might have come across that our best prayer lives can happen when we give God 5 minutes of a car ride each day.

I wanted to encourage anyone that prayer is possible no matter how full our hands or calendars are. And it’s absolutely true, but I think the depth so many of us long for won’t come if we’re expecting it to happen in drive-by moments with the Lord. As busy as Jesus was, He made so much time to get up early and be alone with Father.  And if Christ prioritized that, how much more should we? 

The most searched phrase on our site is feeling distant from God. If that’s you right now. If you’re craving more, know that it might look like a “set apart” time with the Lord. That’s our big hope for you! That prayer won’t just be something we include in the cracks of our day, but it becomes the foundation for it. 

Our mission is to not simply fit prayer into your life. Our mission is for prayer to anchor your life.

Here’s who our prayer journals are for:

1. The person who needs white space to think. 

You won’t find design elements in the pages of our journals. No scrolly designs or floral details. No bright colors or breakout boxes. Just a clean white space so you can focus. I get so distracted by clutter in my home and pages are no different. Instead of ping-ponging to different parts of the page, you can settle your eyes on one category at a time. Plus, if you’ll allow for some cheese, your very own handwriting is the design element. We didn’t want design to compete with the beauty that you’re going to splash across the pages.  If color and stickers or tabs make your heart sing though, this journal can totally accommodate that! We just start with a really clean space for anyone who needs it to focus best.

2. The person who wants her prayers in a sacred place. 

This may just be my own personal hangup, but I can’t wrap my head around having a box in my planner as the place where I pray. And it’s weird because I love the efficiency in theory. I love the idea of one notebook but the thought of revisiting old prayers and seeing what God is doing while sifting through Costco grocery lists or reminders to get my oil changed feels super distracting and not as “set apart” as I want my prayer life to be. I cannot tell you how much I love nestling in at the end of a journal reading through old prayers and requests and seeing what the Lord has done that I might have missed. It’s a treasure to me! Here are my prayer journals through the last 10 years. I wish I could sit and read you the stories of God’s faithfulness in the pages to encourage your own prayers.

3. The person who wishes they were a DIY-er but isn’t.

For months, I tried to keep a blank notebook for prayer requests. It’s not that hard to keep up a list, right? That notebook collected dust even though I was desperate to pray! Desperate, y’all. You know my story. Pregnant woman. Feeler of all the feels. Self-diagnosed hypochondriac. On the verge of panic attacks. I was a mess but still couldn’t keep up a simple homemade format. If you love the idea of bullet journaling but know it’s just never gonna happen, this ready-made, but flexible format is for you. It feels silly to need a journal that literally tells you the day to turn the page (Oh hello October!) but it’s helped me and thousands of others stay consistent better than a blank notebook could.

4. The person who is expectant. 

We have 3 journal options that sort of act like a track and allow you to grow your prayer life from non-existent to consistent. For the person who desires increasingly more, we’ve got something for you with our 3 journals. Compose is just 6 months of our monthly format. You can focus on developing a habit of “composing” your prayer. 😉 Next, we have the Rhythms. This is our yearly spiral journal that includes 12 months of prompts in addition to some lined pages for daily gratitudes and a few written-out prayers a week. This expands beyond the list and adds the habit of writing out actual prayers. Our last journal is our Signature which has 6 months of prompts in addition to more writing space, enough pages to write 29 prayers for the month. Honestly, as my own prayer life has grown, I’ve desired more so it’s been a natural progression to add. We’ll see if God has more in store! We even have a quiz to help figure out which would be best if you aren’t sure.

5. The person who’s a bit sentimental. 

If a Target journal works for you, God bless! That’s awesome! If you appreciate a well-crafted notebook specifically designed to inspire you to pray, we know just the one for you. 😉 Like I said, I love efficiency but for some reason, with my prayer life, I am perfectly okay with making it set apart and special. In my mind, my prayer journal is not a Swiss army knife with all the bells and whistles. It’s the fancy engraved, marble-inlay pocket knife you’ll pass down for generations. It’s timeless. And fun fact: You’d think with a pricey notebook that our customers are mostly upper or middle class but the truth is, for many, our journals are the one thing they splurge on each year. Why? Because they have seen what happens when they use them. That is the most humbling thing to know so many who see our products as the thing to splurge on and it’s one reason we work so hard to help you get the most out of them! 

When I first started 10 years ago. There weren’t any boutique prayer journals. Family Christian Bookstore probably had a few options, but it was a much different terrain. Sharing them originally was sort of a fluke and not intended to become a business so I didn’t have this big mission. Just a desperate need for my own prayer life to deepen. But over the years, as we’ve felt the squeeze with competition, it’s been vital to keep coming back to God. Who are we for? Who are we not for? What’s our end goal with these? And He’s been so generous to give lots of clarity. We aren’t for everyone and thank the good Lord, He isn’t expecting us to be. But we hope you find what you’re looking for. We hope you take a chance and invest in your prayer life, no matter if that’s with us or someone else. 

Just like our brand promise says, we believe prayer has the power to change our lives, our homes, and our communities. And if you haven’t experienced that yet, we’d love to support you!