Life Journal

What is the Life Journal?

The Life Journal is how we are learning to hear God speak through his word each day. Part of the Life Journal is a Bible reading plan, but it’s way more than a reading plan. Inside the pages of your Life Journal are a method that can help you hear God speak to you through His Word.

We believe so much in the power of learning to hear God speak through his word, we want to give you one free! You can pick one up in the lobby on any Sunday, or you can request one below.

The goal of the Life Journal is for you to become a self feeder on God’s word and to experience spiritual growth in your life like never before. If you will get in the word, the word will get in you. That’s when things change in your life.

Underneath this is the conviction that God still speaks today. He didn’t stop when he stopped writing the Bible, he still speaks. The primary way God speaks to you is through the word. The Holy Spirit is promised to guide you in all truth, and as you read the word that’s what he does.

I believe God uses preachers and podcasts, but you’re getting it second hand when you get it from someone else. And that’s ok as a part of your spiritual diet, but that’s not ok if that’s all you get. You need to learn to feed yourself on the word.

Life journal is one of the best tools that I’ve found to become a self feeder. The reading plan is engaging, the method for listening to God as you read is simple and the results are amazing! Born out of a pastor in Hawaii’s own journey into spiritual burnout, he came to realize that energy, hard work, effort and ability can only take you so far. If you’re constantly giving but never receiving them you are headed for burnout. Out of his journey came this reading plan and method for slowing down to hear God speak to you through his word.

Scriptures about your investment in your own spiritual life and growth. The word is the primary way this happens.

Frequently Asked Questions

It’s okay. Don’t be ashamed. Everybody struggles at times to understand what they’re reading. The important thing to ask: “is Jesus transforming me from the inside out?”

Jesus said the goal in reading the word is to act on what you do understand. As you do what you do understand, then as you revisit what you don’t understand, you’ll learn more and more by the Holy Spirit.

Life happens, and you’ll miss sometime. You may even wake up and realize you haven’t read in a while. That’s ok. Resist the urge to go back and check all the boxes. Your connection with Jesus is much more important than checking off a box to say that you did it all!

You can always go back and read or listen to any passages that you miss if you want to do that.

There are groups of people at Bayside who are doing the life journal together. Join them, or grab a few folks from your small group, others you know at Bayside, or maybe even somebody else you’d want to ask to try it with you. Let us know if we can help you get started with a Life Journal group.

The goal of bible study is to become more like Christ. Often, what we need most is to simply obey one truth at a critical moment. Choosing to follow one truth each day isn’t too hard, but when you do this 365 times over a year, these small decisions make you more and more like Jesus.

This moves you from simply learning about God to communicating with the person of God. SOAP (the acronym in the Life Journal) reminds us that when you interact with the Bible, it’s not just a book, you are interacting with God himself.

Request a Life Journal or share what God is doing in your Life!