How to Start Bible Journaling with NIV Journal the Word Bible

If you have been wanting to start Bible journaling but feel a little unsure where to begin, I understand. I lead a Tuesday morning women's Bible study at my church in Conway, Arkansas, and for years I told myself I was not the artistic type, so journaling was not for me. Then a friend showed me her NIV Journal the Word Bible from Zondervan, with its wide margins full of her handwriting, and I realized journaling is not about drawing well. It is about slowing down long enough to let a verse sit with you. This guide walks you through how to start, step by step, with the same method I now use in my own quiet time around 6 AM in my recliner by the living room window. I am sixty-one years old, I have never been crafty, and if I can keep this habit for over a year, you can too.

You do not need special pens, a craft table, or artistic talent. You need a Bible with room to write, a pen that does not bleed through the page, and about fifteen quiet minutes. The NIV Journal the Word Bible gives you the first part; I will help you with the rest. Everything I share here comes from what I have actually done in my own quiet time and what I have watched work for the women in my Tuesday group, not from a Pinterest board.

Step 1: Choose Your First Passage on Purpose

Do not open to page one and try to journal the whole book of Genesis. That is the fastest way to quit. I know because I tried it. The first time I attempted journaling, I started on page one with Genesis 1, wrote two sentences, and felt like I was back in Sunday school trying to produce a perfect assignment. I put the Bible down and did not pick it up again for six months. The second time, I started with Psalm 23, and that is the only reason the habit stuck.

Psalm 23 works as a starting passage because you already know it well enough that you can stop worrying about understanding it and start noticing what it actually says. That is the shift journaling creates. You read a familiar verse and suddenly see a word you have skimmed past for thirty years. For me it was a single word I had read hundreds of times. I wrote that word in the margin and circled it, and I still cannot tell you why it stopped me that morning, only that it did.

Write the reference at the top of the margin, then read the passage three times. Once to hear it, once to see it, once to ask what it has to do with your Tuesday. Then write one sentence about what stood out. One sentence is enough on your first day. My first entry was exactly one sentence, written in pencil because I was still afraid of making a mistake. Now I use pen, and I do not worry about mistakes at all.

Step 2: Keep Your Tools Simple

You need exactly three things: the Bible, one pen, and a bookmark. I use a fine-tip gel pen because it writes smoothly on the thin pages of the NIV Journal the Word Bible without smearing. A regular ballpoint works fine too. The point is to remove every excuse for not starting. The morning I could not find a pen, I told myself I would journal after lunch, and then I did not journal at all that day. That is how a habit dies, not in a dramatic crisis but in a small forgotten pen.

Glenn bought me a nice fountain pen one Christmas, and I tried it exactly once. It bled straight through the page and left a blue shadow on the verse underneath. I have not used it since. The paper in a journaling Bible is deliberately thin so the book stays light in your hands, which means the pen matters more than it does in a regular notebook. A fine-tip gel pen or a ballpoint is the safe choice. Save the fountain pen for letters.

Do not buy a whole set of colored pencils and washi tape before you have journaled for a month. I have watched women in my Tuesday group buy beautiful supplies and then feel guilty when the habit did not stick, as if the supplies were the problem. They were not. The problem was starting with too many decisions. Start with one pen, and do not worry about your handwriting either. Write in print instead of cursive, or write small in the corner of the margin. This is your conversation with the Lord, not a page for Pinterest. Nobody is grading your letters. I print now, and my margins look like a careful schoolgirl's notes, and that is fine with me.

Step 3: Use a Simple Journaling Method

The method I teach my group has four prompts, and you can remember them with the word SOAP. Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer. Write the verse, write what you notice, write how it applies to your life today, and write a one-line prayer. I did not invent this. A friend in my church learned it at a retreat years ago and brought it back to our Tuesday group, and it has carried about ten women through thousands of quiet mornings since.

You do not need to do all four every day. Some mornings all I write is a question. One morning in June I wrote, 'Lord, why does this verse make me uncomfortable?' and that question stayed with me all week. It turned out the verse was about forgiveness, and I had been avoiding a phone call I needed to make. The margin gave me a place to be honest before I was ready to be brave. That is what the method is for.

The NIV Journal the Word Bible from Zondervan has red letter text for the words of Jesus, which makes it easy to find passages where He is speaking. When I do not know what to journal about, I turn to a red letter section and ask what Jesus is telling His disciples that I also need to hear. The double-column format makes the red letters easy to spot as you flip through, and the Comfort Print typeface is kind to my sixty-one-year-old eyes. Start with the Gospel of John if you want a red letter passage that is easy to find. Chapter 14 has been a favorite of mine for years. But you do not need my favorite. You need a passage that already lives in you somewhere, because journaling is mostly about paying attention to what is already there.

Step 4: Build a Five-Minute Minimum Habit

Habits fail when they require too much willpower on a tired morning. So set the bar ridiculously low. Five minutes. One verse. One sentence. That is a successful day. In my first month, I set a timer on my phone for five minutes and put the phone across the room so I would not pick it up. Most mornings the timer went off while I was still writing, and I kept going. But knowing I only owed myself five minutes is what got me to sit down on the hard mornings.

I keep my NIV Journal the Word Bible in the same spot every night, on the end table next to my recliner, with my pen resting on top. In the morning I do not have to decide anything. I sit down with my coffee, open to my bookmark, and start. The bookmark is important. I use a plain ribbon one, and I move it every single day. If I ever skip the bookmark, I spend my five minutes hunting for where I left off, which is a terrible way to begin.

If you miss a day, do not try to catch up by journaling three days at once. Just open to today's passage and write one sentence. The goal is not a perfect streak. The goal is a steady rhythm that survives real life. I have missed days when Glenn and I traveled to see our grandchildren, and I have missed days when I simply forgot. Every time, I came back with one sentence, and the habit held. It held through a busy Advent season and a long, gray February, which tells me it will hold through most anything. After I retired from the church office, I had to rebuild my whole morning rhythm. Walking helped my body, and journaling helped my mind. They became the two bookends of my day, and both of them started small. Five minutes of walking became thirty. Five minutes of journaling became fifteen. Small starts compound, and they are the only kind I trust.

Step 5: Review What You Have Written

Once a month, flip back through your margins and read what you wrote. This is where journaling stops being a craft project and becomes a spiritual practice. You will see prayers that were answered, worries that faded, and patterns you did not notice while you were living them. I do this on the first Saturday of each month with a second cup of coffee, and it takes about ten minutes. It is the reason I have kept journaling for over a year.

Last spring I flipped back to a page from March and found a prayer I had written for one of the women in my Tuesday group. I had forgotten I wrote it, and reading it reminded me to check on her, which led to a conversation that mattered. Another time I found a question I had written in the margin during a hard week, and I could see, from the pages after it, the answer arriving slowly. The margins told a story I could not see while I was living it.

The NIV Journal the Word Bible from Zondervan makes this easy because all your notes live in the margins beside the verses that prompted them. You do not need a separate notebook, and you do not need to remember what you were thinking on a random Tuesday in March. The margin remembers for you. That is the quiet gift of this format. One more thing about reviewing: read your old entries with kindness. Some of them will be shallow. Some will be repetitive. That is normal. The point is not to produce a beautiful record. The point is to show up, and the review is how you find out that showing up changed you.

What Else Helps

A reading plan helps more than you expect. I use a simple one that takes me through the New Testament in a year, and I write the date next to each passage as I finish it. The NIV Journal the Word Bible is a double-column format with Comfort Print, which means the text is surprisingly readable for a Bible with wide margins. I read the passage in the morning and write in the margin, and by the end of the year I have a dated record of an entire year of quiet time.

A small group helps too. In my Tuesday morning study, we started sharing one journal entry a month, just a sentence or two, and it changed the group. Women who had never spoken up began to open up. One woman shared a question she had written in her margin, and three other women said they had the same question. That does not happen when you journal alone. If you do not have a group, tell one friend what you are doing. Accountability is a gentle form of encouragement.

Finally, give yourself permission to write questions in the margins. I used to think a Bible should stay clean, that marking it up was disrespectful. Then I realized the opposite is true. A marked-up Bible is a loved Bible. Zondervan designed this one for exactly that kind of use, with ruled margins and a cloth cover that holds up to being carried. My copy has coffee rings on the edge of some pages, and I would not have it any other way.

A marked-up Bible is a loved Bible. Zondervan designed the Journal the Word Bible for exactly that kind of use.