Then the Lord replied:

“Write down the revelation
    and make it plain on tablets
    so that a herald may run with it.

It is a good idea to write down the things you believe God is saying to you. It is a way to keep them, test them, and pass them on to others. You know you are not writing Scripture, but if you sense God might be speaking, then you will want to keep a personal record.

The Bible does not command us to journal, and some Christians just can’t get along with the idea. But many believers do find it helpful. I have kept a diary/journal for many years, and, for me, it is an important discipline. Last week, on 27th October, Jilly and I were visiting friends. During that day and into the next, I felt an urgent insistence to look at my journal entry for 27th October 2021. When I finally got round to looking, there were a couple of quotes I knew I needed to pass on to our friends.

This morning I ‘just happened’ to come across this paragraph as I leafed through a great book:

‘Of these hidden years of work and waiting little would have been known in detail but for the preservation of a number of brief journals whose very existence was unsuspected. Providentially brought to light while these pages were being written, they fill a gap hitherto passed over in silence. Here they lie upon the table, twelve thin paper-covered notebooks, worn with years, but not one of them missing. Beginning soon after Mr. Taylor’s medical degrees were taken, they covered a period of three years…Daily entries in his small clear writing fill the pages, which breathes a spirit words are poor to express’ (‘Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission: The growth of a work of God’, p.15: Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor).