Using a Planner to Grow in Faith
How to use a Planner to Grow in Faith
Do you use a planner to help keep your life organized and focused? (Don’t worry; you don’t need to have used a planner before to benefit from using one to help you to grow in your faith life). A planner can be a helpful tool for you in your faith journey. Knowing how to use a planner to grow in faith can help you to grow closer to God and focus more on Him each day.
Plan your week.
The first step is to make a plan. In a planner, you can plan your week on paper ahead of time. Over the weekend, look at the appointments, birthdays, and obligations you have for the week ahead. Write down all of these times in your planner. Now you can clearly see when you have fixed times for these things and when you have flexibility each day.
Decide when you will make time for prayer and spiritual reading.
After you have fixed appointments and tasks noted down, think about when you will pray, read the Bible, read a spiritual book, or listen to a Catholic podcast or audiobook.
Take the time to evaluate your days to see when you can do this. Do you prefer to pray, read the Bible, or read a spiritual book in the morning? Do you have quiet prayer time with your children during the day? Perhaps you prefer to read or pray in the evening. Or, maybe the best time is when your little one is down for a nap, whatever time that works out to be each day. Maybe you can listen to a Catholic audio or podcast when you are driving or making dinner.
Whatever you plan, stick with it for the week. Over the weekend, evaluate how it went and adjust accordingly for the next week.
Decide when you will make time for prayer.
Think about the rhythm of your day, or the plan for your week and plan time for prayer. Decide when you will pray and for how long. Block out those times in your planner like appointments. After all, you are making an appointment with God to spend time with Him.
Decide what you prayers you will pray.
Next, decide what you will pray. Will it be a prayer from your heart, a Rosary, a Divine Mercy chaplet, or a novena? Perhaps each time you can focus on a different prayer.
Decide when you will make time for spiritual reading.
Decide what spiritual reading you want to do and how often you want to read. For example, you could read the readings for Sunday Mass before you go each week. Or, read a chapter from the Bible each day.
Here are some resources to help with more specific planning:
Create A Simple Catholic Bible Reading Plan
You may have a book have been wanting to read about the faith or something you want to learn more about, like the sacraments. Books about the Catholic faith, the saints, and biographies of the saints can help you learn so much. The resources section has many posts about good books to read to help you learn more about the faith: Catholic resources
Keep track of your prayer time.
Yep. Keep track of your prayer time. After you make a plan you need to implement it, right? In order to know how well your plan is working, you need to track the results. Every time you prayed or read, you can put a checkmark or happy face in your planner beside each time you planned to do this. If you did not, you can leave it blank or put another mark there to help you keep track.
Weekly review
The next step is to evaluate how well you did. At the end of each day or at the end of the week, look back at the times you planned to pray or read. Did you pray or read? Notice how many times you did and how many times you did not.
Next, evaluate why you were successful. Did the timing work out well? Maybe you put your Bible in an obvious place to remind yourself to read it and that helped you to remember. Did you check your planner during the day and remind yourself of your goal to read or pray? Think about what went right so you can repeat those things next week.
Next, evaluate why you did not stick with your plan on any day when you did not stick with it. Perhaps one of your kids needed some extra attention, you got busy with something else, or you simply forgot.
See what you can do differently the next week to be able to pray or read as you plan to. Would another time work better? Can you set an alarm to help you remember?
Think of ways to be successful in having the prayer and/or reading time that you plan. Ask God to help you figure it out. He will.
If you did not stick exactly with your plan, don’t be discouraged or think that you are not good at planning prayer time for yourself. With a growing family, things change often. Do what you can right now in this season of your life. This is why weekly evaluating how you are doing is so helpful; you can see right away what is working, what is not, and make adjustments accordingly. Make plans week by week to find what works best for you right now in your life.
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Are you looking for a planner?
There are so many planners out there! If you are looking for one, here are a few suggestions:
Catholic planners
Blessed is She MINI Liturgical Calendar Year Planner runs January-December 2021. It has monthly layouts, space for prayer intentions and goals, Bible verses, saints of the day, and much more!
All in God’s Time Catholic planner is a Weekly and Monthly Catholic Planner contains Liturgical Dates, Saint Feast Days, Daily Mass Reference, and Quotes. Each day has a listing of the Mass readings for that day.
2021 Catholic Planner: Catholic Liturgical Calendar and Planner has prayers feast days, monthly spreads and weekly two-page spreads with timelines so you can plan out your entire day.
2021 DAYBOOK || Liturgical Catholic Planner has the option for purchasing sections for homeschooling, household management, and more. There is also a digital version of the planner that you can print out yourself: DAYBOOK DIGITIZED || 2021 Liturgical Catholic Planner
Other planners
Day Designer for Blue Sky 2021 has space to set your goals for the year, monthly calendar spreads, and space to plan out each day.
The Clever Fox Planner has a week at a glance so you can write down your tasks for each day of the week on the same page. It also has space each week for tracking habits, listing your top goals, and evaluation at the end of the week. There are many cover colors to choose from.
Catholic planner stickers
I don’t know about you, but for me, stickers always brighten things up a bit! The Hopeful Planner has Catholic stickers just for fun, planner stickers, and stickers to keep track of novenas you are praying. Check out Ana’s beautiful stickers and see for yourself.
Using a Planner to Grow in Faith
Learning how to use a planner to grow in faith can be so helpful. Planning appointments with God shows Him that He is important to you. It also helps you to make sure you make time for prayer and spiritual reading so you can continue to grow in faith and be even more the woman God is calling you to be.
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