Christian Daily Planners: Purpose + Planning

When it comes to paper planners and journals, I am a self-proclaimed superfan. Now don’t get me wrong; I use, and love, my electronic calendar. It’s perfect for keeping appointments, events, and family functions organized, but when it comes to more personal projects, task batching, reflections, and more, I just don’t think you can beat a physical planner.

The problem: my assortment of notebooks, planners, and journals is growing a bit unwieldy. I have one journal for sermon notes, another for my quiet time reflection, one I use to {try} and organize plans for my blog, and yet another for prayer requests. To-Do lists often get added to whatever notepad happens to be in front of me. Overall, not a great system.

So in an attempt to consolidate, I began searching for a daily planner where I could house all — or at least most — of it. And in that search, I ran across several great resources for Christian daily planners.

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What is a Christian planner?

So what is a Christian daily planner? How is that different than just a regular daily planner? Well, quite simply, it’s a daily planner designed to incorporate priorities and daily disciplines unique to the Christian faith. With the ones I looked at, several of them had all or some of the following:

• a place for sermon notes
• prayer reminders built into time blocks during the day
• Bible verses
• places for reflection and goal setting that include spiritual growth, in addition to personal and professional

For me, it was the inclusion of spiritual attention and development that piqued my interest most of all. While I’ve become pretty consistent in my morning quiet time, I can quickly become distracted and begin plowing through the day dependent on my own power and resolve. So in using a Christian daily planner, I’m hopeful it will help me develop spiritual habits that keep me more consistently focused on God and allow his Spirit to lead.

So the information below is a result of my personal quest. And I hope it helps you narrow the field if you are searching for something similar. While I started looking at planning systems as a new start for the new year, many of these are undated and perfect for a fresh start at any time of the year.

Best Christian Daily Planners

If you are looking for resources to keep you organized and focused (whether that’s at the start of the new year or not), I’ve rounded up a few popular planners and journals you might consider incorporating into your daily/monthly/yearly planning, Bible study and prayer, and/or journaling.

Most of these do have a Christian, faith-based focus on planning and journaling, but not all. I’ve started with the ones I use and rounded it out with others that I considered and also get rave reviews.

While I originally was hoping to create a one-stop-shop-type system for planning, projects, etc., I ultimately decided against it. However, the Faith & Focus Christian daily planner I did buy, combined with the TUL system, should streamline much of what I use on a daily basis, and I’m excited to begin mapping out the next three months.

As with so many other things in life, though, I’m just striving for progress, not perfection! We’ll see how it goes!

TUL Disc Notebook

I love the TUL products and use the large size (like the one pictured here) to organize projects, including this blog! I think you can find these in a variety of places, but I’ve purchased notebooks, inserts, and accessories from both Amazon and Office Depot.

These are the fillers and accessories I’ve found most helpful:

• Hole punch: 100% essential, allows me to add non-TUL papers
• Tab dividers: These come from Natalie Rebecca Design, rather than TUL, but they are compatible with TUL and several other disc-style notebooks, and I think cuter (if that matters to you).
• Letter-sized ruled sheets

I also like the TUL Junior-Sized Notebook, Soft Cover and started using it this year to keep prayer requests organized. The small size makes it easy to carry with me to church and Bible study, and I use Post-It tabs, similar to these, to section it off by group. For example, I have a tab just for my husband and each of my kids, as well as tabs for family, friends, and my BSF small group.

Christian Planner: Faith and Focus 90 Day Planner

I just purchased this planner and am very excited to start using it. There are a few things I liked about its layout and design that I felt would help me stay a bit more organized overall. I especially like the format. It has a section at the front for you to list long-term goals (3-year vision), along with an emphasis on annual, quarterly and monthly goals. Each month there is a section for reflection, focusing on personal, professional and spiritual development.

One of the things that drew me to this particular planner/journal was the space included for sermon notes, and a daily scheduler that combines a task list with a section for notes, prayer, and praise. And it’s perfectly sized so that I can easily carry it with me.

And as their website says, “The Faith & Focus planner is designed to be more portable and compact; with a focus on daily goal setting, it provides more space for note-taking and scheduling.” They also offer the Christian Planner, which has many similarities to the Faith & Focus planner, but it is slightly larger and “designed for weekly planning, activities, appointments, and habit-tracking.”

The James Method: Verse Mapping Journal

This also is a new purchase for me, and I am thrilled with it. While it’s not in the planner category, I’m including it here because I think it’s a wonderful supplement to personal Bible study and quiet time.

I would highly recommend it for those looking for deeper dives into Bible verses and study. I don’t use it every day but rather when I run across verses that create some confusion for me either in meaning or word choice.

Using the James Method of verse mapping has helped me explore historical context, translation differences, and cross-references. But there’s also space for reflection and prayer so that it doesn’t become simply an academic exercise.

It’s still very new to me, but so far, I like the process and depth of discovery.

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Here are some others I’ve looked into for journal and planning purposes:

The Hope Planner

The Hope Planner is a Christian planner with two different versions: daily and weekly. Both are spiral-bound with linen covers, which I really like. The main focus of the Hope Planner is to help meld your prayers and plans.

As the Hopefuel team puts it, “The Hope Planner is more than a daily planner with Bible verses. It’s a Christian planner and prayer journal that will make you as prayerful as you are productive. Using a Christian planner will help you manage all the things on your to-do list, and cultivate the relationship with Christ you’ve always wanted by making time for daily devotions on your schedule, like you do everything else.” 

Faith Planner

Faith Planner offers both a dated and undated version of their Christian planner, and like others, the idea behind it is to be an all-in-one resource for habit tracking and planning out your daily to-dos, as well as creating space for reflection. A few of the features include a place for daily schedule and tasks, weekly goals and reflection, daily habit tracker, daily Bible verses, sermon and Bible study notes, and morning prayer and evening gratitude prompts.

From the creators of the Faith Planner: “The Faith Planner is designed to help busy Christians achieve their spiritual, personal, and professional goals by keeping Christ at the center of their daily lives. We believe that by committing to the Lord each day, we can draw closer to Him and better navigate His path for us.”

Prayful Planner

The Prayful Planner offers a wide variety of styles and sizes, including designs tailored for men. Their planners center around their system, so within the pages, you’ll find a place to focus on the following:

• priorities
• plans
• praise
• physical health
• daily to-dos
• prayer
• habits

From the Prayful Planner: “The Prayerful Planner is a Christian day planner, essentially a daily guide and reminder to be as intentional about prayer and our relationship with Christ as we are about planning our day. Use it as a compliment to your daily devotion and prayer time and invite His guidance into your life. It’s not only a daily agenda for keeping you organized and focused, it’s a journal for documenting and tracing all of the ways that God is good. It’s a place to keep schedules and to-do lists as well as daily prayers, gratitude, praise and more.”

Paper Sunday

The Christian journals and planners from Paper Sunday are unique because of the customization they offer. In fact, every page includes Scriptures that are personalized with your name. They have journals and planners geared toward women, men, and kids, as well as notecards. You pick the product, choose your cover, and then select personalize it all with a name.

On the journals and planners, you can choose from a hard or soft lay-flat cover or wired spiral binding, and you also have some choices regarding the version of Scripture that is used. These could also make great gifts.

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If you have a planner or organizational system you use, I’d love to hear about it. I’m only a quick email away!

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