Journaling is a personal discipline that has been on again and off again through my Christian walk for the last 27 years. My first encounter with journaling was through the teaching of Mark Virkler, author of Communion with God.

At the time I met Mark, I was a relatively new Christian and Mark had just written and released the Communion with God program, an innovative approach to hearing God’s voice. As a result of Mark’s teaching, my wife and I journaled faithfully for several years. Then I have to confess that the busyness of life slowly but surely choked the journaling discipline from our lives.

Probably close to 20 years later, one of my coaching clients wrote a small booklet on receiving guidance from God which revolved around using journaling in conjunction with peer coaching. As part of a “test” group of his concept, I found myself journaling again, but this time it only lasted a couple of months before it got choked out once again.

Then I met Dr. Randy Peck. Now, some one and a half years later, I can honestly say that Randy has transformed my life in a countless number of ways. Randy has many distinctives, but the one that I want to focus on for the moment is his habit of journaling. As you may already know, otherwise will certainly encounter early in his book, Randy considers journaling the lead domino in his life. When I met Randy, he had been journaling for a number of years (he will relate his story to you through the pages of this book) and his discipline had evolved over that time from handwriting in journals (which is where Sharon and I started out), to the use of the computer to record his journaling.

Randy spent major portions of his day in prayer, reading (or listening to) the Bible, and journaling. At the time Randy and I met he was journaling using one of the major word processing applications and had an incredible (to me) system for indexing and retrieving information from literally thousands of pages of journaling. His ability to recall people, places, and events absolutely amazed me, and a major contributor to that ability was his on-line journals. I’ve also learned as I spend more and more time with Randy that a lot of that ability comes from his amazing love for people and his God-given gift (and call) to be a connector (or networker) of people.

As the relationship with Randy grew we developed the idea of using journaling (one of Randy’s passions) to augment life focus coaching (one of my passions). From that sprang the blatantly obvious idea of using two-way journaling to more directly include God in some of the coaching exercises which lead to helping a person determine and articulate their destiny or life purpose. It was at that point that I introduced Randy to Dr. Mark Virkler and his rather unique approach to journaling.

At about that same time, one of Randy’s colleagues mentioned the software program designed for on-line journaling called “The Journal.” I tried it for a couple of days, and absolutely fell in love with it and found myself encouraging Randy to give it a try. His reluctance was clearly rooted in the huge investment of time he had made to develop his indexing system using a conventional word processor. He finally tried The Journal, and within the first couple of days, had the same amazing experience with the software that I had reported. From that point on, he has taken the use of that unique piece of journaling software to new heights and will undoubtedly be sharing some of how he uses that package through the pages of this book.

Randy and I developed and taught an on-line course which we called “UNCOMMON Journaling for Destiny” using The Journal to record the two-way dialogue between the course participant and the Lord as the participant worked his/her way through a series of questions designed to reveal one’s life purpose. The results were absolutely amazing in the lives of those first few people. That course is the foundation for this book on Journaling written by Randy.

I am both humbled and honored to have been asked to write the foreword for the book and also to be in an ongoing peer-coaching relationship with Randy. I know you will be blessed as you read the pages that follow. I pray that it will be more than just a “read” for you. I pray that you will begin to try what Randy presents. There is little doubt in my mind, that by doing so, your life will be unalterably changed by Dr. Peck just as mine has.

Jerry Graham, Ph.D., D.Min.
UNCOMMON Destiny Coach
Chesapeake, VA

Written December 20, 2008