I never in my life thought I would be called to design planners, but over the last couple of years, God has taken me through the creative and faith process of prayerfully designing a planner for Christians that encourages us to live orderly lives that are centered on Him. Enter, Orderly Life Christian Planner.
I have loved planners for a long time, but I have always found the different options on the market overwhelming, or just flat out not right for me. They either have too much or not enough, are too crowded or too blank. Not to say they’re bad planners, but none I have found have pinpointed what I was looking for. I wanted a planner that would help me bring my faith into every aspect of my life, and help strengthen my faith and relationship with God.
After designing, trying, scrapping, redesigning, retrying…rinse and repeat a few times…the Orderly Life Christian Planner is now a balanced planner designed for Christians who want to realistically plan and bring their faith and relationship with God into the center focus of it all.
What is the Orderly Life Christian Planner?
The Orderly Life Christian Planner is designed to help believers establish a habit of aligning plans, preparations, task lists, to-dos, and all the in-betweens with our Heavenly Father and letting Him establish each step. Scripture teaches us that we are to do all things “decently and in order” (1 Cor. 14:40) and as followers of Jesus we should “conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:27).
But everything is to be done decently and in order.
1 Cor. 14:40 CSB
Just one thing: As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ.
Philippians 1:27a CSB
The Orderly Life Christian Planner targets this mission and strives to make it easier for Christians to realistically focus on growing in faith every day in the midst of the busyness of life. We achieve this by flowing prayer and Bible study into every week’s pages. It is incorporated into the design in ways that make it convenient and realistic to plan out your Bible studies and record your prayers every day. Offering this Christian planner in a printable format also allows you to print as many pages as you need, giving your planner some flexibility and less overwhelm.
Why bring prayer into your planner?
Prayer is about communicating within our personal relationship with God, and our life is to be given in service for the Lord. All that we do should be done prayerfully and in service to God, and we should be spending time in God’s Word every day to grow in our faith, relationship, and understanding of God.
With the Orderly Life Christian Planner, you can easily bring prayer, scripture, and planning together to help you focus on God first and foremost in all you do, prayerfully, intentionally, decently and orderly. Each week’s prayer pages include prompts to guide you into deeper relationships and stronger communication with God.
These prompts have been helping and guiding me to pray more comfortably, consistently and confidently within my relationship with God and have really helped strengthen my overall faith and prayer life because they are helping me to pray deeply, to address more specific areas of life and the world in my prayers, and to reflect also on where God has been working and answering prayers, or leading me in different ways.
Designed to bring planning, daily tasks, Bible study, prayer, and health and wellness into one strategically designed space to help Christians live an orderly life and keep God at the center of it all.
The Orderly Life Christian Planner is designed for easy double-sided printing to be used in your favorite method of binding, such as Happy Planner, Cinch spiral binding, and more, as well as in digital planners and annotated digital planners where PDFs can be used.
Want more prayer pages? Check out our Pray Through the Word Prayer Journal. Several page designs allow you to print your favorite pages and add them right into your Orderly Life Christian Planner pages.
Orderly Life Planner Features
- 1 page month overview for important reminders and tasks
- 2 page month calendar spread with space for notes
- 1 page for word of the month and space for art, journaling, or verses
- 2 page weekly spread with room for notes, to-do lists, Bible reading plan, and nutrition plan + goals
- 2 page weekly spread for specific and intentional prayer
- 1 page weekly Bible study notes
Each month includes 3 strategic pages to organize your calendar, tasks, goals, reminders, and other notes. Each week includes 6 pages to track and plan your tasks, meals, exercise, Bible studies, scripture readings, and record prayers.
How do you use the Orderly Life Christian Planner?
I absolutely love the freedom and flexibility of a DIY planner and journal. For me, this was one of the most important aspects because I hate wasting paper, but appreciate being able to switch things up as needed. The planners I have used in the past were not helpful to keep me coming back. With this planner that doubles as my prayer journal and Bible study planner, I am in it every day for those reasons and therefore am planning my day-to-day better, and more prayerfully as well.
For each month, I like to take a look back at my past month and figure out what I didn’t end up getting done, carry it over to the new month’s overview, and start from there. This helps me to get a real feel for what I can get done in a month. Filling out my monthly overview sets the priorities up for the month and guides my weekly planning as well.
Every week on Monday morning, sometimes on Fridays before the weekend, I begin my week by getting my planner set up. I begin each week by recording the following on my weekly overview page:
- What are my priority tasks for this week?
- What do I want to get done throughout this week?
- What passage has been placed on my heart this week?
- Notes & reminders for the week
After this, I flip over to the daily planner pages. I plan my content and blog tasks, family to-dos, community lists, as well as my personal items in this space. The space is strategically designed to discourage overloading a given day with unrealistically long to-do lists (but sometimes I do add a nice sticky note if I need some more space).
I plan my daily to-dos based on what I put on my overviews, scheduling those tasks for a given day depending on when it needs to get done. I add in my family schedule, things like meal planning and grocery shopping, and of course, I plan out my studies for the week. One aspect I am really glad to have as well as the nutrition planner.
This may seem silly to make so prominent, but in today’s culture, it is too easy to get so caught up in the to-do lists that we forget to take care of our bodies that are the temple of God. Part of what God has convicted me of in leading an orderly life is to create space to properly care for my health and wellness as well, as a normal aspect of each day. So, I plan my and my family’s meals every week, and I plan for exercise as well, again striving for realistic goals.
I begin every day in the prayer journal pages and then jump into scripture. I use Bible reading plans as a launching point and let the Lord take me through His Word wherever He leads me that day, but having a starting point helps me get going and so often I find that it was exactly where I needed to be that day. When I need more space or I am doing deeper studies I also like to use pages from my Study Through the Word Journal.
My favorite planner & journal binding tools
I have tried many methods of DIY planners and journals and by far my favorite has been disc binding. With disc binding, you can fully customize your planner or journal on the fly. The disc binding doesn’t restrict you like traditional book-binding or spiral-binding does.
You can move, add or remove pages with ease at any moment. This is a huge factor for me as life is always evolving and my needs change, plus then I don’t have to keep bulky pages from past months if I don’t want to and I can arrange it exactly how works best for me.
I use a thicker 28 lb paper Hammermill paper that has been my absolute favorite. I don’t have any issues with bleeding through pages, the printer ink doesn’t show through much on the other side either. This brand is also Climate Pledge Friendly!
Happy Planner offers a whole disc binding system that I have fallen in love with. The discs come in all kinds of colors and a couple of different materials, and you can grab your own disc-binding punch as well. This is well worth the investment as they can be used long-term, reused, and you can switch up colors depending on the season or just because you feel like a little change!
I also really love this beautiful pack of faith-based scrapbook paper, which I cut and punch to make covers and dividers. It is important to note that the Happy Planner punch is not made to punch through laminated scrapbook paper, but unlaminated paper has been holding up really well in my used-daily planner and journal.
My favorite note-taking tools
- 5 subject notebook to break my notes into categories and double as a prayer notebook to bring it all together
- Amazing and colorful pilot pens that are fun for notes and art journaling
- Sticky notes and lined sticky notes for extended notes to save in my Bible. Margins can only fit so much! And great for when I go back and study something again. Add a sticky note with your new notes on it!
- Bible pens and fine liner pens for doodling, circling, underlining, and note-taking in my Bible
- No-bleed Bible highlighters that are vibrant and not tacky and messy.
I gravitate to these tools to use with my Orderly Life Christian Planner as well as my Pray Through the Word Prayer Journal. I use them for Bible Study, journaling, and planning collectively. Having the right tools for each occasion is really important to me and these have been tested and used and repurchased many times over now.
Grab your Orderly Life Christian Planner
I’d love to invite you to grab your own Orderly Life Christian Planner and see how it can help and encourage you to live an orderly life, focused first and foremost on the Lord. This planner has helped me immensely and I truly hope and pray it is a blessing and help to you as well.