How to Do Bible Journaling When You’re Not Artistic
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Have you ever wanted to try Bible journaling, but held back because you’re not very artistic?
Maybe you’ve wanted to use it to help you dig deeper into God’s Word, but don’t have the amount of time it seems it would take.
Hello, my name is Rosilind and I’m not artistic. At all.
Some of my IRL friends may find that hard to believe, because I’m a musician and singer, and so it would stand to reason that creativity would just flow all over the place for me. But not so.
The fact is, while I love to peruse an art store, and get all excited over seeing bags of colored feathers and stacks of bright, colorful popsicle sticks, I wouldn’t know what to do with them if I actually bought them.
I have two big boxes full of art supplies for my kids, and no clue where to start!
In the end, I have enrolled my kids in an art class on Outschool because no one wants me teaching their kid art! Not even my own kids.
For a long time, my feeling of ineptness when it comes to art kept me from Bible journaling, even though I wanted to try it so badly.
But for me, clearly, it’s not about the art – or even making a page look pretty, but about using a different medium to dig more deeply into God’s Word.
One day, I was scrolling through my YouTube timeline, when I came across a thumbnail that inspired me!
I realized I, too, could do Bible journaling in a very simple, non-artistic way, that would help me dig more deeply into God’s Word…using washi tape (and there’s nothing like washi tape to make a girl feel all artistic and stuff!)
Add to that a few colorful highlighters and suddenly, I felt like a legit Bible Journaler!
How to Do Bible Journaling When You’re Not Artistic
My method of Bible journaling is so simple and yet, when you get into it, God’s Word is transformed from 1-dimmensional words on a page to a 3-dimmensional wonderland of incredible meaning and conviction!
I want to take you through the steps of how I do this, and then below you will find several videos of my Bible journaling process.
1. Gather Your Supplies
A regular notebook (a freebie my husband got as merch from work…and you’ll catch glimpses of their logo in my videos!)
A pen
Washi tape to divide your page
Highlighters are optional, but fun and make your page more colorful
A Bible
A Bible Concordance (I use Blue Letter Bible)
2. Choose your verse or passage
Up until now, I’ve done isolated verses, but very soon I’m going to begin Bible Journaling through the book of Philippians.
There is nothing wrong about Bible journaling through isolated verses, so long as they remain in the context of their chapter and book, but there is tremendous power in journaling through an entire book.
Like I said, journaling this way opens the Bible up in ways you can’t even imagine!
3. Divide Your Page
I do a “T” off center to the right. I leave a large enough space at the top of my page to write the verse or passage I’m journaling through, and then a narrow space on the right to write out the key words from the verse, leaving a wider space on the left to rewrite out the verse in my own words.
4. Start journaling!
Now, I’m ready.
I write out the verse straight from the Bible. Then, I go back and highlight the key words found in the verse, writing them in the right margin I have divided off. I leave space between each word so I can write out it’s deeper meaning from the Greek and Hebrew.
Once I have my key words written out, I go to the Strong’s Concordance and look up each word, writing out the more specific definitions.
While doing this, I refer back to the verse, saying it over to myself using the definitions found in the concordance.
Finally, I rewrite out the verse in my own words, using what I’ve learned. Very often, I will even insert my own name, to make the verse speak to me personally.
This has been a transformative tool for me in my Bible study. It has made Bible study deeper and more exciting. If you’d like to see me in action, you can watch the videos below.
Also, be watching for more Bible journaling videos as I begin journaling through the book of Philippians.
