Affiliate links appear in the following post. Although shopping the embedded links won’t cost you any additional dollars, it might earn me a small commission on sales. Your support of this blog is much appreciated!
The Point A few weeks ago in my Beth Moore study, there was a page that just got to me in every way possible. I highlighted almost all of it, wrote so many notes in the margin that I might never begin to decipher them and put a little flag at the top of the page so I could find my way back to it easily. At the time I wasn’t sure where all of those thoughts were going, but just like the Good God that He is, He brought me right back there today {well, yesterday}.
Believe it or not, it was right there in 2 Samuel 7 {again} where He was beating me over the head with His word. Beth Moore said: “You have promised GOOD THINGS to me. We know we’ve come ‘so far’ when we grown convinced that God only does us good.” She then goes on to list ten different ways – or areas of our lives – where God proves His goodness to us.
A few things have happened since I flagged that page in my workbook and on their own, none of them seem related or mind-altering in any way, but stitched together they were starting to make sense.
- The message this past Sunday could have been written for me. I swore that at any moment, Pastor Chris was going to call me by name. I’ll probably share more specifically about the message later this month, but the gist of it was that God called us for something specific. I carried that around in my head and my heart for a few days and I’ve been pondering about what exactly that meant for my life.
- There was this prayer that I had been praying and yesterday I really felt like God was saying NO. I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly like it when I don’t get my way. I was trying to be a big girl about the whole thing, but all day long he said NO, NO, NO and I didn’t like it.
- I had two different people speak wonderful truth over me yesterday. Before I even got out of bed, God placed it on someone’s heart that I needed a word of encouragement and boy did she deliver it. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that the internet is a bad place, because I have made some exceptionally good friends there. At the time, I had no idea why her message was important, but I treasured it all the same. Then later in the day {after God started saying NO}, someone else I know in real life left an Instagram comment that just confirmed all of the other things I had been thinking and praying about.
At the end of the day, it was quiet and I had a minute to sit down and open my Bible and pull out some pretty things and do you know where God led me? Right back to that list of ways in which He’s good. Romans 12:2 says: “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is GOOD and pleasing and perfect.”
God’s will for me is always good. It is good when I don’t understand and when I am confused and when I complain. It is good when I am happy and sad and angry. It is good when my dreams come true and when they crumble and when they change. It is good when He says yes and it is even good when He says no.
The Process I’m probably going to regret not taking step by step photographs of this one for you, because the layered pages are always the hardest to explain. I promise to do another similar page like this later in the week and document each layer so you can see how I built it up and where I changed my mind and made mistakes along the way. This one was messy and didn’t have a clear plan, but I was really meditating on what I felt like God was saying to me in these verses and trying to focus less on what I wanted and more on what He was trying to show me.
- After penciling in my letters and applying stamps for the word GOOD, I traced them all with the IF Precision Pen and erased my pencil marks.
- I started by painting a layer of watered down light yellow acrylic over most of the page with a foam brush. I then layered a darker yellow in a few areas for depth.
- Using a paint wedge {or an old gift card} I scraped the light blue paint in a few places around the edge of the page.
- Using the end of my foam brush, I dipped it into orange paint and placed a few dots around the perimeter of the page, near where I applied the blue paint smudges. I used a smaller brush to add pink swirls in the same areas.
- Once the paint was dry, I used a signo gel pen {these write so good over acrylics and watercolors} to add the cross embellishments and a black marker to add polka dots around the page.
- I filled in any white space with watercolor in various complementary shades.
- I attempted to fill in the letters with a white gel pen, but it was being stubborn and refused to write over the watercolor paint. I gave up after one word, but I might go back later with white acrylic paint and fill them in.
- Using patterned cardstock and IF word confetti stickers, I created a tab and secured it to the page with a glue stick.
Any supplies or processes you would still like to see?! I’m going to be sharing individual pages much like this for the rest of the week, but would love to share some video with you before the month is over. Sound off in the comments if there are any particular requests!
My Favorite Bible Journaling Supplies: one column journaling bible | mechanical pencils | pigment liners | crayola twistables | white gel pen | prismacolor marker | white eraser | distress markers | washi tape | craft paint | catalyst wedge | watercolor paints | tab punch | patterned papers | rolling date stamp | black ink pad. For more details about why these are my favorite, visit this post!
