Welcome to My Journaling Bible

I have always been a journal lover addict. I often doodle or do little 'works of art' in my journals. However, I've gotten into something that's waaaaay bigger than just doodling in a journal.... I have something to tell you. I own a Journaling Bible (you'll have seen it before if you follow me on Instagram).

Journaling Bibles were new things for me when I discovered them last year. However, they quickly captured my imagination and I wanted one for my own. This happened in May of this year and I've been hooked ever since!

So what exactly is a Journaling Bible?
It's a Bible that has margins. Extra wide margins, in fact. You can do whatever you like with these margins. I choose to do artwork in them. You can get all kinds of Journaling Bibles - I own a Crossway ESV double column one.

Why 'deface' a perfectly good Bible?

Anyone who Bible Journals is connecting to the text. God’s word never comes back void. However, it's easy to read an entire chapter and remember none of it. Bible Journaling doesn't let you do that so much! I take a verse and draw what it means or says to me. It becomes personal. I think it's easy to approach the Word one-dimensionally. This is me engaging actively with it!

One of the really cool things about it is that I'm going to end up with a Bible that can really be treasured. My art isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But it's the fact that it's real, it's all there in one precious Book, it was made by me, that makes it special and really awesome. It's going to be something I can hand down to my children.

I love reading Mum's Bible and seeing her notes in it. This is like that, only it's artwork as well as notes.

I do it to spend time in the Word and with God, because I find joy in Bible Journaling. You can spend hours on a verse. Mediating on it. Listening to worship music and spending time with God.

I'm not a particularly amazing artist and I make mistakes. In the picture on the right ("I am the resurrection and the life" you'll notice I spelled 'resurrection' wrong. I mean, resureection? Whaaat? So yeah. My Bible's not perfect and neither am I. :P

(this one is a bit different - I traced the map onto baking paper and glued it into my Bible to make an extra page.)

Journaling in a Journaling Bible is all about connecting our faith with creativity. God is creative (look at the next sunset!) and we were created in His image. Shouldn’t we be able to approach studying and reading His word in a creative way?

I know it might be seen to be 'defacing' the Bible and disrespectful of the Word of God to cover up the text. However, I have another Bible which I use for studying and reading. This Bible is my art Bible. I'm sure that the Lord is blessed through my worship, whether a bit of paint gets on a word here and there or not!

Want to read more about writing in Bibles/highlighting/doing artwork? Here's a semi-recentish post I wrote about that very subject. 

(this is the front inside cover)

Are you interested? 

You don't have to have anything fancy to start. A good fine pointed pen and a set of coloured pencils are all you need!

If you want to go crazy however, there are limitless things you can do. I love using acrylic paints, watercolour paints, stickers, stamps... I've even woven paper into the margins of my Bible. 

Links

There are some really awesome ideas on Pinterest. (Here's my Bible journaling Pinterest board.)

There is a super awesome and encouraging Facebook community.

And that, my friends is my little 'welcome to my Journaling Bible' post. I hope you enjoyed it! :D Bible journaling is honestly the most awesome thing ever. I call it 'illustrating my faith'.

What do you think?