The Lord had me step away from copying someone else’s Bible pages. Now, you might think that’s an odd thing coming from someone who posts sketches and videos for others to copy and use, right?
Well before I frighten those who feel they’re only able to create a Bible page with the help of copying: please relax! Sometimes we really DO hear from the Lord through someone else–the illustration on another person’s page may open the Scripture up to us in an eye-popping way, and creating our own version of it is fine. And as we learn any artistic skill, copying others can be a great tool – after all, the great masters in art did that as apprentices!
However the danger zone that I ran into was seeing what someone else created – and I just wanted to make what they made. I fell in love with a particular page I saw that had a whole flock of sheep on it – it was SO BEAUTIFUL I just wanted to create it exactly that way myself. The Holy Spirit stopped me in my tracks, pointing out that I wasn’t doing my art for Jesus in that moment…I was adopting someone else’s vision.
How do we keep from just leaning on another’s spiritual understanding and creative view of a passage of Scripture? The answer lies in knowing and recognizing the voice of God. It is vital we learn to hear from Him so we receive directly from Him. For some of us, hearing for ourselves may be a new step in our walk. In my own journey as a Christian, I spent many years listening to pastors, reading books, and devouring all the teaching I could find – but never saw myself as “smart” enough to hear from the Lord personally. I thought I had to be a more deeply spiritual person before God would even want to speak to me – but I have found that’s just not true. He wants to talk with each of us as His children, and if we aren’t listening, we’re missing out! Receiving teaching from the Holy Spirit directly is a feeling of elation that inspires my creativity — and changes my life, which is even more important!
Now back to the reason for the sketches and videos I post….I try to choose visuals that I hope can be used by other Bible journalers to illustrate the vision that God gave them for perhaps another passage. For instance, the soup bowl idea was specifically used for a verse God spoke to me about healing my own heart by bringing comfort to others – but others can use the soup bowl as an image to illustrate many other verses, spelling out something else in the alphabet! The book, Bible Journaling Made Simple, contains tutorials throughout that can be used for many different verses, not just the one shown — so that readers can be encouraged to seek the Lord for themselves and create as they do!
My hope is to build up a bank of sketches in addition to those already in the sketch gallery; if there are sketches of particular items desired, leave a comment and I’ll see about adding drawings that will be of help to my creative brothers and sisters!
Sandy