Illuminated Journaling: Paper Piecing and Giveaway!

I have loved the Julie Nutting mixed media dolls since I laid eyes on the first one! I'm sure it is the little girl in me that LOVE playing dress up with her paper dolls...but I could serious use one of her dolls on a project a week and not get tired of them...so you gotta know that I was a bit giddy to find a way to use Zoe on one of my pages in my journaling Bible!

I have been working on the content for a College and Career Women's Retreat that I will be teaching in a few weeks. I am excited that we will be doing an interesting combination of in-depth Bible study times and then Illuminated Journaling times inter-mixed. My own journaling comes out of my study times - so will LOVE seeing how God meets with these precious ladies on the pages of their Bibles.

But I digress...As I was saying, I have been working on the messages I will be sharing during the study time - and found myself focusing on what it means to have Biblical humility. As a younger woman - I think this is one area of my Christian walk that I struggled with the most...and not for the reasons you might think! LOL

I can't point to any one teaching that led me down this path - but, I KNOW that I firmly believed that being humble meant not thinking highly of myself...specifically, I thought it meant thinking that I was unworthy. But somewhere along the way I took this perspective to a point of some "stinkin' thinkin'."  It was a strange combination of the Dana Carvey/Mike Meyers' in Wayne's World chanting "we're not worthy" and Robin William's quote in Dead Poet's Society "we're all food for worms, lads!"

I no longer define biblical humility this way.

Don't get me wrong! I KNOW I am a sinner. I KNOW I received a gift of unmerited Grace when Jesus died for my sins...in that sense I am NOT WORTHY. But by His death for ME...for YOU - Jesus said "I love you so much that I was willing to take your place!" Wow...tears on my face.

But as I came to terms with the fact that Jesus said, "I've made you worthy," I knew I needed to dig into the Word and find out what GOD says about humility...what He desires from us...how HE says we should view ourselves. I found perhaps my FAVORITE verse on humility in Romans 12:3.

"For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned."

Ahh....there is the key...we shouldn't think more highly of ourselves "than we OUGHT to think." When we see ourselves as GOD sees us - we know that our gifts are from Him...our ability to do right, comes from Him; our strength, wisdom and compassion, come from Him. But that doesn't make me no better than a worm...it makes me BLESSED!

I began to use this phrase: "Do not think less of yourself, rather - think of yourself less!" I believe that true Biblical humility challenges me to use the good gifts God has given me for HIS glory - not mine.  To help others - not just myself. To make a difference in this - not just a splash.

As I was working in Isaiah 66,  I read:

"Thus says the Lord:

Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool; 

what is the house that you would build for me, 

and what is the place of my rest.

"All these things my hand has made,

and so all these things came to be,

declares the LORD.

But this is the one to whom I will look:

he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word."

So many things to love in those two verses...the picture of God in His Heaven and earth as His footstool!?!?! So love that image...and I have already sketched some ideas based on this visual...and therein lies the HILARITY of this whole post.

While these verses in Isaiah do address humility to some extent, I intended to use my quote on a journal entry on Romans 12...but just as I was FINISHING this page, I realized I had done the whole thing on the page in Isaiah! Hmmmm! Not off by a page...a chapter....or book...oh no, I'm not even in the NEW TESTAMENT!



Not gonna sweat it! Will just move my footstool image over to the other side of the page...and move on! I got the benefit of my studying time...and I like the whole page...so I'm happy it is done and I refuse to give it a second thought - but thought you might want to know things don't always go as planned.

Here is the tutorial/process video I did to share how I used these cute Julie Nutting stamps and dies to paper piece this cute Zoe girl.

I am super excited that I have an extra set to share with one lucky winner! To enter - head over to my website on the Giveaways page for Illuminated Journaling....and enter! I'm using Rafflecopter to manage all the entries so that's why I need you to hop over there....thanks for helping me out with this little experiment. I will draw a winner on February 15th. Good luck!

Click here to enter!