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Showing posts from March, 2015

Illuminated Journaling: Time to Stop Worrying & New Workshop

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"Who can add a single hour to his life by being anxious?" Matt 6:27 Well it's not for a lack of trying on my part! For the past few years, it feels like I haven't had a single day where my "to do" list needs fewer than 25 hours to be accomplished. I bet you have days like that too...there is just too much "do" and not enough day! And on top of that - I start worrying about HOW I'm going to get it done and WHAT the consequences are going to be when I don't. After all, that's what RESPONSIBLE people do right? We focus on getting the "tasks" done. Ahh - but God says His wisdom confounds the wise. When you don't have time to get everything done, God says "stop and come tarry with me for an hour." When everyone is looking to you to solve their problem, God says, "Let me show you what to do." When you look at your list and say "there's no way!" God says, "I am within her, she

Illuminated Journaling: See and Remember

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 See and Remember: Imagery is a powerful memory and study tool. Even before we master reading and writing, we draw. Images have the ability to transport us back to a moment in time and remind us of the details of that moment like it happened yesterday. It brings the past into the present. It brings a spiritual lesson to the forefront of our memory and refreshes our mind and our heart. In the scriptures, God often used things we would SEE as a sign to REMEMBER the things that He has done. In Genesis, He used the rainbow to remind us that He had made a covenant that “never again would all flesh be wiped off the face of the earth by flood.” In Joshua, He had the Israelites take 12 stones from the dry riverbed of the Jordan and stack them up so that “When your children ask, ‘What do these stones mean to You?’ Tell them, ‘They are a memorial to what the Lord has done.’” Something really remarkable happens when we engage imagery with our time in the Word. When we take the time to expr

Illuminated Journaling: Avoiding the Miry Bog

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One of the things that I love the MOST about journaling in my Bible is that the Word is always freshly applied to my heart. I was studying Psalms 40 a few weeks ago - and so totally identified with the Psalmist when he said, "I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog and set my feet upon a rock making my steps secure." When I was first working through these verses, I was so very grateful that God hears my cry...and that He acts on my behalf...He draws me up...out of the miry bog! Have you ever found yourself in a miry bog? My face still gets twisted up remembering the SMELL of a miry bog that I found myself in as a child. I wandered a bit too deep into the woods near a family friend's farm...chasing butterflies with their hound dog. The hound dog had enough sense to not keep going when the ground got squishy...I however, did not! That place STUNK to high heaven (as my grandmother us