Bible Journaling - Tables and Lists and Burdens

I remember when I was still in early Sunday school, the Sunday school teacher expected of us to learn the books of the Bible by heart. In order! We all thought it a daunting task. The idea was to do it five books at a time, but the teacher himself seemed to have forgotten about his plan of action after the first week. It always sort of bugged me afterwards, that I did not know the books of the Bible in order. It would continue to haunt me until years later, when I started to enjoy reading the Bible. All of a sudden, I realized one day that the daunting task had been mastered without any effort on my side. I knew the Bible books by heart, simply because I had spent enough time reading and studying it. I did not know it at the time, but this would be one of the first unnecessary burdens that a fellow believer in Christ would put on me. Many more were to follow, and I am sure that even more await me in future. We do that to each other. In today's blog, I share a little more about the idea of burdens with you, while I work on the lists and tables in my Inspire Praise Bible.
I believe that these burdens that we place upon each others' shoulders, are placed there with the best of intentions. I am sure the Sunday school teacher meant well, that his intention was to acquaint all of us better with the Word of God. But his approach was clumsy and driven by human effort. I have often been in discipleship (learnership) relationships with fellow believers, where those in my care had habits that I knew to be wrong or hurtful to themselves, and therefore to our Father as well. At first, my approach was as clumsy as that of the Sunday school teacher. I noticed the shortcomings, I figured I knew of a way to overcome it, and I took interventionist steps. These steps seldom had any lasting effect, if any effect at all.
As time passed, and I grew in my relationship with God, I also learned that I should trust the Holy spirit to know better. These days, by the grace of God, my approach is somewhat more moderate. Now, when I identify a problem, I take it to the Lord in prayer, and I do not open my mouth about it to any other person, until I have instructions from Him to do so. Let me put it differently. I only talk to God about the problem. I do not talk to the person with the problem about the problem. By doing this, I have seen people caught in abusive relationships, develop the will and ability to get out of it. I have seen people trapped in substance abuse, recognize their own problem and develop the will to rid themselves of it. I have seen people desiring to change their words, their habits, their attitudes, after I have prayed for them to have their eyes opened. All, without me ever having to speak a word to them. There is no One who convinces of sin, as effectively as the Holy Spirit does. Then, when they are ready to deal with their own issues, and they inevitably come talk to me, I am also ready to talk to them.
Do they inevitably come talk to me? Yes, because God will not start something that He won't see through to the end. So why would He then trust me to be the best person to send them to? Because during all that time that I spent praying for them, I would inevitably have developed a deep seated love and care for those I prayed about. You see, prayer does not only change the ones you pray for, it also changes the one who does the praying. When you pray with a humble and contrite heart, searching for the absolute best in and for someone else, you will undoubtedly learn to love them the way our Father does. And when you minister from a foundation of love, not condemnation, then you minister from the heart of God.
I wish to make two invitations today. I wish to invite you to bring all of those burdens that you have been dragging around with you, and to come lay it at the Lord Jesus' feet. Leave it there. Do not pick up your condemnation, your church abuse, your rules and regulations, and carry it one centimetre further with you. Leave it there!
The second invitation I wish to make is to pray a prayer of forgiveness with me. Yes, with me, for I do not get this right all the time, either. None of us are perfect. So, I will be praying this prayer as ardently as I hope you will. I pray for forgiveness for all those unfair burdens I have placed upon the shoulders and minds of others in my fervour for the Lord. I pray that they will be released from my human condemnation, so that they can once again hear the loving and caring prompts of the Holy Spirit, as He guides them to a better understanding of what their lives ought to look like in Jesus Christ. I pray that people will get to know our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ for the loving God that they are, instead of the condemning God that we as believers have turned them into. I humble myself before God, asking Him to show me the best approach into people's lives, rather than to follow my own ideas opinions and cleverly constructed plans. May God's will be done, and my own will be humbled.
Now, if you wish, you may read on to see how I approached the decorations of the pages with tables and lists in my Inspire Praise journaling Bible.

I finally managed to get my hands on a bottle of Clear Gesso, by a local producer, called Zellen. It was the last bottle left on the shelf and I grabbed it, not even bothering about the price. It was a bit pricy, but I had become rather desperate.

The consistency proved to be a thick and slow running paste.

At the time, I was visiting the folks over the Christmas season. I grabbed one of my dad's magazines to experiment on. I covered a page with the gesso. The idea with the experiments would once again be to see if the product was completely transparent, and if it allowed any bleeding. I also wanted to find out if any other products could be used on it. The first two questions were answered soon enough. The product is completely transparent. It does leave the page feeling very grainy and rough, something I have a hard time getting used to. At the end of the experiments, I found that it was effective in preventing bleeding. However, as I kept using the product, I found that there were occassions where some of my products did bleed through despite the paper being treated with Clear Gesso beforehand. None of the products I had used had bled through to the back of the page, at the time of theses tests being done. However, subsequent use of the product in my Bible, led to yet another unforeseen problem.

In this photo, you are looking at a photo of a page from my Bible. The page at the back has been treated with the Zellen Clear Gesso before I used my markers on it. It prevented the bleeding effectively. Then I turned the page and treated the back of the page with the clear gesso. All of a sudden, those markers that had not bled through the page, started bleeding through the page! This was a major concern! I suspect that in future, I will have to treat both sides of the page with gesso, before bringing any mediums to the page, to prevent a re-occurrence of the same problem. Do be careful in your own Bibles, as it will require some careful planning on my part to mask this blunder.

I did not have as wide a variety of products with me, as I have at home, but there was still a number of products to test on the gesso. I started with a range of markers and inks. I painted all of these with water as well. I found two things. All of the products could be used on the clear gesso and all retained the vibrancy of their colours. Also, fewer of these products were now as water-soluble as before, making them much easier to use and much more willing to stick to the treated page, than when I used the other mediums.

A closer view of the test results.

I then tested some pencils, watercolours and gellatos. The results were the same as above. I was perfectly satisfied that I had found the ideal solution to the problem, until I encountered the problem with bleeding mentioned above, where my products only started bleeding once the back of the page was treated. Sadly, longer use of this product proved that these initial tests were deceiving. Products proved to not adhere to the page as well  as I had hoped and some colours resultantly were not as bright as I would have hoped for. Still, it remains the best product tested to date.

I was now ready to move into my Bible.

I again wanted to decorate the pages with some lovely flower motifs I found on some serviettes. I removed the backing paper from the serviettes.

Then I cut the flowers from the serviettes and tested the layout on the page.

I was not convinced that I could use the clear gesso to decoupage with. This would have to be a future experiment. So, I used Dala Acrylic Matt Glaze Medium to coat my pages with.

I carefully laid the flowers on top of the wet medium and waited for it to dry.

When it was dry, I painted the Clear Gesso over the pages, covering it completely with Clear Gesso.

Once it had dried, I closed the Bible, with a protector between the two treated pages and left it upside down to straighten the warped pages.

What my pages looked like when I was done. I was not completely happy with the transparency of these particular serviettes, but the text was still legible. I would have preferred it to be more legible.

I painted the backgrounds in watercolours.

Then I used my Promarkers to rewrite the headings.

I used my fineliners to colour the tiny decorative pictures next to the headings.

A close-up view of the colouring I had done.

I then wished to add some decorative stamping.

I used Tim Holtz Distress Ink to stamp with.

The completed pages.

You can watch a short compilation video of the steps above on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/vhnDg7P1Z14

Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2005,2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois, 60188. All rights reserved.

Inspire PRAISE South Africa edition copyright 2017 by Christian Art Publishers, PO Box 1599, Vereeniging, 1930, RSA. All rights reserved.

Marietjie Uys (Miekie) is a published author. You can buy my books here:
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