Paint A Bridge With Inktense Pencils – Bible Art Journaling Challenge Week 29

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Hello Everyone! It is week 29 of the Bible Art Journaling Challenge! This week I’ve sensed a real key breakthrough is available for those in need. Myself and those in the creative communities around me, are standing with each of you for the breakthrough you are stepping in to and I am SO excited by the amazing testimonies which are already starting to come in!

Breakthrough

So, before you get in to this post any further, can I ask you to go read my brief post from Tuesday if you have not yet? It’s titled, “Let’s Talk Breakthrough…” and you can read it here. This Bible Art Journaling Challenge doesn’t sit alone today. That short post is needed for you to fully grasp what I’m sharing today.

You’ll notice in that post, I shared about a bridge and today, I’m going to be showing you how to paint a bridge with Inktense Pencils! They are a huge favorite of mine for Bible art journaling and this is simple stuff anybody can do. I want to quote a bit of what I said in that post…

“…I saw a bridge being transported down the motorway. As I saw it, I felt like God said, He is giving people a bridge to walk over in this season. He is even bringing the bridge to you! If your life has had troubles in this season, it is time to get up and walk over the bridge. This takes your cooperation but He will provide the way…”

Another part of the word I shared there which I want to reiterate here for you…

“…There seem to be many struggling with depression, isolation, creative blocks and other struggles… I want to speak out against those things and speak to those of you struggling. You MATTER. You are NOT alone. God sets the lonely in a family and my groups are FULL of family to you. God has INCREDIBLE creative inspiration ready for you and He is NOT the author of sickness. He gives GOOD gifts to His children and you are HIS child…

As an act of stepping in to God’s freedom, I want to ask you to do something simple now. Stand up and step over the imaginary line in front of you that may have been keeping you from your full calling and then tell God with your voice, that you welcome and receive His freedom and breakthrough for your situation…”

It’s time for breakthrough friends! Time to stand up, step over the line and cross the bridge into your next season.

Read that blog post fully yet? Yes? Okay… let’s do this. 🙂

Scripture

This week the scriptures I’ve chosen for the Bible Art Journaling Challenge are in Jeremiah 51, in several verses. That is verses 1, 20-23, 36-38, 40, 45-46a and finally 56. Together they paint an overview picture of what Jeremiah was saying to God’s people at the time. Let me share them with you from my NASB Note-Taker’s Bible and then explain my thoughts.

¹ Thus says the Lord:

“Behold, I am going to arouse against Babylon
And against the inhabitants of Leb-kamai
The spirit of a destroyer.

²⁰ He says, “You are My war-club, My weapon of war;
And with you I shatter nations,
And with you I destroy kingdoms.
²¹ “With you I shatter the horse and his rider,
And with you I shatter the chariot and its rider,
²² And with you I shatter man and woman,
And with you I shatter old man and youth,
And with you I shatter young man and virgin,
²³ And with you I shatter the shepherd and his flock,
And with you I shatter the farmer and his team,
And with you I shatter governors and prefects.

³⁶ Therefore thus says the Lord,

“Behold, I am going to plead your case
And exact full vengeance for you;
And I will dry up her sea
And make her fountain dry.
³⁷ “Babylon will become a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals,
An object of horror and hissing, without inhabitants.
³⁸ “They will roar together like young lions,
They will growl like lions’ cubs.

⁴⁰ “I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter,
Like rams together with male goats.

⁴⁵ “Come forth from her midst, My people,
And each of you save yourselves
From the fierce anger of the Lord.
⁴⁶ “Now so that your heart does not grow faint,
And you are not afraid at the report that will be heard in the land

⁵⁶ For the destroyer is coming against her, against Babylon,
And her mighty men will be captured,
Their bows are shattered;
For the Lord is a God of recompense,
He will fully repay.

What a fierce and incredible set of scriptures. I’m honestly not sure how long its been since I’ve paid attention to this chapter and this week it called to me deeply as I pressed in to God about what He is saying to me about breakthrough. I’ll talk to you about this shortly.

Applying scripture

Many of the sections of scripture in the Bible that are prophecies like this one, can tend to cause a bit of a stir in the camp of Jesus followers. Was it a prophetic word that already came to pass? Still to come? Applicable to us now? Best left in context and not applied personally??!! It can get confusing for people with so many theological voices telling us different things.

I’m going to set all that aside today and simplify things, (as I usually do). So here is my simple theological thought on how to read and process scripture. I’ve been to Bible college, a discipleship school and ministry school, all of which leaned heavily on proper understanding of scripture and hopefully my brief thoughts here could support some of you in grasping scripture for yourself more deeply.

Quite simply, I believe scripture is best read in context, to grasp what was trying to be communicated to those who, that bit of text was meant to be told to in the first place. So, read a couple or few chapters or verses around what interests you, to see what was happening, who was speaking and who they were speaking to. Perhaps their season of life (speaker and listeners) and their perspective when sharing/listening. Consider yourself a bit of a researcher and seek to discover a fuller picture before drawing conclusions. This positions us for God to speak to us through scripture more clearly. It’s sort of like reading a novel and we don’t really expect ourselves to know what happened, until we get to the end of the book. In reading the Bible, we need to grasp the bigger picture wherever possible.

Having read things in context, we can then figure out how to apply it to our life situations where applicable. The mistake can be to open the Bible, point at a scripture and believe it certainly is always what God is saying to us. Sometimes God can certainly give us a timely word this way, but there is more we can grasp by digging in deeper. An example? Above in verse 38, it says, “They will roar together like young lions,“. If I didn’t read the full context around that verse, I might conclude with a quick glance that God is calling me to roar together with others for His Kingdom! Or something similarly exciting. 🙂 In reality, it is essentially saying that the enemy, those in Babylon, “will roar together” but that they will still be destroyed regardless of their effort to seem scary. Also awesome – and of course, properly understood. 🙂

So how do we figure out how to apply scripture to our life after we understand it a bit more fully? Sometimes it simply ministers to our heart in ways which words cannot express, which feels the best way of all. Other times, when we want to grow our character, we can use practical steps to apply scripture to our life properly. There are several ways and here are a couple…

• One is by simply observing the life lessons which the characters in the Bible learned, so we can avoid the mistakes or even achieve the same sort of victories they had.
• When we read a prophecy in scripture, we can go on to read the section(s) of scripture that might tell us what happened as a result of the prophecy or even looking at why God felt the desire for the prophet or Biblical leader to share what he did to the people at that time of history. Were they behaving wickedly? Had the enemy caged them in on all sides and God was reaching out in mercy? When we understand with these questions in mind, we can then look at our own lives. Sometimes we can see that we have been having the same experiences or been behaving the same way in which the receivers of that prophecy were. We can get an insight into what might take place in our own life if we can see those parallels. It is important when we do this, to keep in mind that if we’re reading an Old Testament word, that God’s dealings with us will be in line with how He handles things since Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected. That new covenant comes with a new set of responses from God that must be considered.

If all this seems confusing to you, I’d recommend you do what I did as a teenager and determine to read through the Bible with the perspective that it is a novel. Perhaps read The Narrated Bible in Chronological Order which puts all the Bible stories in their believed order of happenings with a bit of historical commentary between them to help fill in the gaps.

It’s not a good Bible for study as it is challenging to find scripture when it is ordered a different way. But, it’s a great Bible for helping us understand scripture in context, which is invaluable when going back to our Bibles to read them in everyday life. We suddenly understand how, what we’re reading, fits in to other things. There are other chronological Bibles out there. This is the one I like. If you’ve got a favorite, please share in the comments below for others to know about. I’ve linked the image and you can find it on Amazon here if you want.

Become familiar with the Bible like it is going out of style – like your life depends on it. Because it does. If you want to succeed at this thing we call life, let the Word breathe life into you as you read it in amounts which seem unreasonable. 🙂 We cannot help but be transformed and overcome by God’s presence in our lives when we do.

If you find the Bible overwhelming or aren’t sure how to be hungry to read a massive book of text, have a look at what I said in my challenge post last week about Bible reading, which may give you some ideas. They worked really well for me. I’ve never stopped loving the Word of God!

Today’s scripture

So lets look at that set of verses for today and focus in on what I’ve underlined. This was a prophecy meant for God’s people and spoke of how God intended to destroy their enemy, (Babylon).

I feel like God is offering breakthrough right now to people. Those of you who are experiencing difficulties, you may feel like God’s people did at this time, boxed in and bruised by their enemy Babylon.

But God came as a destroyer against their enemy to repay His people. He told them they were his war-club and weapon of war! He said He would plead their case and exact full vengeance for them! He said the enemy would roar and growl but that He would bring them down like lambs to the slaughter! He told them to come forth from their enemies’ midst, to be clear of His fierce anger pored out on their enemy. This was so their heart would not grow faint and they would not be afraid. He said that He is a God of recompense and He would fully repay! See it for yourself…

¹ Thus says the Lord: “Behold, I am going to arouse against Babylon… The spirit of a destroyer.

²⁰ He says, “You are My war-club, My weapon of war;… And with you I shatter nations, And with you I destroy kingdoms. ²¹ “With you I shatter the horse and his rider, And with you I shatter the chariot and its rider, ²² And with you I shatter man and woman, And with you I shatter old man and youth, And with you I shatter young man and virgin, ²³ And with you I shatter the shepherd and his flock, And with you I shatter the farmer and his team, And with you I shatter governors and prefects.

³⁶ Therefore thus says the Lord, “Behold, I am going to plead your case
And exact full vengeance for you;...

³⁸ “They will roar together like young lions, They will growl like lions’ cubs.

⁴⁰ “I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter…

⁴⁵ “Come forth from her midst, My people, And each of you save yourselves From the fierce anger of the Lord. ⁴⁶ “Now so that your heart does not grow faint, And you are not afraid at the report that will be heard in the land

⁵⁶ For the destroyer is coming against her, against Babylon,… For the Lord is a God of recompense, He will fully repay.

Paint a bridge with Inktense Pencils

I am using Inktense Pencils to paint a bridge but you can use whatever you have. I will leave you to watch my video above for instruction and if you want to see more Inktense tutorials, I’d like to refer you to my Inktense blog tag which will be full of extra tutorial help you’ll enjoy. If you look to my blog right side, for the “Search Blog By Tag” area, you can click on my tags to view all related posts. It is a great way to find your way around my blog. 🙂

Will you pop into the comments below and help me (and others here!) by sharing…

1. Your own tips for specifically using Inktense Pencils in Bibles.
2. Questions or requests for further tutorial you hope I can address with Inktense Pencils in Bible art.

I’ll look forward to seeing your tips and using your questions/feedback as a place to know what to share next time I show you Inktense Pencils.

Paint My Photo

As promised in my video, I want to give you a link to the Paint My Photo website. It has recently moved to a new system and domain and is quite the place, run by a great guy! I was waiting to share it with you until it was accessible to new accounts again and it now is!

If you like to create using images as a reference, but don’t want to copy photos which may be copy-written, you can go to this website and use the images there. Today I used a photo on the site, titled Path To Peace which is downloadable by clicking on the image below which will take you to the page with the full size version.

You’ll need to make an account and give credit. Otherwise, there are no copyright issues which is wonderful! My own profile on the site is newer and can be found here if you want to follow me. Thanks to Linda Willason on Paint my Photo and her nephew who took the Florida photo which she shared on his behalf!

Bible journaling supplies featured today

As promised, here are the supplies I featured, in this lesson. I hope they help you find anything you may want to try out. These supplies are purely optional and you are free to participate with whatever you have, using the devotional for this lesson.

Links lead to my own sites, or my affiliate partners, DaySpring, Scrapbook.com, Amazon.com, Simon Says Stamp, Michaels, Amazon.co.uk and Joy Clair. I occasionally also link to other helpful sites whom I am not affiliated with. When you find products which I’ve recommended through my affiliate partners, this ministry is supported. This has no effect on you and helps impact lives through this ministry. You may view my disclosure for more info on how this works. Thank you. I so appreciate your support, which helps me support your creative journey with God!

Your turn to create!

I would love you to try any of the techniques I’ve shared in my process with you today if you’re interested in them. I also want you to feel free to gather inspiration in other places. I’m looking forward to seeing what you Bible art journal for this weeks challenge!

You can find answers to most any question you may have about the Bible Art Journaling Challenge over on my Bible Art page found in the top navigation. It also has a full archive! Be sure to head over to our Facebook group, to chat about this weeks Bible Art Journaling Challenge and get started on your own page!

If you have not done so yet, be sure to join my newsletter on the right-hand side of this page, so you can be notified when I release new Challenges and other exciting creative things. And, don’t forget to share this with any friends you think might want to know about it.

You are loved. x

*Scripture quotations taken from the NASB.

*Links take you to my affiliate partners, DaySpring, Scrapbook.com, Amazon.com, Simon Says Stamp, Michaels, Amazon.co.uk and Joy Clair. And, occasionally to other shops whom I am not an affiliate of. When you find deals which I’ve recommended through my affiliate partners, I get supported. This has no effect on you and makes a real difference for me. You may view my affiliate and product disclosure for more info on how this works. Thank you, I so appreciate your support, which helps me support your creative journey with God!