Bible Journaling for Beginners

April 25, 2020

Hey y'all!

I invited my friend Mackenzie Cook to guest post on the blog today! I'm excited for her to share what she knows about Bible journaling! Enjoy!

Bible journaling can seem like a very daunting task especially if you have never done anything like it. I am going to try and help simplify it so you can get started! One of my biggest tips, if you are just getting starting, is having just a simple notebook to create in! To me it is scary to put my art in my Bible because I do not want to mess up and I do not want to cover any of the words in the Bible. That is my personal preference of course but I think it helps because you can constantly experiment and then once you feel comfortable with the technique you used, you can transfer it into your Bible.

A lot of people ask, "Well where should I start?" I highly recommend James, Ephesians, or Galatians to begin with. These are shorter books in the Bible but are packed full of truths! I am currently journaling through the book of James. I do one chapter at a time. First I read it, then I use a commentary (like bible-study.org) and I take all kinds of notes. I underline or highlight words or phrases that stick out to me. Now is the fun part! If you have artistic abilities you can draw or doodle images that correlate with what you read. For example, in James he talks about the tongue, wisdom, and faith; so you could draw mouths, an owl or a cross to correlate with those words. Now my favorite thing to look at is Pinterest! After reading in my Bible I will look up that specific verse that sticks out to me and see what other people have drawn to help inspire me!

During this quarantine there are a lot of people offering free Bible journaling classes that go more in depth. You can follow what they do step by step so you can do exactly what they do and then take what you learn and apply it to different passages of scripture. Another resource I use along with Pinterest is Youtube. Sometimes I need a little more inspiration than what Pinterest can give me.

Most of all, something that I recently heard from a lady I have learned from is that it is a “work of HEART and not a work of ART.” I love this saying. Sometimes I simply do not have the time or even the motivation to get all of my art supplies out and do all the artsy stuff. Because of this I also keep a journal that I can just write out notes, thoughts, prayers, etc. You ultimately have to just find what works for YOU and not compare yourself to everything you might see on Pinterest. So just get started. Use a lot of trial and error to find out what will work best for you and get out of your comfort zone and experiment!