July Take Me Deeper

I got a bit behind towards the end of July and now into August....like 3 weeks behind! I'm not sure how that happened? Anyway, I finally finished up my July art journal pages so I can now share them as a whole. July's theme was Honor with the theme scripture being found in Revelation 4:11 "You are worthy, O Lord our God to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by Your will they were created and have their being."

Week 1: Dependance vs. Independence  - As a Christian one of my goals is to be totally dependent on God which is a whole lot easier said than done. I have been quite independent since I was quite young. I can remember telling my Mama many times that I will do it myself and usually she would let me with her standing by to make sure I did what needed to be done. The suggested scripture reading included Matthew 18:2-4  "He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them.  And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." And Psalm 131:1-2 "
My heart is not proud, Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content."  The art work for this page (and a few other pages this month) are prompted by Journaling By Heart studies by Erin Leigh and Melissa Ohlson. The flowers are so me, but the second page with the colors kind of randomly painted on, not so much. I used a copy of a picture of myself when I was around 3 years old framed with an antiqued paper doily and the children's hymn Jesus Loves Me.

Week 2: Cultivate Honor - To cultivate honor you must practice it, live it out everyday in the way we relate to one another. There are so many "one another" scriptures. I used the verbs from some of these "one anothers" on my page. This page is done with Gelatos blended with gesso, letters cut from book text and my new favorite things...Pitt pens.

 Week 3: Honor God - The scripture that I meditated on the most for this lesson is from 1 Corinthians 10:31 which tells us, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” Bernice (the lesson author for July) asked the question, "How is God honored?" and then shared these five ways: He is honored when we welcome Him, when we worship Him, when we trust Him, when we give him our tithes and offerings, and to be kind to the poor or those in need, and I added to be loving because that is what I am working on this year.  This page was done with watercolor crayons, gesso and Pitt pens.

 Week 4: Honor Others - This week we studied the scriptures that tell us that we are individual parts of a body and we should honor each other as an important part of that whole no matter our preconceived notions of someone's importance. The nursery worker is just as important to the body as the evangelist. Romans 12:3-5 " For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others." and 1 Corinthians 12:21-26 "The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”  On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,  and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty,  while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it,  so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.  If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it."  On this page I used the tutorial from the Journaling By Heart study, it worked so well with the Take Me Deeper study that I didn't change much at all. This is done with a background of several colors painted on randomly then stamped and stenciled with contrasting colors. I just happened to have foam stamps of grapes and grape leaves so I decided to use them. The border, words and any outlining was done with Pitt markers.

 Week 5: Honor Ourselves - The scripture for week 5's study is “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”    1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Which pretty much says it all. My background was created with Dyan Reaveley's paints. I dabbed on green, blue and yellow for the first layer then stenciled with a flower design and pink for the next layer. I added spatters of black and white. For the final layer,  I made a silhouette stencil as well as a couple of different shapes to make my words stand apart from my very busy background and used watered down gesso so that the pattern would show through. I outlined, shaddowed and added floral touches with my Pitt pens. The words were written with a variety of pens....because my pens kept dying on me.

 The last thing I want to share for the month of July is my Logos365 LOVE page. 

Many Blessings....and on to get caught up on the August lessons!

Zuda Gay Pease