My Nest, My Heart, My Soul, My House

Back in March (see this post http://mewithmyheadintheclouds.blogspot.com/2013/03/heart-journey.html) I journaled and blogged about the many paths of my journey that are converging. This continues to happen to me and it feels like God is speaking to me and leading me to a place that has the potential to bring healing. Where God leads will always bring healing. I say "potential" because I must be willing to follow where He leads me and to let what He has for me transform me.

What continues to converge?I continue to read Dallas Willard's "Renovation of the Heart". Our current staff book study is an excellent book by Ruth Haley Barton called "Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership". In the online art journaling course I am working through, Soul Restoration, the metaphor for our soul is a house. This month's theme for "The Art Journaler" community is nest. What God is showing me through all of this is that I have allowed the state of my heart and soul to become cluttered and messy by not paying attention to some areas. To continue the metaphor, I've swept some things under the rug rather than fully dealing with the mess. The above things are all serving to open my eyes to see the state of my house/nest.

I love God's humor and that He knows us so well. Using metaphors such as house and nest resonate with me and draw me in to what He wants to show me. I have always loved houses, even as a very young girl I was drawn to architecture. Restoring old houses and decorating have been life long hobbies of mine. I have also been fascinated by birds for most of my life. so these themes of house and nest serve to nurture me rather than push me away, and enable me to hear God.

Right now it seems safer to continue to speak of this journey through the use of these metaphors, but I want to continue to blog about them and share my art journaling. It seems to be a part of the journey; a part of the healing.

As usual, to feed my love of making books, I have made a little book to collect parts of this journey...actually two books (cuz two is better than one, right?).

Restoration Altered Book Journal

Journey Art Journal Binder

Heart Journey

Life is a journey. I become more and more convinced of this the more I travel. On this journey are various paths we must choose to take. For those of us who have committed to offering our lives to Christ and to following Him and His ways, we must travel the road of spiritual formation. Right now, for me, I have many paths that seem to be coming together:

• My continuing journey of discovering who I am and who God has created me to be.
• Re-reading "Renovation of the Heart" and it's companion daily practice guide by Dallas Willard, which is about our paths of spiritual formation.
• Our leadership team at church is starting a monthly gathering time where we will examine transformation of character/heart that is core to our identity as Christ followers and leaders.
• I am participating in an online art journaling course called "Soul Restoration".

What I am seeing so far is that these paths are converging around a common thread: heart transformation. On the journey of life as a Christ-follower, the goal is to become more and more Christ-like. This is the calling and purpose of our true self ~ the self that was created in the image of God, for God. Our heart has been shaped by human nature and the culture we were raised in and currently live in. Our journey then is one of positioning ourselves throughout life to have our hearts transformed by God's Spirit to the likeness of Christ's heart. We position ourselves by practicing disciplines {practices or habits} that help us examine our hearts and lives, and that enable us to surrender to God's re-shaping of us. I read or heard somewhere (I don't currently remember where) that we are all in the process of being shaped, it's just a matter of what we are allowing ourselves to be shaped by. I choose to continually be shaped by God. Some art journaling pages with content from my written journal:

"What is in our heart matters more than anything else for who we become and what becomes of us." ~Dallas Willard

Over time, through practice and self-discovery, I have found that some of the best spiritual practices for me are: Bible study, reading books, prayer and examen, solitude, and art journaling. With my "One Word" for the year ~gratitude~ I am developing a practice of looking at life through a lens of gratefulness, which is helping to restore my heart from negativity and cynicism that have worked their way in over the years. It seems the above paths I find myself on will serve to help me continue in these practices and see further heart transformation.

Our assignment for our "One Little Word" practice for March is to set some goals and take action. My goals and actions art Journaling pages:

Art From Study Notes

One of the members of an online art journaling group I belong to posted a picture of how she was using art with her research proposal notes. She posted this picture on our community group page:

 

Thanks, Anna Tapp (Anna's blog: notknowingwhere.com), for the inspiration!

We have just started a series called "Images of the Incarnation" at church. So, while studying last week in prep for our Creative Team planning meeting, I was reading in Matthew about how Jesus tells John the Baptist's disciples who He is.

^"When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”

Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. ⁶ Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.” (Matthew 11:2-6)

I got off on a rabbit trail as I started thinking about what Jesus says to them. Quoting from the prophet Isaiah, He says that His identity is evident by what they have SEEN and HEARD. So I started looking back through the first 11 chapters of Matthew to see exactly what it is that these men has seen and what they had heard.

First, what they HEARD:
Jesus' ministry begins in chapter 4 verse 17: "From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”
4:23 says that, "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people." (Also repeated in 9:35)
In 10:7, when Jesus sends out the 12 disciples, He tells them to "As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’"
In fact, in the book of Matthew, the word "kingdom" is used 53 times, 48 of those times referring to God's kingdom. 7 times Jesus mentions the kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount; 15 times Jesus mentions the kingdom in His parables, 10 of those times He starts the parable out saying, "The kingdom of heaven is like.."; 21 times outside of the Sermon on the Mount and parables the kingdom is the illustration or point of Jesus' teachings.

So, John's disciples heard from Jesus all about the kingdom of God (heaven). In the Lord's prayer He calls His followers to pray, "your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." (Matt. 5:10). They heard that the kingdom was now near to them...THIS is the incarnation - the Kingdom of God coming near to us in the person of Jesus Christ!

So, then, what did they SEE?
They saw the very things the prophet Isaiah had foretold:

• the blind receive sight (Matthew 9:27-31)
• the lame walk (Matthew 8:5-13, 14-17; 9:1-8)
• those who have leprosy are cured (Matthew 4:23-25; 8:1-4, 14-17; 9:20-21)
• the dead are raised (Matthew 9:18-26)

Jesus pointed to himself as the Messiah ~the Savior of the world~ and told them that they had already received the evidence of this through what He taught and preached and by what He did. The kingdom of God draws near to us and points us to the Savior. We see and hear evidence of His identity all around us. We too are called to declare who He Jesus is and then show those around us the evidence of Christ in us by what we say and do.

So, like I said at the beginning of this post, I was inspired by Anna Tapp's artistic notes and while I watched TV yesterday put my study notes on paper artistically.

I love rabbit trails when I'm in God's Word...and it's a bonus when art comes out of it!

Art From My Journal

 



As Law & Order's stories are "ripped from the headlines", I am making art of quotes and thoughts taken from entries in my written journal. Currently I am reading "The Cry of the Soul" by Dan Allender and Tremper Longman. What I've read so far is about dealing with our emotions honestly, especially the one's we generally would label as negative or bad. Instead, dealing with them honestly, they can be opportunities to draw closer to God and know ourselves better.