Creative Worship: THE FORGIVENESS CIRCLE | Faith Art Journaling with Julie

Colossians 3:13 "Remember, the Lord forgave you so you must forgive others."

I'm journaling in my 100 Days of Bible Promises Devotional, and the promise for day 69 is about God's forgiveness. God promises that He has forgiven us already. Notice that it is in the past tense. He forgave us when Jesus took all of our past, present and future sins upon Himself and nailed them to the Cross. It's been done! Already! Complete! However, He doesn't leave it there, does He? There's more to the verse.

The rest of the verse says, "...so you must forgive others." Just as God has forgiven us, we are to forgive others when they wrong us. Bitterness and anger are toxic to our souls, and when we harbor them in our hearts, they fester into relationship-barriers. Unforgiveness can prevent us from having a right relationship not only with other people, but with God also. Said the opposite way, forgiveness can foster a right relationship with others and with God. That's because when we forgive others, freely and fully, we can more easily accept God's forgiveness. But when we hold bitterness in our hearts and refuse to choose to forgive someone who has wronged us, then it translates into us not being able to experience the full grace of God's love towards us.

What about if they don't admit to being wrong? What if they don't say they're sorry? What if they don't even know they've hurt me? Guess what?! Forgive! God forgave us before we even asked for forgiveness. "Remember...to forgive others," He says, because it is something we need to be reminded of. And more often than not, it's a matter of choosing to forgive. Our emotions will probably not FEEL like forgiving. Did Jesus feel like He wanted to die on the Cross? NO! We can see that in the Garden of Gethsemane; but He chose to do it anyway. Choose to forgive, and the feelings will eventually follow.

I created this page with the "Send Me" and "Let's Do This" stamp sets. I wanted to emphasize the cyclical process of forgiveness--we experience God's forgiveness, which helps us to forgive others, which then helps us to appreciate and experience God's forgiveness, etc. I began by coloring concentric circles on my page with my watercolor crayons, starting at the center, and alternating the colors. Then I blended those colors with an aquabrush, adding my color where I felt I needed it. I chose my palette to match the colors on the devotional page, a golden ochre and burnt sienna.

Then I stamped my words using Versafine Onyx Black Ink. These words are a mix and match of the two sets. I handlettered the "s" to the first "forgive" to make the subject and verb agree (I'm an English teacher). Don't be afraid to make your stamps fit your needs! Then, to highlight the circular pattern I added the arrows, and colored them, again, with the watercolor crayons. I finished with a texture stamp from Texture Tiles 3, washi tape, a tab and bow.

There was still too much blank space between the arrows and the words, so I added the stamped heart. I dipped the burnt sienna crayon into water, dabbed it off slightly onto a paper towel, and then stamped directly onto the page. I outlined it with the same journaling pen that I used to write down my prayer-thoughts.

Thanks for stopping by. You can visit me anytime at Jules' Jewels YouTube Channel and my blog Jules' Jewels, and see other projects on Instagram at @julesk.jewels.