Getting Creative with You Devotional Time

Well, now that I've pretty much recovered from Tuesday's frustrations, I feel like I can actually sit down and maybe write a semi-decent blog post. Maybe. We'll see how it goes... ;)


Lately I've been thinking about how I can change my devotional time to get more out of it. What I've got going on right now isn't bad or anything. Sit down, read the day's entry for either "Jesus Calling" or "Whispers of Hope," read the Scripture that accompanies the devotion, write a few thoughts, and pray. It's a pretty standard system that I don't think you can go wrong with, really, but I can't help but wonder if there might be something MORE I could be doing to bring my devotional time to life.

Enter, Shar and her incredible Instagram...

Y'all, I am slightly obsessed with this woman's Instagram posts. Almost every day, she posts pictures of her daily devotions and all I can say about it is that I am SO inspired by her posts. I love how she gets creative with her Bible studies and I'm really starting to think I'd like to give it a shot, myself. After all, I've definitely found that adding color and variety to anything I do helps me to stay engaged and interested more easily than if I just kept things black and white and super-streamlined.


That's why I went out and bought some supplies yesterday (I even took Shar's advice and dropped by the Dollar Tree). I bought a small journal (like... REALLY small so if it doesn't pan out, I haven't screwed up a real journal), some colorful markers, and some stickers. *Confession: I'm twenty-one and I really like stickers. Just sayin... So, I'll probably start trying some form of this either tonight or tomorrow and I'll definitely blog about how it goes.. I'm pretty excited about it. :)

If you followed the links and checked out Shar's page (where she explains her process) and Instagram (where you can see examples), I'd love to hear your thoughts on them. You already know I love it. 

Instagram-spiration

I am about to make a public confession of sorts, but don't be freaked out. I could do MUCH worse things. Seriously... but I should probably go ahead and say what it is I do before you DO get freaked out. Okay. My confession is...

My name is Ashley and I am an Insta-stalker.

That's right. In the past month or so, I have fallen in love with Instagram. I actually prefer it over Facebook right now and if I didn't have so many Instagram-less friends in my life, I'd probably ditch the book of faces altogether and just look at pictures all day. Anyway... I've reached that point in my Instagram-love that I've started searching for EVERYONE on there. People I know... well... some of them. Bloggers I like. Authors I love. It's kind of a problem, but whatever. There's no malice intended, so I think my behavior is still acceptable.

Really, the thing I like most about Instagram is the fact that, because it's based on single-photo sharing, it's easy to find inspiration EVERYWHERE you look. Seriously. Some of my friends are great photographers and then there are the writers/bloggers I've found who post writing-related things. It's basically a treasure trove of cool things to kick a writer's brain into action. 

Furthermore, when I get discouraged with my writing, I like to so search Instagram for hashtags such as #writerlife and #writerly to give me a kick in the seat. OR (since I'm an Insta-stalker, now) I'll just go find one of the writers I follow and look at their posts. *Yes. I'm that person who will scroll all the way back to your first post ever unless you have 2,392 posts and I just don't feel like it. #sorrynotsorry

I am sorry about that hashtag, though. 

So, for all those who say social media is nothing but a distraction, I have to politely disagree in the case of Instagram. In fact, I'd have to say that that particular social media platform has benefited my writing.

Am I the only writer who loves Instagram? Where do you look for inspiration?