Chosen and Loved...

Hi friends,

I have been reading through the Bible using a chronological reading plan this year, and some parts can be really challenging! One book that can sometimes be a bit tough to read is Deuteronomy, partially because it includes a lot of repetition from Exodus and Numbers, and also because there are a lot of laws given that we struggle to relate to everyday life in the 21st century. Nevertheless, I want to encourage you to persevere and pray as you read, asking for God to bring revelation to you as you study His Word. Sometimes there is just one verse that jumps out from the page and into your heart, as God reveals something of Himself to you. This happened to me as I was reading through Deuteronomy 7 and noticed verses 7-8...

 

“The Lord had his heart set on you and chose you, not because you were more numerous than all peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.  But because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your fathers, he brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from the place of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt."

What a beautiful picture of God's saving grace! God didn't choose us because we were well behaved or intelligent or gifted... He chose us because He set His heart on us and loves us. And guess what? That will never change! Romans 8:38-39 assures us that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

I really enjoyed creating this page and meditating on the awesome truth of these words. I used a few different stamp sets for this, and wanted to show you how to stretch your stamps further by selectively inking some of the words. I used Hello My Name Is for the words chose and loves but these words do not appear exactly like this in the stamp set:

I took a few photos of the process so you can see how it's done:

The beauty of the high quality clear stamps from Sweet 'n Sassy is that you can choose to ink only portions of the stamp. In this case I left off the 'n' from chosen, and the 'd' from loved. I then inked just the 's' from saved and stamped this at the end of love, joining up the letters with a Micron pen. I encourage you to look at your stamps and see how you can stretch them to create different or new words - there are so many possibilities!

Here are the other sets I used on this page:

       

 

May your heart be encouraged today as you meditate on the fact that God set His heart on you and chose you because He loves you.

x Amy x