Cord of Hope

Behold, when we come into the land, you shall tie this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and you shall gather into your house your father and mother, your brothers, and all your father's household. Joshua 2:18

Hi Friends!

I hope y'all had a blessed Thanksgiving, telling the Lord how grateful you are to Him. Believers share something we can all thank God for- HOPE. This world is not a place that instills hope. In fact, it's often the opposite of hope. But because believers know Jesus as our Savior, our hope is in Him- not anything or anyone in the world. So, our hope is sure. The definition of hope is "a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen" or "a feeling of trust." In Hebrew, the word for hope is "tikvah." It means expectation, but it also means cord or rope, with the root word meaning to bind or wait for/upon. 

In Joshua 2:18, tikvah is used and translated "cord." Joshua had sent 2 spies to Jericho to check things out. They went to Rahab's house, and she protected them when the king of Jericho came after the 2 spies. Rahab told them that she, and all the people in Jericho, had heard all that God had done for the Israelites and it scared them. They were probably feeling a bit hopeless. Rahab asked the spies to promise that when Jericho was conquered, that she and her family would be spared. They told her to tie a scarlet cord (tikvah) in the window, and she and her family would indeed be spared. In this story, the scarlet cord was a literal cord. But it also illustrates what hope looks like. The cord was Rahab's only guarantee that she and her family would be saved. But, she had to wait for the realization of the spies' promise. Rahab didn't have a personal relationship with God at that time, but she hoped in Him and knew her physical salvation was tied to trusting in Him. 

How do we stay hopeful when things seem so dismal? How do we wait and wait and wait? God is the answer, of course! We must focus on Him and be in an active relationship with Him. When we are connected to God, it's like we are clinging to a very strong rope. Keep your hope in Him, my friends. And cling to Him as you would a scarlet cord hanging out a window.

Page details: I used the following Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps: Peace Be Still, Texture Tiles 2, Skinny Caps, Teeny Alpha, and Mini Grunge Alpha. I stamped the cord, masked it, and stamped the bricks. I lightly watercolored the bricks, and then stamped the words.

I based this post on information I found in an article by Dori Halbert, refugecounseling.com.

Have a blessed week! Andrea

Blessed Nation

Hello again, friends!

 I hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.  I spent a good portion of Memorial Day reflecting on my freedoms and the blessings I have because I live in this great nation.  I am thankful for the sacrifices so many throughout history have made.  It's almost incomprehensible, to think of all the lives that have been lost to protect our freedom and way of life. 

Psalm 33

¹ Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous;
    it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
² Praise the Lord with the harp;
    make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.
³ Sing to him a new song;
    play skillfully, and shout for joy.

⁴ For the word of the Lord is right and true;
    he is faithful in all he does.
⁵ The Lord loves righteousness and justice;
    the earth is full of his unfailing love.

⁶ By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
    their starry host by the breath of his mouth.
⁷ He gathers the waters of the sea into jars;
    he puts the deep into storehouses.
⁸ Let all the earth fear the Lord;
    let all the people of the world revere him.
⁹ For he spoke, and it came to be;
    he commanded, and it stood firm.

¹⁰ The Lord foils the plans of the nations;
    he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
¹¹ But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever,
    the purposes of his heart through all generations.

¹² Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,
    the people he chose for his inheritance.
¹³ From heaven the Lord looks down
    and sees all mankind;
¹⁴ from his dwelling place he watches
    all who live on earth—
¹⁵ he who forms the hearts of all,
    who considers everything they do.

¹⁶ No king is saved by the size of his army;
    no warrior escapes by his great strength.
¹⁷ A horse is a vain hope for deliverance;
    despite all its great strength it cannot save.
¹⁸ But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him,
    on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,
¹⁹ to deliver them from death
    and keep them alive in famine.

²⁰ We wait in hope for the Lord;
    he is our help and our shield.
²¹ In him our hearts rejoice,
    for we trust in his holy name.
²² May your unfailing love be with us, Lord,
    even as we put our hope in you. 

I pray, Lord, that we never forget as a nation, where our hope comes from.  I pray we never forget the sacrifices made so that we may live as a free nation.  I pray for each and every service member, that they may seek You and know You and that they live a life in service to You, first and foremost.  Protect them, as they protect us, Lord.  I also pray for the family members of our armed forces.  I can not imagine the countless sleepless nights they endure waiting to hear from their loved ones.  Give them strength and comfort, Lord.  

Father God, thank You for the ultimate sacrifice made by your Son, that allows us a place in Heaven, if we only accept Him as our Savior!  Help us to be a nation of Christian soldiers, ready to sacrifice what ever You ask of us, for the glory of Your Kingdom.  Amen.

Page Details:

I started this page by drawing and painting the flag and flag pole, using acrylic paints.  Then I stamped the large floral cluster from Consider the Wildflowers using a light colored ink and messily colored it in with acrylic paint.  I stamped back over the image with black Stazon ink, after the paint dried.  I repeated this process with the cross from the Rustic Easter set.  I covered up my flag with pieces of paper and sprayed the sky with a light blue mister spray I made using Derwent Inktense Blocks and some water.  I added some clouds with white Distress Paint.  It was at this time, I felt like I might not have left enough room for my title and decided I would have to stamp over the top of my flag to have room.  I tried using Archival Ink to start with, but the word was getting lost in the flag.  Embossing powder to the rescue!  I used Versamark Ink with black embossing powder and the Chunky Alpha and Mini Grunge Type Alpha to complete my title.  And because I had some stray embossing, I used some black paint splatters to finish off my page. 

(Before the title)

Until next time, catch up with me on Instagram and Facebook @simplyjillsjourney.

Jill

Just Listen

"Ok, but seriously, can you not just LISTEN?!"

That's what I felt like saying to the Israelites when I was reading through Jeremiah this past week. They repeatedly sought Jeremiah's advice and counsel, and repeatedly ignored it - with devastating consequences. 

Jeremiah 44:5

Jeremiah chapters 42 through 44 paint the scene for us:

After the downfall of Jerusalem and inner turmoil, assassinations, and infighting, the remaining people of Judah gathered together and approached Jeremiah and said to him, "Let our plea for mercy come before you, and pray to the Lord your God for us, for all this remnant - because we are left with but a few, as your eyes see us - that the Lord your God may show us the way we should go, and the thing that we should do." Jeremiah agreed to pray to the Lord for His guidance and report back whatever the Lord said. The people then promised to do whatever the Lord commanded, whether it was good or bad, they would obey the voice of the Lord. 

At the end of 10 days, Jeremiah relayed the message from the Lord back to the people. God told them to stay in their land and He would protect them and bless them. But, He said, if they leave the land and settle in Egypt, famine, disaster, and destruction would follow them and they would all perish. 

“Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your plea for mercy before him: If you will remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you, and not pluck you up; for I relent of the disaster that I did to you. Do not fear the king of Babylon, of whom you are afraid. Do not fear him, declares the Lord, for I am with you, to save you and to deliver you from his hand. I will grant you mercy, that he may have mercy on you and let you remain in your own land. But if you say, ‘We will not remain in this land,’ disobeying the voice of the Lord your God and saying, ‘No, we will go to the land of Egypt, where we shall not see war or hear the sound of the trumpet or be hungry for bread, and we will dwell there,’ then hear the word of the Lord, O remnant of Judah. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: If you set your faces to enter Egypt and go to live there, then the sword that you fear shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine of which you are afraid shall follow close after you to Egypt, and there you shall die. All the men who set their faces to go to Egypt to live there shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. They shall have no remnant or survivor from the disaster that I will bring upon them."

Jeremiah 42:9-17

The people heard all Jeremiah had to say and when he had stopped speaking, the arrogant leaders exploded with anger. "Liar!! Liar!! God didn't tell you to say, 'don't go to Egypt'. You are just trying to set us up so we can be killed or captured and exiled to Babylon!!" 

(Wait, what? You asked Jeremiah to give you advice and promised him you would listen and obey no matter what, and then you call him a liar when he gives you the direct word from the Lord, which just so happens to be something you didn't want to hear? I read this passage in complete astonishment.)

The people ignore Jeremiah's warning and move to Egypt, and Jeremiah 44 tells of God's judgement. Perhaps the saddest passage is Jeremiah 44 when God says, "Yet I persistently sent to you all my servants the prophets, saying, 'Oh, do not do this abomination that I hate!' But they did not listen or incline their ear..."

Of course, we know what happens after that -- Egypt falls to Babylon and the Jewish people living in Egypt were destroyed. In fact, Matthew Henry says this about the Israelites living in Egypt at that time: 

The sacred history records not the accomplishment of this prophecy, but its silence is sufficient; we hear no more of these Jews in Egypt, and therefore conclude them, according to this prediction, lost there; for no word of God shall fall to the ground.

What a sad, sad end to a people who would just not listen. 

It's easy to judge the Israelites and their poor decision making. I mean, they had the direct word of the Lord and they did the complete opposite time and time again! Oh, but my friend, aren't we so often like the Israelites? We have the entire word of God (the Bible), we have direct access to God's heavenly throne room through our Lord Jesus Christ, and yet we do the complete opposite of what we know we should do time and time and time again! I was so convicted reading this passage. It's not enough to read and know God's word, you have to also listen and obey. This is an area I know I need to work on and, with the Lord's help, will strive to be a better listener to His Word in my life. Will you pray with me to be a better listener this week?

Much love in Christ, 

Janelle
@journalingjoy

This page is what I call a "beautiful mess". 😍 I followed my friend Colleen's instruction video on creating a page using stamps, Distress Oxides, acyrlic paint, stencils and texture paste. If you haven't see it yet, you can find it on YouTube here. What a blast!! I used the new Art Deco Alpha stamp set along with the Mini Grunge Alpha, Faith Wordfetti, Texture Tiles 1, and Typewriter Text Background stamp sets from Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps. They are celebrating their 12th birthday through the month of November and you can receive 12% off your entire order!! 📣🙌

  

 

A Place for Jesus

Hello friends and fellow Bible Journalers...

As we begin a new year, I want to be sure that I make even more room for Jesus in my life.  It is so easy to allow the demands of every day life rob us of spending sweet time with our Lord!  

This page was inspired by a sermon our pastor preached at our church at the beginning of the new year.  I was convicted and challenged to "Make a Place for Jesus!"

Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side.  And a scribe came up and said to him, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go."  And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has no where to lay his head."

Matthew 8:18-20 (ESV)

I wanted to include my sermon notes, but didn't want to cover up any of the details on the page, so I created a Tip-In tag which was attached to the opposite page by a washi tape hinge.

The page was prepped with two layers of clear gesso and the scene lightly sketched with a pencil.  Intense Color Blocks were used to watercolor the background.   Archival Inks, Versafine Onyx Black Ink, and a White Paint Pen were used to add the details.  The new scene silhouettes stamp sets and several alphabet sets made it fun and easy to complete the scene.  The bushes were created using the top of the tree from the Scene Silhouettes: Trees stamp set and masking was used to get just the tops of the tall grass from the Scene Silhouettes: Tall Grass stamp set.  I was able to use the fox and the bird from the Scene Silhouettes: Woodland stamp set to perfectly illustrate the scripture verse!  I couldn't resist adding a few more animals to the scene.

Here are the stamp sets from the Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps Store used to create my page:

I hope you will be inspired and challenged to "Make a Place for Jesus" this year!  He wants to take up residence in our hearts.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Hugs,

Cathy

Abide in Christ

I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. John 15:1-4

Hello Friends!
In these verses of John 15, Jesus uses the analogy that He is the vine and believers are the branches and that we are to abide in Him. That's what I want to focus on today: abiding in Him.The definition of abide includes to follow, to conform to, to remain or dwell in. I read a lesson by Pastor Brian G. Hedges that broke this analogy into 3 things we can do to abide.

• Connect to Jesus: Just as the branches must be connected to the vine to bear fruit, so must we be connected to Jesus. This union is mutual, we abide in Him and He in us (vs 4).
• Depend on Jesus: We are dependent on Jesus just as the branches are dependent on the vine. We cannot grow without Him. In fact, we can do nothing apart from Him (vs 5).
• Continue in Jesus: We must stay or remain in Him. That means we must continue to trust Him, keep on depending, never stop believing, to persevere in Jesus and His teaching.

And in John 15:11, after all the talk of abiding in Him and His love, Jesus said that He told the disciples these things so that His joy would be in them and that it would be full. Abide in Him and be filled with His joy! I want that, don't you?

For the page, I used the following Sweet 'n Sassy stamps: Shake It Off Caps Alpha & Mini Grunge Type Alpha. I drew the grapes by copying an image I found online. Then I colored everything with chalk pastels. I highlighted "Jesus" with a white Sharpie pen.

 

Have a blessed day! Andrea

Child of the King - Romans 8

You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to lead you back again into fear, but you received a Spirit that shows you are adopted as his children. With this Spirit, we cry, “Abba, Father.” - Romans 8:15

Hello everyone! Today I want to show you a page I made with two stamp sets: mini grunge alpha and Child of the King. I love the smaller alphabet because you can just stamp an entire sentence and you’ll still have room to add something else ;). Child of the King had just the perfect elements for this page; the little diamonds and the crown were perfect for this part of Romans (Romans 8:12-17). And of course the sentiment: child of the King matched this part too.

I prepared my page with clear gesso (I use a Dutch journaling bible with extremely thin pages, almost every waterproof ink will bleed through so that’s why I prepare my pages) and started stamping the sentence ‘always wear your invisible crown’. When I stamped the sentence I ended with the word ‘crown’ from the stamp set ‘Child of the King’ but when I finished the stamping I thought the lettering didn’t really match the rest of the sentence so I decided to add some white gesso on top of the stamped word and stamp the word crown with the mini grunge alpha too. I think it would be hard to see if I used another background. But these crayons got a lot less color on the white gesso than on the rest of the page so you can still see that I tried to fix the page. I don’t really mind it (I learned to be a little bit less hard on myself when it comes to journaling mistakes ;)), but it gives a weird color change in the middle of the page. I colored the background with wax crayons that I blended out with odorless mineral spirits. After that I colored the images with colored pencils.

Have a nice day!!
- Lucinde

Happy Places

“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth.The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more."
Isaiah 65: 17-19



Hey friends! Do you have a "happy place"? Maybe a nail salon, massage parlor, mall, CRAFT STORE, church... maybe even your pantry with the door closed behind you eating a snack cake and NOT having to share...#momprobs. Hopefully we all have a happy place to get away from the non happy things in our life and bring a little light to our lives. Our FOREVER happy place though is coming soon! Some day we will wake up everyday in our happy place and rejoice with our Lord! How refreshing it is to know that! Keep pushing on and hiding in your pantries folks... one day we'll be there and there will be no worries or sadness!

 

For this page I tried a new technique I've been seeing! I used the plastic packaging to one of my letter sticker sheets and put watered down water colors on it and then smooshed it down on the page. Here's a little snapshot of what it looked like while I was doing it! (Not the best picture but I did it at night time in my little "area" I've created in my living room.)

 

 

I enjoyed making this page and used ALL Sweet N' Sassy Stamps!
The stamp sets I used are listed below! Remember Korin still has all the stamps 25% off right now to lighten the load a little bit for her move to Georgia!

Remember to use #sweetnsassystamps on Facebook and Instagram so we can see what you're up to!



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<3 Brittany
@britcarleton
Personal Blog: Journaling Through Motherhood

Have Courage & Be Kind ♥

Hello lovelies!! 

Sharing with you a page I created inspired by one of our favorite Disney princesses... Cinderella! 

If you look at 1 Peter 3:3-5 it tells us:

Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God. This is how the holy women of old made themselves beautiful. 

When I think about Cinderella and her beauty that radiated beyond the rags and dirt, I think of her gentleness and kind spirit that charmed even the animals. Just as quickly as a pretty outfit, makeup, and heels can fade away, did Cinderellas coach turn into a pumpkin. Outward beauty is temporary, but being able to glow from within with the beauty of a kind spirit, shining for Him, is the secret to a beauty that can withstand age. In the movie, before Cinderella loses her mother, she gave her some advice... 

to have courage & be kind. I know this is pretty simple and short but what differences could you make or impacts could you have if applied this two principles to your daily life?

So let me tell you how I created this page. I watched a video from Lindsey Decor on Youtube, and I took the cotton swab technique she showed and use it to fill in my silhouette. First I found the image I wanted to use and traced it onto my page, then applied masking fluid around it so I would have a nice crisp outline. 

Using my Keurtake Watercolors I picked out my colors I wanted to use and gathered 2 bundles of swabs just like Lindsey showed in her video, and started applying layers, drying in between with my heat tool. 

I added some splatters and once those were all dry I began to remove the masking fluid with an eraser.

After the masking fluid was removed I watercolored around my verse and added a few more splatters, and then grabbed my stamp sets I wanted to use to stamp out "have courage, be kind"

I used the following stamp sets:

Mini Grunge Alpha, Kindness Matters,  and the Rebecca Script Alpha.

I stamped them all with Ranger Archival Ink since it is permanent and waterproof. 

To finish it off I added the date with my Mega Date Stamp, and added some washi and a cute bow tabbie to mark my page!

So that's it for today! Hope y'all enjoyed my page and are maybe even inspired to create your own cotton swab art!😉

Make sure to hashtag us #sweetnsassystamps on FB and IG so we can see how you 've been inspired & inspire us! Be sure to check out the Creative Worship facebook group as well! 

Until next time!

xo

Maria

♥