Joy in Your Presence

You make known to me the path of life;
    in your presence there is fullness of joy;
    at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Psalm 16:11

I absolutely loved the movie, The Greatest Showman.  Everything about it was pure entertainment, especially the upbeat, positive message of the movie and the endearing music and lyrics.  Every musical piece stood alone as a stellar performance and each had its intrinsic meaning.  The song, Never Enough, was so powerful, though secular in its message.  It did make me think about how empty all the pursuits of this world really are and how our only joy and fulfillment come through our relationship to our heavenly Father.  Our trust and obedience to Christ is what gives our lives meaning.  Earthly relationships and aspirations don't even compare.  Though fictitious, the relationship between Barnum and Jenny Lind was electrifying.  Jenny is portrayed, especially through the song, as being so enraptured by the man in the wings that nothing in all the world would satisfy if she couldn't have Barnum.

When I encountered this verse in Psalm 16, I for some reason thought of the lyrics to the song.  It should be true of the believer's heart that nothing would satisfy like being in the presence of God.  I have often told my husband that I find enjoyment and satisfaction in just being with him.  We don't have to be doing anything special.  I just like to be in his presence.  I feel the same about my God, multiplied!  

When you glance at the verses above the passage, there is even more joy apparent in the psalmist's heart.  I could say exactly the same.  My Wonderful Counselor instructs my heart day and night and leads me in the path of real life.  I need never be shaken because I'm securely held in His might hand.  Look at verse 9 above.  "Therefore my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices..."  That is my heart's song when I dwell in the presence of the Lord.  

Truly...all things, all relationships in life will never fill me with the complete joy I find in God.  I LOVE my family, my husband, my children, my grandchildren.  I cannot imagine life without them.  But the joy I know in the presence of God surpasses it all...for I know that in Him and through Him, my family and I have life everlasting.  If I give over my heart completely to God, I will have the capacity for a deeper joy in all earthly relationship too!

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Design Details:   I'm doing something a little different for my post today and I hope you enjoy it.  I'm embedding the process video for this page.  I created the background using gelatos.  I'll show you in the video how I did everything on this page.  And below that are the Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps products I used for the page.  The video explains other supplies used.  (I hope it works...I've never done this on a blog post before!)

Joy in His Presence Process Video

Click on the arrow to begin.

Joy to the World

Starry Sanctuary Printable Bundle

3 pages of colored print and cut images, scripture prompts and my devotional study

Most of the color images and some images as outlines are included in the digital files of the bundle.

Lord of My Heart

...give me your heart and let your eyes delight in my ways...
Proverbs 23:26 

... my heart [will] sing your praises and not be silent. 

LORD my God, I will praise you forever.

Psalm 30:12

It's been a whirlwind of activity in our household.  I was recently in a car accident and our plans changed radically in a moment.  It isn't what I would have wished...for anyone, but there are amazing stories to tell about God's intervention throughout the event and in the days that followed. I had to smile just the other day because in the retelling I was able to share about my amazing God again and again.  My praise for Him is such that I cannot be silent.  He is a great and marvelous God, even when life is hard, when things don't go according to plan, when we are hurt and things get broken.  God is working it all out for our good. I'm so grateful that He is Lord of my heart, Master of my eternal destiny and Lover of my soul.  He is my all in all and I will praise Him with every breath I take.

I took the elements from our current printable, Starry Sanctuary, and used them in my Traveler's Notebook instead of my Bible.  I love these small pages with plenty of room for praise.   I'm free to use acrylic paint with abandon and then handwrite my thoughts over it.  So many possibilities with these printables. 

The pocket on the left is from the patterned paper samples in the printable.  The pocket swings on washi tape hinges to reveal more journaling.  One of the printed tags fits in the pocket and well as more cards with my personal praises on them.   

 Starry Sanctuary Printable Bundle

Women of Praise

Sunshine Girl Alpha

Every Spiritual Blessing...OURS!

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 

who has blessed us in Christ with

every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,

even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, 

that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love he predestined us for adoption 

to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, 

according to the purpose of his will,

to the praise of his glorious grace, 

with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

Ephesians 1:3-6

Doesn't this passage just knock your socks of with pure astonishment and make you want to jump up in praise!?  It does me, every time I read it.  To contemplate what it really means for us is astounding. I love the way it begins...PRAISE.  It could end there with only two lines and it would still be worthy of our praise.  But it goes on to showcase God's extravagant love for us. 

There is so much to glean from these verses, so much depth, so much doctrine.  I could sit forever and soak in the majesty and beauty of this passage.  Praising Him for who He is...that will take at least 10,000 years. Really, I can just picture myself around the throne room in heaven and never being able to take my eyes off my Creator to even glimpse the wonders of heaven itself!  My earth bound praise has a more myopic view I'm afraid.  I do sit in awe of my God, His power and presence.  But I can't help but look at all my blessings as well...and I'm so grateful for every one of them. 

To think that I was in His heart and in His plan before He even created the universe staggers me.  I was like a long-awaited child to Him. That fact alone makes me feel so connected to all my spiritual siblings, my brothers and sisters of faith going back to those first patriarchs who called upon the name of our God.  I sit in a cosmos that envelopes a family of faith...and I'm such an important part that God bestows upon me all the spiritual blessings of heaven.  He knew me before I was conceived. He knew what my life, days, moments would be. He knew my heart before it started beating.  He knew the love and passion I would have for who He is, for His Word. He knew I would choose Him; He knew I would fall to my knees the moment the scales of darkness and lies would drop to the floor and I would bask in His Light and absorb His Truth.   He knew I would run to Him and ask to be cradled in His arms.  He knew that look I would have in my eyes as I searched the heavens to hear Him say, "You are Mine!"

And the really amazing thing?  He has done the same for every believing heart on this planet.  He draws us into an eternal circle of connection and under His starry sanctuary He hold us close.  We are not perfect children and He has to discipline us from time to time. He has to grow us, mature us and let us sit in the refiner's fire.  But what loving parent doesn't spend time polishing their child?  He wantss Jesus to shine forth through us, so every facet of our diamond-in-the-rough faith and character much be chiseled to perfection.  He is adorning me as part of the Bride, preparing me to live forever with the Beloved.  Meanwhile every spiritual blessing is mine...salvation, transformation, sanctification, strength, power, wisdom, grace....the list is endless because the gifts come from heaven's treasure trove!  

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Design Detail:  The background is a thin acrylic scraping.  I created the stars and moon on this page by painting a heavy body white acrylic paint through a stencil that I have.  I outlined those with a fine Prismacolor pen.  The girl, banner, tab and concentric star pieces are from the printable, Starry Sanctuary, perhaps my most favorite printable so far.  It holds deep meaning for me.  Don't forget that the printable comes with both color and outline digital images so you can entirely change the color scheme.   I put white acrylic paint on a grid stamp for the additional white accents (clean your stamp immediately if you do that!!!)

Starry Sanctuary by Diane Noble

$7.99

4 PDF Pages include

• 3 pages of ready-to-print, colored images and sentiments
• Scripture verses for Bible journaling inspiration (coordinate with images)
• 1 page devotion based on theme
• Personal Bible study questions and prompts

Note about the devotional: For those who want to go deeper into study you will love the study guide with questions. They make great prompts for doing art-journaling in your Bible. Additional Bible verses are included for further personal study. All of these verses go with the printables, so you won’t have to think about where they can be used in your Bible.
Digital Image Package includes

• 58 precolored images in both JPEG and PNG formats
• 17 outline images in both JPEG and PNG formats

Praise Him Always

Psalm 34:1-3

"I will bless the Lord at all times;

his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

My soul makes its boast in the Lord;

let the humble hear and be glad.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me, 

and let us exalt his name together!"

So this was a really fun page to create! I am still resonating on the topic of Praise that we soaked up while on our Creative Worship Retreat a few weeks ago. An amazing time spent in the word with wonderful ladies will stick with you for a while! One of the verses we referenced was the one above, Psalm 34:1-3. We are called to Praise Him Always! Sure, it's easy to praise him when life is going good and everything falls into place just perfectly. But it's in those more difficult times in life that we may find it harder to praise him. Our God is good, so good. There is ALWAYS something to be thankful for and to praise him. Sometimes, it may seem as simple as praising him for waking up in the morning, and being able to get out of bed! But if life is really hard at that moment, sometimes that may be all that you can find to praise him for...... and that's ok, but it is worth praising!! 

This page just makes me smile and feel good! I was so relaxed and care free at the moments I was working on it. I wasn't overthinking how I was going to do it exactly. I just resonated on the scripture and played with my materials. This page features a couple of our new items this month. We have a new printable set called Starry Sanctuary which is where I pulled the beautiful blues and yellows from for my background. I used my distress oxides to create a watercolor-like background and embossed some gold "stars" using my Falling Leaves Stamp! A fun new way to jazz up one of our older stamp sets! This page also features our new Women of Praise stamp set which we created for our recent retreat. So much of God's word and colorful goodness packed into this page and I just love how it turned out!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

xoxo,

Stephanie Gammon

Starry Sanctuary Printable Bundle 

Women of Praise

Falling Leaves

Bitty Minnie Alpha 

Chunky Lowercase Alpha 

Praise God in His Starry Sanctuary!

Praise the Lord.

Praise God in his sanctuary;
    praise him in his mighty heavens. 

Praise him for his acts of power;
    praise him for his surpassing greatness.

 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord.

Psalm 150: 1-2, 6 

How can we not praise the Lord?  All of creation testifies to the greatness of our God.  Psalm 19:1 and Psalm 66:4 verify this declaration...

   

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 

All the earth worships you and sings praises to you; they sing praises to your name. Selah 

A current and popular song by Hillsong, So Will I, certainly inspires the praises of many.  I love the lyrics from the song that speak the the grandeur of creation as it declares by its nature the praise of God. 

If the stars were made to worship so will I
If the mountains bow in reverence so will I
If the oceans roar Your greatness so will I
For if everything exists to lift You high so will I 

So Will I, Hillsong United 

When I created the printable, Starry Sanctuary, it was with all these inspirations in mind.  There have been so many times in my life, I find my most meaningful worship time with God at night.  I speak to that in the devotion contained in the printable.  There is something about a starry night, the sanctuary God provides with His night sky, that elicits my praises.  Looking at the stars absolutely shows the power and majesty of God.  I think about all God has done in my life...and I'm immensely grateful for all of it.  And I praise Him for it.  But I would praise Him anyway...because of who He is.  

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Design Details:  

This may be one of my favorite printables so far.  I love the colors and the theme of it all.  It was a worship experience in putting it together and thinking of ways to depict praising God day and night.

 

I used cut outs from the printable for all the images.  But these would be amazing on clear sticker paper too.   The background is just an easy acrylic scraping, with a few black splatters for texture.   

Don't forget that the printable bundles at Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps include digital images as well, making our printable unique and so versatile. 

A Life of Praise

Hi friends,

I've been really enjoying studying the Psalms this term at college and have learnt so much already about the nature of praise and worship, as shown to us in the examples of the psalms. One of the things I have found fascinating is seeing how the whole book of Psalms unfolds from a position in the earlier psalms of distress and lament to a posture of praise at the end of the book. If you read the last five psalms you will notice a strong theme of praise that includes every part of creation. This structure of moving from distress and difficulty to praise for God's love and faithfulness is also seen in many of the individual psalms.

This has really made me think about the way we praise God in our own lives. The psalms show us that it is totally ok - in fact encouraged - to bring all of our lives to God (warts and all!). We can pour out our hearts to him in total honesty about how we feel and what is happening to us. But here's the thing: it shouldn't end there. There should be a BUT moment, where we choose - despite the circumstances - to praise God for who he is and what he has done. There are so many reasons to praise our God (and the Psalms give us lots of examples that we can follow) that no matter how dark it may get, we can always lift our head in praise and allow his light to shine in our hearts.

I created this page in Psalm 146 as a declaration of my heart, which desires to praise the Lord at all times, for as long as I live, no matter the circumstances, in every season - because he is good, faithful and loving, and he is the Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer of all things. PRAISE THE LORD!!

I used the fun new Texture Tiles 4 stamp set (October's Stamp of the Month) for the panel at the side - I love how you can create your own patterned paper effects with this! I also used Armor of God, Refresh my Soul and Teeny Alpha along with some alphabet stickers to create the verse. The other fun new product I've used on this page is Diane's Starry Sanctuary Printable Bundle & Devotional. There are so many lovely images to print and use in a variety of ways. I printed mine on clear sticker paper, then cut out by hand and stuck on this page once I had stamped and sponged the background. Here are the new goodies I've used on this page:

I want to encourage you to pour out your heart to God, and in the process to choose praise as the final word in your situation. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!!

x Amy x