Choose Joy

“A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones” Proverbs 17:22

Perspective. 

If you’ve been following me for any length of time you know that I talk a lot about perspective. The way that we see things and the lens from which we see it determines a lot about how we live our lives.

The word joy has been coming up a lot for me lately. It’s in my Bible study, in my conversations and just a lot in my thought process, and the more that I meditate on it, joy has everything to do with perspective. How often do we long for things to be different? Maybe we would be happier if we had a different job. Maybe we would be happier if we had more money. Maybe we would be happier if we had such and such tool or supply. Maybe when our kids get a little older we would have more freedom. And the list goes on and on.

But, guys, JOY is a choice. It is a fruit from the Lord that comes we when are completely satisfied in Him.  It’s a choice to be content with where we are and what we have. Joy is a deep rooted satisfaction with our lives despite our circumstances and it changes the perspective from which we see things. 

JOY says, I will gladly do daily household chores because I have a roof over my head that’s  mine

.JOY says, I will listen to my name called a million times a day because that means I am surrounded by people who love me and need me.

JOY says, I will cook and clean up for yet another meal because when I nourish little bodies, I can nourish little souls.

JOY says, I will go to work every day because I have been given the opportunity to provide for my family.

JOY says, I will endure hardships and sufferings because it’s those things that are designed to produce perseverance in me (James 1:2-3)

Guys, life is about so much more than what it seems sometimes. It’s about the choices we make and the perspective from which we see it. It’s about choosing every day to find the good and seeing life through the eyes of a child. It’s about having faith that believes in the unseen and that the best is yet to come. It’s about finding the joy in a situation that seems the polar opposite. It takes a commitment on our part to look for it and celebrate it. Switch your lens over to the eternal and watch how much more joy you will experience in your life. Proverbs 17:22 says it all, “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to walk around wishing for something more all the time. I want to experience that deep rooted joy that only Christ can give. I want to be thankful and satisfied with what He has given me and where He has placed me. It’s all about perspective, and choosing to find the joy every day. It’s all those small things together that make life worth living. <3

Have a great weekend!

Jennifer

IG:@lifeintherace

Crafty Details

I started by adding some yellow and orange watercolor layers to an index card and drying it with my heating tool. Then, I added some texture with Texture Tiles 5 in Hickory Smoke and Picked Raspberry distress oxide. I then stamped the word “JOY” from Choose Faith in Spiced Marmalade and overlaid the word “choose” in black. I hand wrote Proverbs 17:22 at the bottom and clipped the card into my Bible as a reminder that Joy is a choice we must make every day. 

This Jesus

"But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words.... 

Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel an foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.... 

This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses."

Acts 2: 14-47

I think it's safe to say that Peter was passionate, driven, and committed follower of Christ. When he went in, he went all in. And he was all in for Jesus. 

• Matthew 26:33, "Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended."
• John 13:37, "Peter said until him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake."

But then we all know what happened after that. When put on the spot, he denied having any relationship with Jesus. How heartbreaking for Peter, how heartbreaking for his friend and Lord. 

Thankfully, Peter's story doesn't end there. He has a personal conversation with his risen Lord and Savior and Peter's life is forever changed. He steps into a leadership position with the followers of Christ and in Acts 2, he has the opportunity to give the very first gospel message. 

Honestly, Peter's exposition in Acts 2 gives me goosebumps. This Jesus of Nazareth - HIM! - He is the one the scriptures told about. The Messiah, The Savior of the world. Peter clearly and passionately gave the gospel message and 3,000 souls were saved. THIS JESUS. 

Jesus gives hope. The capture and death of Christ purchased our life and freedom. This moment of sadness gave us eternal joy of heart and life. He changed Peter and he can change you. 💙

********

I had some fun playing with acrylic paint and stamps on this page. I painted, splotched, and splattered acrylic paint all over the page and then used the Messy Stamped Alpha, Texture Tiles 1, and Texture Tiles 5 stamp sets to illustrate the theme "This Jesus."

    

I encourage you to read Acts 2 and be encouraged by the truth of the gospel message today. 

Love in Christ, 

Janelle

@journalingjoy

Trust. Pray. Repeat.

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. Colossians 4:2

Hi Friends!

I don't know about you, but I've had a lot to pray about lately. One of the positives about staying home is I have a lot more time to focus on prayer. The Bible tells us time and again to talk to God. Even though, He already knows our situations, He wants us communicating with Him. It doesn't matter how small the issue may be, God wants us coming to Him. First. We can trust Him as we can trust no one else. And He will answer our prayers for His purpose and for our good.

So, I saw a lovely idea of making a small prayer booklet from Allie Trumpower from Allie Scraps.  She mentioned carrying hers with her in her purse so that when someone has a prayer request, she can jot it down. I thought that was a great idea! It could also be used just for our own prayer requests for ourselves and loved ones and for praises. Allie has prayer card printables on her website. However, my printer is not working, so I had to improvise. I used stamps!

One of the Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps sets I used for this project is part of the April release. And, Korin has made the release available early!! WOO HOO!! It's called Your Story. I absolutely love it. Two of the stamps are a library card and a piece of notebook paper. EEEP! So I used those stamps to make the pages of my booklet, stamped on scrapbook paper. I used 10 pages, but really, you can as many pages as you like. I also used a set called Texture Tiles 5. Once I had all the pages stamped and cut out, I punched holes in the corners, and attached them with a book ring, and added ribbon to the ring. Ta-da! Prayer booklet! Now all I need to do is start writing.

I think this will be a great way to keep track of what I'm praying for and the praises I have. I walk my dog every morning, and pray while I'm walking him. This booklet is small enough to take with me on the walks. They would also make sweet little gifts for others!

With the extra time we all have now, we can make these little booklets for ourselves and to share. But, most importantly, let's make sure we are focusing on prayer. God has a purpose in all this. May His will be done.

Have a blessed week! Andrea

Mercy

"The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy."

Psalm 103:8

"Mercy for others will reveal your ongoing need for mercy, driving you to the end of yourself and into the arms of your merciful Savior." - Paul David Tripp, New Morning Mercies

In all honesty, I had a completely different topic picked out for today's blog post. But then my devotional covered the topic of mercy, my Sunday School class was on the topic of mercy, and my pastor preached on mercy in his Sunday evening sermon. You think just *maybe* God's trying to tell me something? 

To be completely transparent with you, I have not felt very merciful these last couple weeks. Not. At. All. People have been hurtful and unkind to me and my family and my first response is to immediately give them a piece of my mind. You feel me? After all, it's wrong and they need to know it! But then I have to stop. Just stop. Think. Take a deep breath. Pray. And remember the mercy that God has given me each and every day. 

"Let thy mercies come also unto me, O Lord, even thy salvation, according to they word. So shall I have wherewith to answer him that reproacheth me: for I trust in thy word."

Psalm 119:41-42

God has a plan for me to live in freedom and liberty (read down to verse 45), and that plan includes my living in mercy so I can give mercy. If I don't have a plan for living in and giving mercy, I will live in a state of perpetual irritation - being hurt and offended by everyone and everything that slights me in any way. I don't know about you, but that is not how I want to live.

I love this excerpt from Paul David Tripp's New Morning Mercies devotional:

"We celebrate God's mercy but scream at our children when they mess up. We sing of amazing grace but punish our spouses with silence when they offend us. We praise God for his love but forsake a friendship because someone has been momentarily disloyal. We are thankful that we've been forgiven but say that a person who is suffering the result of his decisions is getting what he deserves. We bask in God's grace but throw the law at others. We're simply not that good at mercy because we tend to see ourselves as more deserving than the poor and needy."

Ouch. That hits where it hurts. God has granted me mercy and wants me to extend that same mercy to others; and when I show mercy to the people or situations that hurt or offend me, I grow (II Peter 3:18). 🎕

This week, I am praying for God's mercy to be real to me, not just for me, but so that I can share mercy with others and ultimately point them back to a loving, merciful God.

Page Details

If you know me, you know I love doing anything and everything with Distress Oxides. They are my go-to medium for all art pages! This page was especially fun because it was a beautiful mixed media disaster (kinda like me, haha). 😉 I used a 5" x 7" art journal I received as a gift at a recent retreat. Here is my step-by-step process:

1. I did put down a couple layers of Diane Wakley Clear Gesso on the page before starting my art. I used to never use gesso, but then I watched a great video by Colleen on whether or not to gesso with Distress Oxides (watch the video here) and have been gessoing ever since. I really like how the water reacts on the page when I gesso. Definitely creates more of an effect. 
2. I used a blending tool to blend two colors of Distress Oxides randomly on my page: Seedless Preserves and Peacock Feathers. I work fast when I do this! I get a bunch of ink on my blending tool and then swirl around on the page. Since this is messy page, I wasn't worried about actually blending the colors together - just about getting them down on the page. 
3. As soon as I had my base color down, I spritzed the page with my Tim Holtz Distress Sprayer. I like to get big droplets of water on the page and then tilt the page around to get runny water splotches. 
4. I used my heat dryer to dry my current progress. 
5. I then pulled out my brand, new Distress Ink Spray and sprayed some splotches on the page. This is the first time I've ever used Distress Spray and it was fun, but it's definitely going to take some practice. 😉 I did like how it reacted on my page, but since I had gessoed the page, it took a bit longer to dry. So be aware of that.
6. Dry again.
7. I smooshed the Seedless Preserves Distress Oxides down on my plastic page background, grabbed a paint brush, dipped it in water, and made my own little DIY watercolor with the smooshed oxides and splattered it all over the page. This added some purple splatters to go along with the blue splatters. 
8. Dry again.
9. I then used texture paste and stencils to created some flowers on the page corners. I smooshed down my Distress Oxides in Shaded Lilac (I wanted to add a different purple color for dimension) on my plastic page background, mixed a little bit of glitter acrylic paint that I picked up at Michael's, and texture paste to create a light purpley, glittery texture. I then very thinly spread that over my stencils where I wanted my flowers to go. 
10. Dry again. 
11. I then stamped down my images and title using the new Dragonfly Dreams, Loop da Loop, and Texture Tiles 5 stamp sets from Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps. I love these sets! I used Versafine Black Ink to stamp the images. I have found that this ink gives me the best images when I'm doing stamping, but be careful not to smudge the stamp when you are stamping on gesso!
12. Dry again.
13. I filled in some of the stamped hearts with my white gel pen to add a bit more dimension. 
14. Added a few small strips of coordinating color washi tape.
15. Wrote my devotional note.
16. Date stamped (always date stamp!!).
17. Made sure everything is dry again. 
18. FINISHED!

All in all, this page took almost an hour to do just because of all the layers and I was working with new mediums but, boy, was it FUN! I would highly encourage you to do something similar. This kind of messy art is therapeutic to me. In fact, how would you feel about me creating a video with this process? It won't be anything you haven't seen before with some other mixed media pros, but it could be fun to make an art mess together. What do you think? Leave me a comment if you'd like me to do a live video and journal together!! 😊

Thanks for hanging out with me today. I hope you are reminded to show mercy to the people in your life today. For further encouragement, take a moment and read Psalm 103. 💜

Much love in Christ, 

Janelle

@journalingjoy

Here are the stamp sets I used to create this page:

 

 

Yahweh Tsidkenu - the LORD our Righteousness!

Hello Tuesday folks!

How are things coming in the new year?  There's a feeling of excitement when I think of passing not only from one year to another, but from one DECADE to another.  It's like the Lord has given us another start of starts - a fresh beginning that could potentially usher in more of His glory!  I don't know if that's doctrinal, as I'm unable to find anything that supports this in the Bible.  But I DO know that the Lord is a God of beginnings.  A God of startING.  The One who promotes turning and returning to Him at all times.  
With that in mind, I am praying for a love for Him that supersedes all others in my heart.  A love for Him that will guide me fruitfully, productively, and purposefully in being renewed day by day for His glory.  Leaning daily on His the effectual work of the Gospel, I am promised everything I need "for life and godliness," for His glory. (2 Peter 1:3)  Additionally, forming habits of praying to Almighty God has the reward which is far greater than I can anticipate or think, for His glory! (Ephesians 3:20-21) 

Here's to 2020!

I did something a bit different in my Bible journaling today.  In addition to the page I colored with watercolor, stamps and a tag, I made a duplicate tag to put into a "loved" Bible which I'm giving to a young lady in my youth group.  

It's been awesome to be able to learn something in God's Word and transfer it over to a compact Bible.  Today's insert for the smaller Bible is simply a tag with similar Gospel encouragement on the back.  (Stamps I used for the whole project are listed below)

I'm working in Jeremiah today.  Why Jeremiah?
Well, it all started with Matthew 10:21, actually.  Reading up on the "rich, young ruler" caused me to search out studies and commentaries on such a verse, which brought me to a wonderful sermon by George Whitefield.  Within this sermon is a well-rounded understanding of the righteousness of Christ, which touched a bit upon the account of said young man in Matthew.  His main focus was in Jeremiah and on the substantial, satisfactory covering of Righteousness provided in Jesus Christ:
"'Behold, the days are coming,' declares the Lord, 'when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.  In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’" (vv. 5-6)

Around the Advent/Christmas season, there was a lot of talk about this Heir to the throne of David; a Counselor, Prince of Peace, Mighty God, Everlasting Father; a Son born to a virgin whose name would be "God saves."  When doing a live Facebook feed back in December, I was thinking on how appropriate it truly is to continue reading about and thinking on these things, primarily as it pertains to preaching God's goodness and Gospel over our lives.  

There is a lot packed into these 2 verses, one of which is the expectation of a coming King - Jesus Christ - who will execute judgment, heal the land, restore the Kingdom.
But until then, there is something else of HIGH and WONDERFUL importance tucked away for us.  Something that keeps.  Something that holds.  Something that carries until our King returns.
"The Lord Our Righteousness."  
I used to think that the names of God were neat; the fact that He had multiple titles meant that He is that much more, better and greater than we are.  Truth is, that does make Him more, better, greater, wonderful, and the wonder of this this name, "Yahweh Tsidkenu," means so much more than I believe we're able to grasp!
Note: I urge you to hop onto the Sacra Via Scripture and Art Journaling facebook group to see the full live, if you can!

 I don't want to mince words, and I certainly don't want to mishandle the Word of God.  When we speak in terms of the Gospel, it's important to get the truths firmly established for the sake of victorious living as a Christian!  I pray that the Lord will touch you when you read the section of Scripture above and even save time to study it.
Saying all of that, I do pray that the Lord has laid this in front of me, that I should share:
If you are in Christ, HE IS YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.

Nothing can be further from the Gospel than to say to a follower/believer of Christ, "we must pave our own way; we must pay our own debt; we must do; we must be; we must have..." These are lies crafted by our adversary in an attempt to see us falter and despair as a witness and light for Christ.
When God came as a man - Jesus - taking on the form of humanity, this condescension was a midway point between God's initiation of our redemption plan back in Genesis, and Jesus' final victory over Satan and his forces.  IT WAS MIRACULOUS!  So glorious, all heavenly hosts sang, "Hallelujah" as they heralded the birth of that Christ child!

If you remember back in the garden of Eden, there was a rebellion in the heart of man (and woman) which led to "the fall."  The encounter with our enemy left Eve in a confused state of mind, believing in some way God had shorted or deceived her.  After our parents refused to obey God, there was a resulting shame, guilt and overwhelming sense of nakedness, both literally and spiritually speaking.  This new awareness caused them to hide from that familiar voice they'd originally connected with peace up to this point.  (Genesis 3)
Hidden.
Covered up.
Less exposed.
More concealed.

Futile in the attempts to clothe themselves, they could not hide from Omniscience.
Constrained by His love for them, God made clothes for His image-bearers by way of the very first blood sacrifice.
God covered them.
God clothed them.
God did it.

This was the beginning of a long line of animal sacrifices that would need to be made to atone for sin, as mentioned in the Old Testament writings.  But these, of course, would never be satisfactory or sufficient for all sin, transgression and iniquity in man.
God knew He would provide Himself, for Himself, the very Lamb that would take away the sins of the WORLD!  The Sacrifice would be satisfactory.  The Substitution, pleasing.

Jeremiah speaks highly of this One who would live and die to be the Savior of the whole world.  He calls Him a "Branch" from the royal lineage of David.  One who would bring justice, peace and hope to all of Israel.
Skip ahead roughly 650 years...

The slaughtering of this Holy Lamb of God exacted the wrath of God laid up for humanity for our rebellion.  God turned His face away from the cross, that He may not behold all the sin, death and hell hanging on that tree.  "Once and for all..." scripture tells us, did Christ bleed, die and raise, closing the gap between God and man.  (Hebrews 10)

What a wonderful Savior!
Do you know what this means?
This means that upon believing that Jesus indeed took even YOUR sins to the cross with Him, you are officially covered by the adequate clothing made by God Himself!  The spotless skin of the Sacrificial Lamb conceals you.  You are transformed into a new creature, never to be the old again!  You are clothed in HIS righteousness forever and ever, and there is nothing that can strip you of such a garment!
George Whitefield suggests that Christ's Righteousness is the "very garment" that we don as the Bride of Him who created us!
I love that picture, but then again, I'm a sucker for elegance and imagery. :D Plus, it makes even more sweet the Hymnal lyric, "My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness!"
Amen??

I'm sure I am not doing the sermon or the Scriptures justice of all that this means.  There is so much joy here.  So much peace here.  So much hope, love, victory!
Friend, we battle daily the "flesh" that weakens our witness.  We battle daily the enemy that haunts our minds.
There's a special prayer that J.D. Greear puts out for us to pray that embodies the Gospel:

 - In Christ there is nothing I can do that would make You love me more, and nothing I have done that makes You love me less.
 - Your presence and approval are all I need for everlasting joy.
 - As You have been to me, so I will be to others.
 - As I pray, I'll measure Your compassion by the cross and Your power by the resurrection.

As we pray it over ourselves often - daily, even - the weight of doubt, shame, defeatedness or discouragement lifts.  We are free in Jesus, to live like Jesus.
God covers us.
God clothes us.
God did it.

Live in victory! We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us (Rom. 8:37).

Much love,
Deeds

IG: @mercies_journaled
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