Choose Joy...

Welcome and Happy Sunday!
I hope your day has been wonderful and you're ready to start a fresh week!
We're starting a new challenge over at Mustard Seed Faith Challenges today, and I think the theme of the devotional is very fitting to start off a new week!  Our devotional topic is "Choose Joy"!

This week's devotional has been chosen and written by my lovely teammate, Nancy!
The verse that she has chosen for us to focus on is...

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,
whenever you face trials of many kinds" 
James 1:2

Joy and gratitude are so important to our faith!  All too often as Christians we forget to focus on the good when the going gets tough!  Things don't go the way we want and we become saddened, depressed, or think that God is not on our side, when really God has called us to live a life that is filled with joy!  I don't think that means that we are never sad, unhappy, etc. I think what God really calls us to do is to find the good in our situation.  I believe that God's joy is much more than happiness...it's a state of contentment, it's knowing that God is in control, it's reminding ourselves of how much God loves us and how much He sacrificed when He sent his son, it's taking the time to focus on, spend time with, praise and honor our Saviour! All of these things create a joyful heart in any circumstance.  So easily typed here on this screen....and so much harder to live out!
That is my challenge to myself and to you as we start this new week...let's fill our hearts with joy as we fill ourselves with God!

Now, onto our new craft challenge that goes along with our "Choose Joy" theme!
This week we'd like to see your creations based on something that brings you joy!
Something that brightens your day...it can be something in nature, your favorite color, a family picture that you'd love to scrapbook or use on a card...the options are limitless on this one!

Here's the card I created for this challenge...


I love nature...birds, flowers, gardens....they all bring me a sense of feeling close to God as I appreciate His creation...they make me feel content and serve as a terrific reminder to me that God is in control of this crazy world!  I love the colors in creation...the blue sky, the green grass, the warming yellow sunshine...and of course I love sunflowers!  What better way to combine all of these things by creating a card that features a sunflower along with an inky background and a beautiful decorative paper with some beautiful scripted writing....and of course a sentiment proclaiming the positive message that today is going to be awesome!

I've created the blue and brown background using Distress Oxide Inks...I do love my oxide inks!
I've heat set the various colors and then added water droplets over top to get the ink to oxidize.  The beautiful sunflower is by Power Poppy Stamps and I have given it a quick coloring with my Copic markers.  The sentiment is also from the same sunflower stamp set.  The finishing touch is the pretty yellow bakers twine I've looped around the bottom of the card and put through the button in the center of the sunflower.  Doesn't the bright yellow against the darker colors just make your heart happy!

I do hope you've enjoyed today's share...and I hope I've encouraged you to join us in our current challenge over at Mustard Seed Faith Challenges!  I can't wait to see what you create!

Until next time...

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