Digital Scrapbook Design
This month, our blog train is full of golds and blues. I have a matching kit coming out on the 18th titled, My Super Star. I am so excited about this little page kit. If you have a super star in your life, this kit will be great for celebrating your Star! Here is a look at the preview. Come back on the 18th for the link and the super sale.
Here is my part of this month’s train:
Be sure and visit the other designers in this train:
Happy New Year!! This year, our Scrap Designers Blog Train, will be focusing on something a bit different. We will be doing monochromatic themes all year.
For January, we our theme is, “Beyond White!”
I did a glitter alpha for this train. I hope you enjoy it.
Be sure and visit the other designers in this train.
This month’s Title is “Word Play.” I made an alphabet to go with the amazing parts the other ladies created. I hope you enjoy.
Be sure and visit the other designers in this train:
Marniejo’s House of Scraps
Moore Blessings Digital Designs
I HOPE YOU HAVE AN AWESOME BLESSED YEAR- 2020!
My Goal is to make much of God this year!
Your name is like perfume poured out.
(Song of Solomon 1:3 niv)
Today, you have celebrated the birth of Christ. Let’s take another look at why the name of Jesus is precious.
First, crucially, His name is the source of our salvation.
“There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Undeniably, the name of Jesus is supreme.
No other name is recognized like the name of Jesus.
To our great comfort, Jesus’ name is strong and secure.
The name of the Lord is a strong tower;
the righteous run to it and are safe. (Prov. 18:10 nkjv)
Nancy Wolgetmuth tells us why the name of Jesus is so sweet:
And joy of joys, the name of Jesus is always sweet. Though it is saving in power, supreme in rank, strong in reliable protection, and totally secure in its endless duration, the name of Jesus remains sweet and delicious on the lips, soothing and peaceful on the heart. His name is indeed “like perfume poured out.” And I hope the scent is evident at every turn in your home or wherever you may find yourself on this Christmas Day.
John Newton (1725–1827), the British slave-trader turned Jesus lover and pastor is best known for penning the hymn “Amazing Grace.” Another of his hymns, though not a carol, expresses what’s on my mind as we close this brief moment together today.
How sweet the name of Jesus sounds In a believer’s ear!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds And drives away his fear.
Dear name! the rock on which I build, My shield and hiding place,
My never-failing treasury, filled With boundless stores of grace!
Jesus, my Shepherd, Brother, Friend, My Prophet, Priest, and King,
My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End, Accept the praise I bring.
I pray you have had a blessed Advent season and a glorious Christmas day!
This should finish out your Advent 2019 kit, “Away In A Manger.” I hope you have enjoyed it! I would love for you to share any Layouts from this kit!
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory,
glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
(John 1:14)
Some of you may remember the famous Christmas Eve Apollo 8 moon orbit, in 1968. The crew had made revolutions of the moon and transmitted live video feed seen around the world.
Something memorable about this broadcast we may not experience on national television today, was the astronauts taking turns reading Genesis 1:1-10, as pictures of the moon’s surface flickered on screens. What an exciting time! James Irwin, an astronaut who actually walked on the moon in 1971, in his book, More Than Earthlings: An Astronaut’s Thoughts for ChristCentered Living:
“God walking on the earth is more important than man walking on the moon.”
This is a quote from today’s devotional by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, “Consider Jesus.”
The One who inhabited heaven’s ivory palaces allowed Himself to be born of woman in a borrowed cattle shed. He who flung the stars into space made His lowly bed underneath them. The omniscient God humbled Himself to learn to walk and talk as a child; the eternal Word of God learned to read.
The One who fed His people with manna in the wilderness chose to become hungry. The Creator of oceans allowed Himself to experience thirst. He who never sleeps became weary. The great Helper of humankind became helpless and dependent.
Why?
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
As you treasure this special, expectant day, whether alone or with your loved ones, as you close your eyes tonight on a year’s worth of busyness and a lifetime’s worth of Christmases, pause to marvel at what your Creator has done. Unwilling for you to remain enslaved any longer to sin and time and memories, He interrupted the unbroken rhythm of the calendar with a Christmas Eve for the ages. Bridging a distance far greater than the vast expanse between the earth and the moon, He did so much more than just leave us feeling nice and warm inside. He actually made it possible for us to become a new creation.
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15).
This is Christmas.
Here is today’s portion of the Advent Kit:
Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?
(Judges 13:18)
“Throughout this Advent walk together, we’ve found Jesus to be a lot of things. We’ve considered His cross, His deity, His humanity, His humility. We’ve seen His love and compassion, His power and glory. We could say so much, and all of it would be true. Each little slice of understanding, were we to delve deeper, would provide a spiritual feast of insight and truth. But ‘wonderful’ serves us well as a shorthand way of communicating what could take forever to describe.”
This was from today’s devotion in “Considering Jesus,” by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.
She also shares an incident in the life of Charles H. Spurgeon. In a series of sermons, preaching on the names of Jesus, having come to the description, “wonderful,” he told of this intensely personal experience.
When Spurgeon was just 22 years old, on a Sunday, he was preaching at Surrey Music Hall, to a congregation of about fifteen thousand. Someone in the crowd shouted, “Fire!” Through the chaotic mass of people trying to get out of the hall, many were injured and seven killed. Spurgeon fell into depression, something he had struggled with throughout his life. Even prayer became difficult, and he was fearful to engage in this daily practice,
Walking alone, in a friend’s garden one day, as he was sorting out his depressive thoughts, in his mind came the name of Jesus. He recalls, “I stood still. The burning lava of my soul was cooled. My agonies were hushed. I bowed myself there, and the garden that had seemed a Gethsemane became to me a Paradise. His name has been from that time `Wonderful’ to me.”
As Wolgemuth shares,
“Wonderful. Marvelous. Extraordinary. Beyond understanding. Bundle up all the remarkable, amazing things you know and hear and sense and imagine when you think on the name of Jesus. And if ‘wonderful’ is all that comes out, it is wonderful enough indeed. You may feel frustrated to the point of despair at times, unable to grasp all the things you wish to understand about Jesus. But if you were asked today to explain who He is, I think ‘Wonderful’ would please Him. Wonderful says a lot.”
Today’s devotional has brought to mind an old song by Roger Strader:
WONDERFUL NAME, JESUS
Mary was the first to hear it, Name that came from Heaven above;
Name that raises souls from darkness, This the only name worth singing of.
Wonderful name, Jesus.
The name angels sang, the night all Heaven rang,
Wonderful name, Jesus.Heaven touched His name with glory, Precious name of Jesus, Our King.
In God’s Word is told the story, Of this Wondrous Name the angels sing.
Wonderful name, Jesus.
The name angels sang, the night all Heaven rang,
Wonderful name, Jesus.
This is today’s part of the Advent Kit:
Have a super blessed day!
We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
(Hebrews 4:15)
Many times, you may feel Satan knows your very weakness and is specifically pointing temptation toward you. According to Scripture, there is no temptation you can experience that isn’t “common to man.” 1 Corinthians 10:13 says,
“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”
It is comforting to me to know that I am not the only one dealing with my temptations. It is also comforting to know God will provide a way out so the temptation can be endured. I can rest in the fact that Jesus, Himself, experienced temptation and he did it without sin.
I have heard that because He experienced temptation He understands when we give in to it. Jesus is an example of being tempted and yet coming through the temptation without sin. In response I often hear, “Yes, but He was God.” Jesus didn’t use His Divine power to overcome His human limitations. He really did hurt, cry, die, and yes, feel temptation. Here is an excerpt from “Consider Jesus” by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth:
“He still retained His divine power, of course, but He lived His perfectly sinless life as a man, as one of us. How? By doing what we can do. By depending on the Holy Spirit. Jesus used the same resources in defeating sin that are available to us today as human beings.
The same book of the Bible that attests, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38), also reports that Jesus said to His followers, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8). So when you see Jesus loving unlovable people, you see Him doing it with the Spirit’s power. When you see Him choosing to remain silent in the face of others’ insults, He is doing it with the Spirit’s power. In each of His reactions to the assault of both everyday and more intense temptations, you’re seeing how you, too, can respond when faced with your own most powerful temptations.
Wrap your mind around that. Jesus has given you the Spirit that was given to Him. The record of Jesus’ earthly life is intended to be “an example, so that you might follow in [the] steps” of this One who “committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:21–22). Not only has He shown you that He understands what it’s like to face temptation; He has also shown you how to live “without sin.'”
This is today’s part of the Advent Kit:
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
(Matthew 11:29)
In ancient Greco-Roman history, humility and meekness were not considered virtues. These were not words used to describe leaders, whether in government, religion, or community. In comparison, the example and teaching of Jesus was revolutionary. We see many examples in the Gospels, of Jewish leader rejecting Him as the Messiah. The Jewish people must have had an image of the expected Messiah, as a majestic military leader who would set up Israel as a world power. Jesus was vastly different than this ideology they held.
This was Wolgemuth’s explanation in today’s devotion:
“For Jesus to elevate humility into something positive and desirable clashed like plaids and stripes with the aspirations their culture had built into them. And Jesus didn’t simply live and teach humility’s importance as one of a cluster of godly character traits; He rightly understood it as the root of every virtue. Just as human pride had been and continued to be the root of every sin, just as pride had severed our relationship with God going all the way back to the Garden of Eden, humility was presented by Jesus as foundational to reversing what had been lost in the Fall.
“Lowly in heart” is how Jesus accurately described Himself.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” is how He measured humility’s value (Matt. 5:5).
“He who is least among you all is the one who is great,” He taught His followers (Luke 9:48) in absolutely upside-down, totally backward fashion from what they’d always thought and experienced.
And the cross, for all the ways we try capturing it in thought and word, is the living and dying epitome of humility in action.
Instead of loud boasting and pumped up pride, Jesus showed His greatness by showing His humility, even to the cross.
This is today’s part of the “Away In A Manger” Kit:
It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
(Matthew 4:4)
How many Christmas memories are associated with food? From holiday parties, fellowships, and family gatherings, there are several opportunities each year, to indulge in holiday treats.
During this time, we often don’t feel hungry, but we take just one more goodie, or one more helping of something yummy. Even if we feel “full” we may take “just one more.” It is about wanting what we want, the temptation of it all.
Satan, tried to appeal to the humanity of Jesus, when tempting Him in the wilderness. You can find this in Matthew 4:1-11. First, he tried to tempt the physical appetite. Jesus had been fasting for 40 days. Satan first tempted with bread. The question for Jesus wasn’t “do I want the bread?” The question was, “Who is in charge?” This is a quote from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth in “Considering Jesus:”
It’s the question of Will I surrender to God’s lordship in my life, or will I insist on running things myself?
By the time we see Jesus in Gethsemane, praying those earnest, heartfelt words, “Not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42), we’re witnessing fruit from an entire life of complete, glad, wholehearted, consistent surrender to His Father. As aweinspiring as His willingness to endure the cross sounds, it actually just follows the trajectory He’d set with each day He lived on the earth.
“The Son can do nothing of his own accord,” Jesus said early in His ministry, “but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise” (John 5:19). “I have come down from heaven,” He later told His disciples, “not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38). He elaborated on this theme again and again: “I do as the Father has commanded me” (John 14:31). “I always do the things that are pleasing to him” (John 8:29).
While following the example of Jesus isn’t easy, it is simple. We should remain obedient and surrendered to the Word of God and the prompting of the Holy Spirit.
Here is today’s part of “Away In A Manger.”
You made him for a little while lower than the angels.
(Hebrews 2:7)
This is a segment from today’s devotion about the name of Jesus. This is by Nancy Wolgemuth.
“Let’s remember that Jesus the Son is from above, dwelling in heavenly places, “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Eph. 1:21). Remember, too, that “at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10–11 NASB).
That’s who Jesus is—incredibly, eternally, exclusively powerful above every created being in heaven and earth. And yet He submitted Himself to the human practice of being given a name. This One “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph. 3:15) bowed Himself low enough to be given a name common to His historical era, a version of the Hebrew name Yeshua, or Joshua. He who holds all dominion and authority allowed an earthy, nondescript carpenter to “call his name Jesus.”
Stand back in amazement today at this wonderful truth: the Son, though equal with the Father, willingly submitted Himself to the Father’s authority. He who created all things—of whom it is accurately said, “Without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3)— willingly placed Himself in a position of receiving.
This is today’s part of the Advent Freebie:
