The Joy of the Lord | Elli

“The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Nehemiah 8:10

I knew I wanted to share a verse about joy on the blog with you today. For some reason God kept putting this verse on my heart. So I flipped to Nehemiah chapter 8 to get a better understanding of the context of this often quoted scripture, and God showed me something pretty neat and relatable!

“They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.”

“And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.” Nehemiah 8:8 & 12

Now I still may not understand a lot of the context, but God did teach me something about the source of their joy and strength. The people were rejoicing  because they had heard God’s word and they understood it.

The context of my life looks a lot different from the Israelites of the old testament, but the source of my joy and strength is still found in the Lord. It is found in His truth revealed to me through His word by the help of the Holy Spirit. When I read God’s word and understand His love for me, His purpose for my life, and His promise to make all things new and work together all things for good, I have joy and strength to get through even the hardest days.

When life hurts and I am grieved, I turn to God’s word and find joy and strength. The joy of the Lord is my strength!

“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” Psalm16:11

The joy stamp in this month’s kit  was my inspiration for this entry in my Bible. I decided I wanted to be able to watercolor inside the word so I stamped the word on a separate piece of paper then traced the outline of the word into my Bible. This left the word hollow so I could add color to match with the other words on my page. I love the mixing of different lettering styles, so even though I do my own lettering, the hand lettered stamps of different artists are my favorite to play with! And didn’t Ashley do a fab job with this joy stamp? Ahh, love it! I finished the page with some layering of stickers from the kit, and as always a tab to top it off. (The March faith art box is currently sold out so click here to be sure to get the April faith art box.)

I hope you feel inspired to read God’s word and get creative too! Please share your faith art using the hashtag #creativeretreatkits I love to browse it and see how everyone is using their kit! You can find me on Instagram too here

Full of joy,

Elli