CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO PEONY COTTAGE BLUE 2 ART KIT IN STORE HERE, $4.98

I have the second art kit in the “Peony Cottage, Blue” series ready and in the store today.  This is a BRAND NEW art kit that I have hand water colored.  A beautiful a pink English Rose, and a floral cluster with tulips, peonies and roses are the foundation of this collection.  There is an 8″ x 8″ image suitable for a card front included and an elegant painting that is suitable for framing, along with 5, 12″ papers, 3 borders, 2 frames, 5 fun embellishments (two custom buttons, a tag, title banner and photo corners),  two small square art icons and an elegant rectangular floral swag complete the 18 piece collection.

This wonderful cottage-feeling collection will make you feel the warm, gentle winds of spring and the scent of roses on the air!

This artwork is extremely detailed and life-like.  It can be used to create your own cards, craft with or for scrapbooking.  The files in this kit are 300 dpi jpeg and png files.  Art copyright Audrey Jeanne Roberts, 2009  Special thanks to Atomic Cupcake.

SCRIPTURE OF THE DAY: 1 John 2:15-17  Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For everything in the world-the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does-comes not from the Father but from the world.  The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.  NIV

DEVOTIONAL: Continuing our discussion about the ways that we grow dry and spiritually empty, I’m sharing today about how we get too wrapped up in “the world” and all of it’s cares.  How does scripture delineate the difference between the natural world that we live in and “the world” which is considered sinful and a wrong place to dwell?  First, we need to recognize that God made us to live in this world.  We need to eat and drink and sleep and earn a living — that’s part of the life he wants us to live.  But if or when the pursuit of any of those things goes to the extreme, we begin to live in “the world,” not the kingdom of God.

If as we work to pay our bills, we walk with Christ in prayer and meditation and we seek to be used by Him in the course of our day — we’re in a great place.  Whether we run the board room as a CEO or we sweep the floors as a janitor, God wants us to dedicate the entirety of ourselves to HIm and His purposes.  But, If we make climbing that ladder of success our goal, we will find that we just may climb the ladder and discover it has been placed against a wrong building!  Achievement for the sake of achievement, honor or money will not last.  It will not satisfy.  In fact it will leave you more empty than when you started.  That can be ANY achievement, even “good” ones — if the achievement becomes more important than the one who created you to achieve.

If you have a home that is a place for your family to gather in love and delight in each other and the Lord, it’s a precious gift from God, but if you are consumed by the caring for that home so much that it crowds out your devotion for God and love of your family — it can be a curse.  The world is less a list of things and much more an attitude of our heart towards those things.

Of course the bible also identifies the world as sins we participate in.  We lust after possessions.  We crave pleasures.  We look at someone else’s husband or wife and covet them.  We yearn for bigger, better, more expensive cars, homes or other things — certain that they will bring joy to our heart.  Perhaps we yearn for financial security in banks, stocks, homes, gold or other physical riches.  Any and all of these can be “the world,” and rob us of a closer relationship with God.

Take time to monitor your thoughts a little.  Are you worrying?  What are you worrying about?  What consumes your thoughts?  Where does God fit into your routine, daily thought life?  Do you ever think about things farther away than next week or next month?  By this I mean, do you ponder the eternal value of each task in your life?  Do you think about how God might want to use you today?  Or do you only think about God almost as another commitment you need to check off your to do list to keep on track?

Spend time today asking God to help you see your “world” through His eyes.  It might be a very interesting and profitable exercise!

PRAYER:  Lord, help me to look at my world through your eyes.  What in it is in the right place and is balanced and what isn’t?  Help me to discern anything in my life that is drawing me away from growing closer to you and anything that I am putting my effort into that will not matter in the light of eternity.  Show me anything that is creating a dry and dead place in my heart and help me to remove it.  Show me how I can add things to my day that will be like springs of living water springing up to water my very soul.

Help me to see how I can make the most of mundane of chores or responsibilities.  Show me ways that routine tasks can build the kingdom of God and how I can experience a refreshing from you as I do the ordinary tasks of life “as unto the Lord.”  Lord, renew a right spirit within me, for I am dry and weary and in need of your refreshing.