What if I will always be this way… (fill in the blank with fear of personal choice: self-centered, overweight, uneducated, unmotivated, debt-ridden, angry, anxious, apathetic, unfulfilled…) What if our family, this marriage, these children, stagnate, fester, languish? What if all tomorrows are just more of all our yesterdays? A thousand times I’ve told myself, “I simply must try harder.” Try harder to be more organized, try harder to educate our children better, try harder to be more after God’s heart. But I know it: trying harder only results in harder trials. Self-striving nurtures self-hatred. Toiling in the flesh produces foiling in the soul. Looking back on the trail tromped through other years, I can see that to forge new tracks across this year will needs more than simply sheer effort, gritty determination. The wind lifts the branches of the spruce trees that tower outside my window. I cannot see the wind, where she comes from, where she goes, but I watch a thin veil of snow, blowing in with her, going off with her. And the wind whispers with rumors from Home: to track new ways, one needs wind’s hope, His Spirit. His Spirit wind covers our muddled tracks. The grace of His Spirit, fills our empty spots, intercedes, and gives us a fresh start every day. |
2012: The year of faith
I mentioned that I was unsure about having a word or theme for the year. I prayed about it some more and felt the Lord was giving me a word. But, it was a word that I didn’t know I wanted to focus on. 🙂 I thought it was actually too elementary for me! HA! (doesn’t that show the ugliness of my pride?) That may be exactly why He wanted me to have this very word!
I started the year off memorizing Isaiah 43:18-19.
“Forget the former things.
Do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up, do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wastelands.”
Isaiah 43:18-19.
When I read these words from Ann Voskamp:
God spoke to me. He showed me that there is a fear I have that I don’t even know I knew about. He showed me the fear in my heart that I will never change.
When He showed me this fear, He showed me that this fear is a result of a lack of faith. I haven’t been trusting Him to grow me, change me and mold me into His image. I have wallowed in the past (the “former things”) and felt I was too beyond His hand of mercy to make me into who He wants me to be.
When He told me this, I knew what my word had to be this year. He wants to grow my faith. It isn’t elementary. It’s where I am.
I pray you will join me this year as I embrace more trust, more hope, more FAITH in my Savior. I’m excited to see what He is going to do.
Increase my faith, Lord.
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