For the past two years, I have challenged myself to pick a word of the year to help focus my relationship with God. In 2019, I chose WAIT… as in “wait for the Lord”… ironically, that was a banner year for tremendous answers to long term prayers for me… along with tremendous spiritual growth and dependence on God.
In 2020, my word was PRAY, which turned out to be extremely important, and in some circumstances of 2020, was literally the only thing I COUlD do! My prayer life was literally transformed as I learned to spend hours in intentional prayer as well as plain and simple talks with Jesus throughout my whole day.
The word I choose for 2021 is PREPARE. I do believe God is cultivating warriors for His kingdom and we need to be prepared. I don’t yet fully know how to prepare, nor do I fully understand the mission for which I am preparing. I only know that God has a plan and a purpose for my life… and that His ultimate purpose is that we go and make disciples for Him. I am preparing to do that.
Below are a few phrases I thought of when the word prepare came to my mind… over the next few weeks I plan to explore those and others as I prepare for whatever God has planned.
Let every heart Prepare Him room
Prepare for battle
Prepare for visitors
Prepare for take-off
Prepare for landing
Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary
I can think of no better way to begin preparing than spending time in His word. For the past 62 weeks, I have been using an ap on my phone to do a study of the Bible through Pastor John Stoper of the Christian Missionary Alliance church. It is called Mission 119. I spend time reading scripture each morning through a guided tour of the Bible, and then listen to a 10-15 minute sermonette by pastor Stoper. I have learned an incredible amount over the past year, particularly in the Old Testament, which I now find fascinating. It is an awesome way to start my day, focused on exactly the right thing…. my Lord and Savior.
My wish for all of you is that you would also begin preparing yourselves for whatever God has planned for you.
May you be blessed today, my friends.
Happy New Year!
SB
Journey-For-Life 