New Year !

It's that time again.  A new year is about to begin.  We start out with so many great resolutions....a clean white slate, not a mark on the page.  I remember as a kid, and even now because I still use them, starting a new notebook....I always loved writing on the first page, always vowed to keep it neat and tidy.  And isn't the new year like that?  Don't we do the same thing?  Vow to do better, achieve more, be kinder, thinner, healthier, save more, spend less....resolution after resolution.  For me, I usually pick  a few of those areas, but the best and greatest "resolutions"  I get always come from the Lord.  Every year He gives me my new assignment as it were....a place I need to improve upon or grow in.  It's always very exciting for me to hear what the Lord has in mind.

This year it's my words.  And not just any words, but negative words.  My feelings, my emotions are often conflicted....both praise and questions, thankfulness and complaints roll around my head and heart at any given moment....sometimes I feel like the epitome of the double minded man mentioned in James 1:6-8    But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.  For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;  he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.  Not so much straddling the fence between the Lord and the world, but jumping back and forth between trusting God, and living by my emotions.

The Lord is not asking to me to work on my emotions though.  I'm pretty sure I couldn't change them if I tried.  What He wants is for me to stop speaking out of them.  Just because I feel bad about something doesn't mean I have to complain about it or go on and on about how terrible it is.  He wants me to learn to speak in faith.  2 Corinthians 5:7  For we live by believing and not by seeing (or in my case feeling).

This is so exciting to me!  Just like that brand new notebook, clean, free of marks, mistakes, wrinkles and creases.  By the end of the year it will be filled with a new story.  Successes and failures, stops and stumbles, milestones reached and hopefully surpassed!  So what is God asking of you this new year? Take time to sit and listen.  Will we get it perfect?  I'm going to say "no."  But we don't give up! We keep going forward, following Jesus down the pathway of our lives.

Lord, talk to Your children.  We long to hear from You, need to hear from You.  I pray that our hearts be open to Your voice, to hear Your plan for us.  Help us to walk in Your ways, growing closer all the time to You.  Ups and downs come, but as long as we keep with You, we will be fine.

Spend some quiet time with the Lord over the next few days and see where He leads!!