It's almost 2023 and I am really hoping for a new season to begin with the new year! It has been a season of suffering. You never know what a season, or a month, or a year, or even a day is going to hold for you. Our last 6 months have been tough. How true it is that we don't fight against flesh and blood but against the powers of great darkness (Eph 6:12)
I wrote in my last post how crazy life has been and how there has been just one thing after the next. Since that time, some things have gotten better and some things not. But that is how life is, isn't it?
What's that great quote that so many people say? We are either going into a storm, coming out of a storm or in one? I probably botched that, ha! But you get the idea. This world is just not meant to bring us joy or peace. There is only ONE who can do that. The Creator of the universe is the only one who can fill me up, satisfy me and bring peace during chaos.
I am grateful for a God that loves me through my doubts and anger and hurts. I am grateful that when I am feeling those things He knows my heart and knows that it's not Him I doubt but me and this world around me.
Every year, I pray and seek God for a word and a verse to focus on. The past few years have been words like follow, obedience, joy.... that's just to name a few. I have been doing this over a decade now and without fail my word gives me insight into the year I will have. God has an amazing sense of humor and I am so happy He does!
As you know this year 2022, I was scared for my word "joy" but the Lord brought me through some intense times. Including times of persecution in my own church, times of loss, and scary times of seeing my children with broken bones and in the hospital and yet He did so with joy. Not joy in the situation or the hurt or the people who were in it but joy in Him, joy in the fact that I knew the persecution, the hurt, the loss, all of it was for His glory and was because I was following His will.
This brings me to this year, 2023, and the word God has given me. Stripped away.
Talk about a yikes! Although, I am half nervous I am also half excited. I know there are layers to me that God needs to strip away. Areas I have kept to myself that He can use for the good of His kingdom. Places of my heart that I haven't shared but that I also know are part of my testimony. I know He has good plans for me. I know he can take beauty from ashes and turn rubble into a work of art.
While stripped away is scary and maybe a bit unnerving it is also a chance to see myself in a new way and see God work in me in ways I haven't before. I am ready for this new year. A year of healing and growth and intimacy with my Creator.
I am praying for you all! Happy almost new year - Xoxox
Comments