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It’s coming soon…..

The start of the year. What were you thinking??? :))))

With the close of the year approaching, I have found myself reflecting over this past year. I have been asking myself questions like:

  • Was it a good year or a bad year?
  • Did I grow in depth of relationship with God?
  • Did my life bear fruit? Fruit that will last? Fruit that counts?
  • Did I keep any of the challenges that I had set for myself?
  • If so, what did I learn or gain from those challenges?
  • If not, why not?

In reflecting on these questions, some answers I am pleased with, some I am not, some I have no answer for. But I am glad that God’s grace & mercy covers it all. Where I fell short, He picked me up & set me back on course again – forgiven & restored. In those areas, where I met “success”, He has been pleased & yet still gently challenges me to more. He stretches me & pulls me – out of my comfort zone – to do more & become all that He desires for me to be. He does not want that I be stagnate. Stagnate – an interesting word to come to my mind just now. It is defined as:

  1. to cease to run or flow, as water or air
  2. to become stale or foul from standing, as a pool of water
  3. to stop developing, growing, progressing, or advancing: My mind is stagnating from too much TV. (example given not me speaking, lol, although….).
  4. to become sluggish & dull

I have found myself thinking towards the new year – 2012. I have found myself asking, “What is it that I want to challenge myself with this year?” Yeah, yeah, I know – New Year’s Resolutions. Who ever keeps them past January 2nd?

But here is the thing: last year I challenged myself not with the normal “resolution” of weight loss but in the ways I wanted to grow in my walk with God. I did not call them “resolutions” but “challenges”. Amazingly, the challenges were maintained. They stuck! Well, almost. I didn’t read the Bible through in its entirety from start to finish. I think I died somewhere in Leviticus. I comforted myself with knowing that it is “the graveyard of those reading through the Bible.” I heard that once or twice 🙂 Yeah, yeah, I know – excuses, excuses.

Here’s the thing – I did not give myself a long list of challenges. No, I narrowed it down to a simple few. Like three. One, as you know, I did not keep. But I did keep the other two. Well I almost have as it is only a few more days to the end of the year. In keeping them, I have learned things about myself & more importantly, about God. For the record, I like what I learned about God a whole lot better than what I learned about myself! But then, that was the point of the challenges.

So…..to get to the point of all this….

What am I going to challenge myself to in 2012?

And….

What will you challenge yourself to in 2012?

If I stand still (or become stagnate – see? I was coming back to that!), I will become stale, foul; I will stop growing in Him: my relationship with Him will not progress or advance (and He so wants to take me from “glory to glory”); I will become sluggish & dull in my walk with Him, in my life even. I so do not want to do that! And neither do you.

I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.  No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it,t but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead,  I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.”Â  (Philippians 3:12-14 NLT).