It is only natural that most of us spend some time reflecting on our lives when a new year begins. Some of us even jump on the New Year's resolutions bandwagon with great ambition to make some positive changes in our lives as the new year kicks off. I have done that many, many, many times myself! And if I am completely honest, most of my great ambitions end up falling to the wayside when life goes through its inevitable twists and turns. My focus shifts, and I have a hard time getting back on track most of the time, and the begin to feel defeated for not accomplishing what I had set out to do. This year however, I inquired of the Lord on how to break this cycle I have found myself in so many times. It just so happened that as I asked this question I was looking at the piles of notebooks and random scrap pieces of paper stacked in a pile on my desk. These are items that I had collected over the last year. Notes from books I had read, sermon notes, words of encouragement, prophetic words, and various other items that were on my "someday" to do list. As I looked at the stack on my desk I felt a little sad and frustrated. Here were so many wonderful tidbits that I had read or thought about over the last year and most of them had gotten no further than being written down on a piece of paper, that was now piled up on my desk. I moved the stack to the middle of my desk and sighed. Proverbs 29:18 tells us that "Where there is no vision, the people perish". I had lots of things in these pages that I felt were important enough to write down and that I was passionate about, but I had no clear vision. So this is why year after year I felt as if I was stuck in the same place of making very little progress in various aspects of my life. In some areas of my life I felt unfulfilled and if I was in fact perishing. Then the Lord in His goodness, brought me to Habakkuk 2:2 which states, "Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it." NKJV. This is just what I needed - I wanted to run - run in pursuit of the clear vision of what God has planned for my life! It became clear to me that what I had done in writing these things down was at least one step in the right direction. However I needed to go through and organize all of these random pieces of paper and notebooks. I ended up with three main categories: Encouragement & Prophetic Words, Wisdom & Teachings, and To Do's & Goals. Now I'm going to tell you what I am doing with each of these three categories.
As the priority items from each stack made their way to the forefront I began to see a pattern emerge between them. The Holy Spirit began to highlight things from these pages of notes and I could see the vision the Lord was giving me for this new year and passion was ignited in my heart. Through this process I was able to write the vision and make it plain, and I now have a way of keeping that vision in front of me constantly as well. At the beginning of each week I pray and begin filling in my schedule for the week. This helps keep me accountable, not so much to the daily things of life that we deal with all the time, but accountable for the dreams, vision, and passion that God has laid upon my heart, because if I don't make it a priority and schedule the time for it, life will all too easily take over, or I will be tempted to volunteer my time in areas I should not be spending my time. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be flexible. We need to write our plans in pencil and give God the eraser, and let Him lead us each day. God has called us to be an intentional people. Intentional in our pursuit of Him, intentional about the call God has placed on our life, intentional in our love towards others, and intentional in maintaining the vision God has given us. Be intentional this year and pursue your vision - write the vision and make it clear!
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