Friday, December 31, 2010

My One Word 2011 - LOVE

As I sit here only 4 hours away from a new year... I am just in awe of God. When I look back at

My One Word for 2009 - Trust
and
My One Word for 2010 - Hope

I just want to run into His arms and thank Him for how real He made these truths in my life. He is SOO mind blowingly BIG but yet He - THE GOD who created the STARS and is above all that I can see, touch, feel, smell, or even imagine cars about ME and is so personal! He answers my questions, guides me, leads me. How important it is for us to take time to reflect back and have a "spiritual memory" to be able to see all He has done!!! God you are so AMAZING - I feel so unworthy to even think of you and yet despite my minute-ness you LOVE me. You love me enough to send your ONLY SON to die for MY sins. To be forsaken so I never have to be. God it's just.... so much.

Sorry a tangent.... God I just LOVE YOU!!! THANK YOU for helping me TRUST and HOPE. THANK YOU for the beautiful tapestry you are making my life into. THANK YOU!!!!

Am I perfect in these areas? Absolutely NOT --- but you really did change me and help me grow drastically.

These past 2 years, He has shown me what it looks like to trust. He proved His trustworthiness. He showed me this year, 2010, that hope does not disappoint! He is the perfect orchestrator of our lives and He is good. Jeremiah 29:11. HE has the plans and they are for our good, for our hope and our future! Instead of worrying about my future - I should trust, hope and be patient! Romans 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer!

He IS THE king, the Sovereign Lord Almighty and so worthy of our trust, our hope, our praise!

What a miserable wretch & failure I am in many ways.... I have such a new disgust for my sin.. and sin in general. I hate it....but I KNOW that I am of worth because HE made me and HE saved me and now lives in me! I will cling on to the promise that I'm a new creation and His Spirit is in me!

Thinking of what One Word I wanted to focus on in 2011... I kept thinking of the verse I Corinthians 13:13 and now these three remain... faith hope and love...but the great of these is LOVE.

I want to love better. I mean that so earnestly God. I am so sick of not loving my husband and my children as I should. I am so sick of not loving my family like I ought. I am sick for being back to a place of being so controlled by my emotions. I was freed from that and I picked that burden right back up. God free me again!

I am so sick of being more full of love for strangers or acquaintances than those who are closest to me!! God it doesn't make any sense. I KNOW that you have done so much in me and I should be showing SO much more fruit than I do sometimes!! I go through a 'spell' and I wither. The fruits that were showing as you were alive in me so quickly disappear.

I have spent so much time absorbing information and growing in knowledge of you, your Church, Life, the Bible..... but I have missed the joy. The one thing I told myself I wouldn't do -- I did.

I am reminded of what Shane Claiborne said in Irristible Revolution. Out of the whole huge list of things God has done through their ministry around the world.... what does Shane say is the most beautiful and challenging thing they do? Love each other. Love the people in their core small group....whatever they call themselves. Love each other.

God I have loved others outside my home more than I've loved my family inside. God give me a new passion and vision for christian homes and what you desire for our home! I truly DO believe that you are looking and searching for people who earnestly are seeking to love and follow you! and I truly believe that you can change the entire state of the nation by changing the homes. You can change whole communities, states, nations -- by the work you do in individual's hearts and homes.

For 2011 I desire so deeply to marinate myself in God's Word & to truly allow the Spirit to flow through me!! Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. John 7:38 . God I desire your Spirit to flow through me! Help me beat down my flesh and make it impossible to be around me and not see Jesus's love radiating.

God I want to figure out how to truly enjoy HIM for all He is. Stir my affections for you God and help me get back into that "sweet spot" season again with you God. You are my first love God - don't let me harden my heart or turn away from you in even the slightest way God! You are perfect, Holy, Sovereign, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, the One True God. I want to enjoy YOU - not only the blessings you give, but YOU.

I know that this is the key step to letting love flow through me. To not forget the JOY. To not forsake my first love. To glorify God by enjoying Him forever. To be so full of the Joy of being His and having His Love that Love just overflows through me like a spring of living water.

God help me keep my zeal and spiritual fervor, serving the Lord yes... Romans 12.... but God Help me live it out God! Show me teach me lead me change me to LOVE deeper wider bigger better! ♥

In our home God, help us submit to each other God. Yes we love our children so much.... but God help us love them so much deeper. Help us be patient when we make short term decisions because we just want quiet. Help us make the effort to discipline right when we want to whip them into shape quickly but wrongly. Help us God give them our time & attention when we are so tired and want nothing more to selfishly pull into ourselves.

Help us use LOVING words that build up, support & encourage! Help us show LOVING attitudes to each other always! Help us God show our children how to love by how we love YOU and how we love each other!

God - help me show my love for my husband through respecting him.

Oh heavenly Father - help me be slow to anger and abounding in Love. Jesus - I want to be more like you. God I want to be more patient and graceful and slow to anger.... Father - help me not be controlled by my emotions. Daddy Abba Father help me be in tune enough with your Spirit to not be captive to my own emotions anymore. I have battled this before and I know you'll help me again! You are my rescuer & redeemer & healer.

Change me God! You are the Father, I am the clay. You are the Potter. I am simply the work of your hands. Mold me God!

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE
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God you are slow to anger in abounding in Love Joel 2:13

How priceless is your unfailing love! Ps 36:7

God your love endures forever! 2 Ch 5:13

Your love is better than life! Psalm 63:3

You, the LORD are good and Your love endures forever Psalm 100:5

God you are slow to anger, abounding in Love Psalm 103:8

The earth is filled with your love, LORD; teach me your decrees. Psalm 119:64

The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. Psalm 145:8

His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor his delight in the legs of the warrior; the LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love. Psalm 147:10-11

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Matthew 22:37

This is my command: Love each other. John 15:17

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God. I Cor 8:1b-3

Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. Titus 2:3-5

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. I Peter 4:8
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? I John 3:16-17

7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

I John 4:7-21

And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love 2 John :5-6

1 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.


I Corinthians 13

1 comment:

Rose of Sharon said...

I wanted to come over and thank you so much for the sweet comment you left today and for praying for me and my work situation. I really, really appreciate it and God worked every thing out! My job situation is soooo much better and all those mean girls are gone now!

Your post today is beautiful! God bless you!

:0) Hugs, Sharon