THANK GOD, IT’S MONDAY! — WEEK OF JANUARY 23rd 2017: Questions for Plotting a Purposeful Year

Last week, our discipleship group leader posed seven questions to help us plan our 2017. They are quite straightforward questions, but it took me much prayer and reflection, including an evaluation of the previous year, to answer them with confidence and substance. Here they are (with some of my answers):

1. Is there something I need to change?
   • I need to change my habit of busy-ness.
2. Is there something I need to stop doing?
   • I need to cease taking on so many things to the point of being unable to rest in the Lord. I need to stop accepting side projects for a while, take a few months’ break after the current projects I’m working on.
3. Is there something I need to do more?
   • More quiet time, specifically reading and studying God’s word.
   • More quiet time, specifically time for prayer, and even more specifically, time for praying for others.
   • More rest, more exercise, more reading.
   • Priority given to pursuing and nurturing relationships.
4. Is there something I always need to think of or consider before I act?
   • In every decision, thought, act and speech — 1 Corinthians 10:31 “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
5. Is there something I haven’t done that needs to be done?
   • We still haven’t completed our requirements for our adoption application! I believe the delay indicates our apprehensions, which still have to do with our ability to raise a child. This delayed obedience, I know, is equivalent to disobedience, and indicates our lack of trust in God’s power 😦
6. Is there something I am expecting that hasn’t come yet — which either means it isn’t time yet, or I have to re-evaluate or re-think it some more? (May also go back to all the previous questions and find out why it has or hasn’t happened or changed or moved yet.)
   • Our baby hasn’t come yet, and it’s all our doing!
7. When can/should I start?
   • By God’s grace, we will really complete everything within February. No more compromises!

It was quite a revealing exercise for me to answer these questions. It has given more flesh to my priorities for 2017. Now all that needs to be done is to act on these items, pronto!

So I’m beginning my week mindful of these things that I have resolved to change/do/stop/prioritize. I don’t want to call them resolutions; rather they are some of my key prayer points for the year, which I know can be fulfilled as I depend on the oversight and enabling that God always provides, and as I live each day being sensitive to the leading of the Spirit. And they’re making me quite expectant and excited for all that this year will bring!

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What would be your answers to the above questions?

And how’s your start of the week?

Feel free to write your own TGIM blog or Facebook status, and comment below with a link to your post. If you wish, you may also post your story/insight/inspiration straight below.

Be blessed!

My Word of the Year: PAUSE

I started a conference call at 11:00 P.M. last night. The person leading the meeting from the other side of the world expressed that she felt bad for me, but also that she was glad I could at least sleep in the following morning since it would be Saturday.

Funny how my mind totally blanked for a few seconds upon hearing the remark. It was as if she was talking to me in an alien language. When I recovered a bit, I could only flatly reply, “That does not happen.”

Over the last few years it has just become a daily routine for me to get up very early in the morning — 6AM at the latest, but sometimes as early as 3 — and to be up and running right away, all day until around midnight or even an hour or two later. Part of it is necessity, such as when we need to go to my husband’s medical treatment. Hugely, though, I think it has just become a bad habit.

I would spend time working and writing, and when there is nothing urgent left for me to attend to I would go online and contact friends looking for additional stuff to do. Sometimes it’s freelance writing, other times it’s volunteering or just anything that would interest me and I could get my hands into.

What I have might just be an addiction to busy-ness.

And I have to do something about it.

So for the first time, I have decided to identify my personal word for the year:

PAUSE.

I have to be deliberate in pursuing pauses in my daily walk.

I have to be consistent with my quiet time. I have to slow down to enjoy God’s presence in my life.

He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.

– Psalm 23:2-3

I’ll be taking time and effort in the next days to trim off my life’s clutter. “Major on the major,” as what my pastor says. After all, as I’ve said in my first post of the year, there is nothing that I look forward to more than His very presence.

I stand in joyful expectation, eager for what God will reveal to me and the intimacy I will share with Him, as I take more and longer pauses this year just to focus on Him.