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K-love Digging Deeper – A New Kind of Resolution

by

resolutions

 12/29/2014

 A New Kind of Resolution

By Rachel Olsen, co-author of My One Word:

Change Your Life With One Word

I adore January. Never mind that I usually need to shed some holiday pounds or that I’m no fan of cold weather. The first few weeks of the new year feel pregnant with the possibility that this year I’ll become my best self. Americans love this fresh start feeling. Nearly two-thirds of us make New Year’s resolutions—and I’ve been one of the 90 million who do. What about you?

Any of these sound familiar:

• I’m going to get organized.

• I’m going to lose 10 lbs.

• I’m going to stop running late.

• I’m going to read my Bible early every morning.

• I’m going to be a better spouse … parent … Christian.

Research confirms what you and I have known: Before January ends most of us abandon our list of ways we intended to improve. That ball keeps dropping in New York’s Time’s Square each New Year’s. And we keep dropping the ball on our resolutions to change. That’s because change requires more than a clean calendar page. It takes more than positive feelings or wishful thinking. And transformation takes more than a couple weeks’ effort.

 

CHANGE IS POSSIBLE, BUT FOCUS IS REQUIRED.

 

The problem is our attention is divided. Our lives are fast-paced and demanding. Lots to change divided by busy days (multiplied by frequent frustration) equals little transformation. But there’s a solution equation. Clarity plus grace (multiplied by focus over time) equals transformation.

A Single-Word Focus

That’s why seven years ago I ditched New Year’s resolutions in favor of choosing one word to be my focus for the year. Just one word that represented what I most hoped God would do in and through me in the twelve months to come. I stayed focused on that one word for 365 days. I thought about it, talked about it, journaled with it, and prayed about it. I let it shape my choices and my schedule. And I saw change.

In looking through the lens of a single word, chosen in tandem with God, I found a new approach to personal change mainly because it supplies narrowed focus. In fact, the results each year have been greater and farther reaching than I expected. I want you to try it too. Let me be clear, this is not a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps and will yourself to be different” project. Such an approach rarely works for long. Change, heart-level change – spiritual formation – is an act of God. The human heart is meant to be conformed to His image. The power and provision of God will aid us in that transformation.

This single word will force clarity and concentrate your efforts. And as you focus on your word over an extended period of time, you position yourself for God to form your character at a deep level. Last year my one word was FIRST. It was anchored in the call to seek first God and his kingdom whenever I worried about how I was going to get what I needed or wanted. I encourage you to join the thousands around the nation already choosing their one words for 2015.

 

 

Take Hope in the Manger

by

nativity

12/22/2014

Take Hope in the Manger

 

From Louie Giglio’s
Waiting Here For You, An Advent Journey of Hope

Just the Right Time

 

A Savior had been promised to God’s people for centuries. They longed and prayed for rescue. And then on the right day, in the right place, at the right time, Jesus was born.

 

While God rarely comes at our appointed time, He always comes at the right time. All of us are waiting on something, often wondering if God has forgotten us. In your waiting, let the birth of Christ encourage you. Just because God hasn’t come through (as far as you can see), it doesn’t mean He has abandoned you.

HE ALWAYS COMES AT THE RIGHT TIME

To Him a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day. This very minute He’s working for His glory and for your good. Though circumstances say otherwise, God is going to come through, on schedule, fulfilling His long-appointed plans for you.

 

Don’t give up before the time is right. Take hope in the manger and know that you are loved and prized by the God who stepped down from heaven and arrived at the perfect time for you.

 

How to Remember What Matters Most – K-love Digging Deeper

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what matters most

 

How to Remember What Matters Most

 

Excerpted from The Women of Christmas by Liz Curtis Higgs

 

It was time. All across Judea people went about their business, trading their goods and tending their flocks, unaware, unprepared. But Mary, Joseph, and all of heaven knew. He is coming. We can’t be certain how close to term Mary was, but definitely “in the later stages of her pregnancy.”

 

Tradition and Hollywood often show her reaching the edge of town at the first contraction, but that’s not found in Scripture. She and Joseph may have been in Bethlehem for some time before she went into labor. With a sigh of relief, we can probably let go of the image of an about-to-give-birth Mary being jostled on the back of a donkey. Even so, she didn’t have long to wait. Joseph and Mary were still in Bethlehem, the streets and houses crowded with visitors, when her pregnant days were over.

 

Like John before him, Jesus didn’t come prematurely but arrived when “the days were fulfilled,” and “she came to the end of her time” at the exact moment God had ordained. Whether she labored three hours or thirty, whether a midwife was present or Joseph alone assisted in the delivery process, Mary gave birth to a son. We have no birth weight, no length, no Apgar score. Were his extremities pink? Was his pulse rate over one hundred? Did he have a strong, lusty cry?

 

He came for those he loves.

He came for you.

 

Here’s what matters most: the prophecies had all come true, the miracle was complete, and the Savior rested in Mary’s embrace. This child of the Holy Spirit was her child too, with ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes, with olive skin and a dark whorl of hair. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” On that sacred day God became more than a pillar of cloud or a pillar of fire. He became flesh and blood and bone. He became one of us. Mary focused on caring for her baby while she stored all she’d seen and done “like a secret treasure in her heart.” Some women like to talk their way through experiences; others prefer the Mary approach: “weighing and pondering,” “mulling them over,” and “trying to understand them.”

 

Sometimes the Lord does such a profound work in us and through us that sharing it with others would sound like bragging. Even if we say, “Look what God has done,” others may perceive it as “Look what I’ve done” or “Look how special I am!” God, as always, knows best. The shepherds were noisy, yet the mother of Jesus was quiet. Others would take his story far and wide, encircling the earth with his truth. Mary was called to be his mother—no more and no less. To nurture him, to feed and clothe him, to teach him all she knew of his heavenly Father. As to these things she had treasured up, “holding them dear, deep within herself,” Gabriel had given her quite a list of attributes for this child, starting with “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.”

 

Whenever she held her baby boy, those angelic words surely ran through her mind. He didn’t look like a monarch, but one day he would be called “Lord of lords and King of kings.” He didn’t have the strength to hold up his head, let alone stand on his feet, yet he is the One “who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy.” Just as Mary “committed these things to memory,” we can do the same—not only at Christmas time, but all through the year—thinking about who Jesus is and why he came to earth as a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. He came for those he loves. He came for you.