Overcome

I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season and are now looking forward to the freshness of a new year. At this time one can not help but do the self evaluation of the previous year, where I find myself now and what does the year ahead hold. I am reading a book by Greg Laurie and in the introduction he states that when a life (or in our case a year) is coming to an end one of the things he hears people say the most is that “they wished they had spent more time walking closely with God. At the end of their lives, they have come to recognize the fact that they will stand before Almighty God…. Sadly we will spend so much time on that which does not really matter and in the process, we neglect that which really does matter.”

When I read this I became so very convicted. What you say….”Clea, you have given up everything to serve the Lord!” It is true that I have given up many physical luxuries but the thing that I have not given the Lord is priority. I like so many others all too easily get caught up in “doing”; putting so much emphasis on my daily physical schedule that I schedule out the Lord. How I get to such a state is hard to determine. I look back on seasons of my life where I was committed to my quiet walks with the Lord, to my personal journal time, of just needing time in the stillness. Like any new resolution it takes time and commitment to make it routine. Like pastor Laurie reminded me I am never going to look back and care if dinner was on time or if I got the chores done on time but I will regret allowing my flesh to rob me of the blessing of time with my Father.

I don’t know about you but the kind of person that I want to be can’t happen without daily refreshment from the Lord. I don’t want to be a complainer; I don’t want to get frustrated with my kids just being kids; I don’t want to get stress out just trying to get the family out the door for church. To me that is not the victorious Christian life that Jesus has made available to me.

For me, my once again new year resolution is to get up early and start my day before the kids wake (yes I realize this may mean getting up at 5 in the morning) in the bible and prayer. I need no I must begin with Him, not rushed, not squeezed, but still. If I don’t how can I ever be that person that reflects Christ to my husband and children yet alone to a lost and dying world. Without spending time being filled, it will not happen no matter how much I want it.

So now that you know my resolution... anybody up to calling Africa daily to get my lazy butt out of bed… Just kidding. I know even this too is accomplished by prayer and He will give me the ability to overcome. But how about you…what is the Lord putting on your heart? What is He calling you to do or not do? Please I beg you, I implore you, no matter how impossible it may seem or how silly or how hard, COMMIT. Don’t come to the end of next year with the same regrets or what ifs. Lets be overcomers!

1John 4:4 “Little children, you are of God [you belong to Him] and have [already] defeated and overcome them [the agents of the antichrist], because He Who lives in you is greater (mightier) than he who is in the world.” (AMP)