Wow! What a year 2008 has been! As I think back to this time last year, I had no idea that God was going to be calling me to move to Atlanta! So many things have changed in 2008, and God has blessed me with so much! I can't wait to see what He does in 2009!
God has already begun doing heart surgery in me the past few days of this new year. I know that it probably seems that I've got it all together, and most of the time I would prefer that people thought that about me. However, the truth is that I SO DO NOT have it all together. As much as God has blessed me in the past year, and as much as I love Christmastime, this holiday season had it's painful moments for me.
There are some deep longings of my heart that have yet to be fulfilled, and I began focusing on those things a lot towards the end of the year. I found myself thinking, "If I could just have this or that, then my life would be complete." That kind of desperation is a dangerous place to be in, because Satan knows that is where I am most vulnerable. He used some circumstances to bring out more thoughts of rejection, lonliness and inadequacy in me.
Yes - desperation can cause us to do and think stupid things. However, desperation can also be a gift. If geared properly, it can be turned into a desperation for God. I began to think, "What if those things I so deeply long for never happen for me?". Do I want to go through life miserable because of it? NO WAY!!! I want to live the ABUNDANT life that God sent His Son in order for me to have. I want to learn to be content right where God has placed me.
God has said to my spirit the last few days, "Jenifer, allow ME to fill the deepest longings of your heart. Take your focus off of those things and put that focus on Me." Instead of worrying about what I don't have, I want to spend this new year enjoying the many blessings that God has already given me. I want to focus on becoming more like Christ. I want to become the kind of woman that the Godly man I am looking for would want to marry. I want to become the kind of friend to others that I would want them to be to me. More than anything, I want to be so desperately in LOVE with JESUS!!! I want 2009 to be a year full of getting to know my sweet Savior more and more!
Happy New Year!
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I just had to share this New Years prayer with you. It is from the diary of a woman named Ruth Bryan (1842). Feel free to pass it along to all the women who you feel it might encourage.
"Precious Christ, I come with a large request for 2009: it is that You would be the "Alpha and Omega" of it. Do You not say, "Ask what I shall give you?" Yourself, Lord! You have most blessedly given Yourself to me. But I find sweet liberty to entreat more unfolding, revealing, and opening of Your glorious person, amazing work, and matchless love, than I have yet had; and more losing and treading down of SELF, too--that I may be lost in Your fullness, and forgotten and forsaken in Your soul-absorbing glories
Oh! raise me higher, draw me nearer, that I may daily die, and You live in me more manifestly. I just give myself to You, to live on You, to live in You, to live for You, more and more than heretofore, and that by the power of the Spirit resting on me. I humbly ask that mine may be a large and still-increasing portion; that, under fresh anointing, You, most lovely Jesus, may be more fully known, more loved, more served; for it is to You the Holy Spirit leads, of You He testifies.
Oh, do make this a large, rich, full year! You being increasingly honored in me, and I increasingly lost in You, and made an increasing blessing to Your dear people. An Ebenezer for past mercies befits me; large and magnificent have been Your bestowments; bountiful and constant Your favors to me--a poor worthless nothing! "Bless the Lord, O my soul--and all that is within me, bless His holy name!"
Blessings to You!
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