It wasn’t until January 1st that God spoke to me about 2008. I was thinking, pondering, meditating on what God could possibly do in my life with year after all that He did in 2007. I started the year with that word about perfection and completion, I started the year with purpose and fasting and I knew it was going to be very significant. But I didn’t have that same focus coming into 2008. I wasn’t hearing anything specific from God before the year ended and as I reflect on that now I see that God hadn’t finished what He was doing in me until literally 2007 was over, right to the day.
On January 1st I was praying and waiting for God to speak to me and I kept hearing the word Establish… Establish… I am going to establish you. I kept waiting… I wanted something a little more exciting than that… I am going to Establish you sounded like a demotion from Perfection and Completion. But I couldn’t shake it. I didn’t really know what it meant… but I knew that was the word for me. I shared it with a friend still not really knowing what it meant.
I shared it with Jason and it started to unfold. I remembered what happened to the flower and I knew it needed to be established in order to hold its magnificence, it’s resplendence. I started to get a picture of being established. But that process just sounded like hard work and kind of boring work… like when you do work that no one else sees, that no one can celebrate with you, the dirty work under the surface that establishes your future and purpose, that work is usually hard and dirty. Yet the more I thought about it… the more I started to get a new vision, fresh vision and a plan of how God was going to establish me for His purposes.
I looked up establish in the dictionary… You are not even going to believe what it means… I was flabbergasted… I can’t believe I thought being established was going to be boring… Being established is going to be even more exciting than being perfected and completed. Not because one is better than the other but because being established is the NOW word to my life. We cannot hang onto the past… the things God did last year, or even last month. He has something fresh for us all the time. He has new ways of doing things and being established is the now word to my life and it is so exciting.
Establish
- to start or set up something
- to ascertain, to determine something
- to place something permanently
- to confirm truth of something,
- cause something to be recognized
- to make church national and official
- to cause a plant to grow
Establish – set up, found, institute, start, create. begin, launch
The fear of the Lord is upon me… I feel humbled yet ready to dig in… to be established. Slowly and surely… steady and strong… line upon line… I am sure there will be a running theme on my blog this year about being established as God shows me layer by layer how He is going to do this in my life.
Did you notice the last meaning… To cause a plant to grow… My plant… my broken plant a reflection of my life before God… Not broken but being established… Wow… I am so excited for 2008…
Tomorrow Jason and I will begin our "Love Life" series on our blogs…
This is going to be a great year. I’m excited for you. Established. Amen.
Without the establishment of the roots…there is no bloom!