New Years Resolutions

When I started this blog I had originally planned to do a post every week, A week after writing my first blog I sat down to write my second and came up with nothing. At this point I felt God saying, it isn't my blog, it is His so I'm on His time not mine. There have been a few times in the past month that I've tried to rack my brain for something to write about or diligently prayed for god to give me something but its usually through the daily lessons that God slowly gives me something. So here I am, not a week later like I had originally planned for, but writing in Gods timing

We are approaching the holiday season and pretty soon the New Year will be upon us. With the New Year comes New Years resolutions, the joke I hear every year is, how long is this new years resolution going to last. Many of us get to the New year and all of the sudden have a desire to eat healthy, lose weight, work out, and many other things, the list could go on and on, and If you are anything like me or many of the people I know, you usually eat healthy for a month or so, and after a while you lose the motivation you had at the beginning of the year, so the new years resolution slowly disappears.

Today I want to ask you, how often do we take that route with the things God lays upon our hearts to do?

About two years ago I felt God calling me to give up social media. I'm going to be completely honest with you, at that time I was completely addicted to it. After a few weeks of going back and forth with God I deleted all of my social media accounts, and let me tell you it was one of the most freeing things I've ever done. Now lets fast forward, after a year of no social media, I decided I was ready to go back and started a new account. Now, lets fast forward another year. Last week I was scrolling through Facebook and once again found myself highly frustrated by some of the things I was seeing, at this point I was brought back to a year ago when I reopened a Facebook account and thought to myself, when I gave up Facebook 2 years ago I felt God telling me to do it, but when I picked it back up a year ago was it because I no longer felt God calling me to go without it or was it because I had decided my time without social media was over. After much debate I ended up deleting my Facebook account again days later.

Often times it can be difficult to discern between our desires and what God is saying. Like me, we can hear God telling us to start doing something so we start doing it but after a while it's not so easy to stick to so we quit. When we look back at the end of it all, we realize how we completely forgot what God was calling us to do and don't even know when or how you lost sight of Him.

A few years ago I did a Bible study by Beth Moore, in one of the chapters she outlined how to decipher between our desires, the voice of God and the enemy, it has stuck with me every since. Her words were, your desires will lead to pleasure, the voice of the enemy will be built on lies, and the voice of God will be built on the Bible. In my situation, God lead me to give up social media and after a while it became more pleasurable for me to pick it back up, so I did, not even checking to see if it was just my desire or Gods voice.

How have I learned to decipher these voices?

Through prayer, and reading of the Bible.

Romans 16:16 says " rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation and be constant in prayer

Matthew 7:7 also says " ask and it will be given, seek, and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you."

My spiritual mom always asks me on a regular basis, "are you praying and reading your Bible", there was a time earlier on in my faith that I would make excuses for not doing it and think to myself that's not what I need right now but then wonder why it felt like depression and anxiety were running my life. The past few months I have committed to getting down on my knees and praying every night and reading my Bible and I can truly say letting Christ lead my life through the Bible has truly transformed me from the inside out

The next question might be, once I have deciphered Gods voice and know what He is calling me to do how do I stick with it.

A little over a month ago I called a mentor of mine to vent and my first words were, I'm just so frustrated with myself, I feel as if, by now I should no longer be dealing with the temptation of old sins. Her words to me were " I think you are to caught up in where you should be and where you want to be, and what you really need to start doing is celebrating the little victories." That night we made the decision to start celebrating my little victories with ice cream, and no matter how cold it is, on Monday nights when I haven't fallen into temptation the week before we celebrate with ice cream

I work with and always have worked with kids and most of my day is spent motivating and rewarding them with smarties. For me it is easy to forget that I am a 4 year old Christian and sometimes I to need motivations and rewards. I also think even Christians who have been at it for a long time need motivations and rewards to stay on track because this faith thing isn't always easy

Like those new Year resolutions we make aren't easy to stick with, God doesn't promise the things He calls us to will always be easy and i think He knew we would also need the promise/ motivation of a reward at the end

1 Corinthians 15:58 " Therefore dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. let nothing move you. always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain"

Colossians 3: 23- 24 " Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving"

Philippians 3: 14 " I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

My challenge tonight is to spend some time in prayer seeking for anything God might be calling you to give up or anything God has called you to give up before and you gave up but picked back up

As always I hope you have enjoyed this post and been encouraged by it. As mentioned I deleted my Facebook account so if anyone feels lead to share it feel free to.