BELIEVE. RELAX. JOY. SIMPLIFY.
Each year for the last several years I have chosen a word to be my “theme” for the year. This year I chose SIMPLIFY. On January 1 I woke up feeling a little unsettled. And I kept singing that song, “I surrender all” over and over. I don’t even really like that song. Why am I singing it?
Did I have a dream? Why is that song and that word so heavy on my mind? As the morning went on that word SURRENDER would not go away. So I stopped my morning routine of “work as fast as you can to be productive” and just sat….quietly…and prayed.
I asked God why I had that word on my mind. And I believe He revealed to me that SIMPLIFY is my word for the year but I needed a second “S” word and that was SURRENDER. I felt Him telling me that I have made my life so complicated by trying to control so many things that the word SIMPLIFY was a natural choice for a word to help me improve. But the natural choice word needed a spiritual choice word – SURRENDER.
I need to surrender my worries, my control, my manipulation of trying to make things turn out how I think is best for everyone; my obsession with trying to protect everyone from harm. God told me to SURRENDER in order to SIMPLIFY.
So this year my word for 2018 is actually an equation. SIMPLIFY+SURRENDER=PEACE.
Yes, Lord, I’m going to try really hard to SURRENDER ALL so that I may have a more simplified life in order to feel Your peace every day.
