Thoughts on life as we look at the new year!

We cannot make growth happen

We cannot produce anything.

We cannot make it rain

We cannot make the sun come up

We cannot make the soil be rich (maybe a little bit)

We cannot make a single plant grow. We simply can’t

Only God, only His power, His love, His life can bring life to anything.

Our lives, our everyday struggles, our challenges, our decisions, our choices, fears, doubts, pain, sorrow, joys, victories, these things

they’re all known by our creator, and he’s very aware of every single detail of our lives.

All we can do is get to a place of awareness in our lives that in fact, this Creator, this God, this Father, is indeed watching, listening, working and doing His work in the midst of it all, and in being aware of these truths, encourage others to pause, to think, to give time to our hearts and souls to stop from all our doing and recognize and realize these things, and it’s in the midst of this pausing, this stopping, that then we can hear, see, think and receive what hope, what life, what joy and love he offers.

We are constantly full of ourselves and everything that pertains to us. Our own goals, ideas, thoughts, dreams, visions, filters, world views, convictions, beliefs, ways of doing things, etc.

We are taught to be this way. Yet we know His spirit is constantly asking us, begging us, crying out to us to come to the place of rest, of quietness, of peace, of hush, of stillness. Why?

Because it is our own voices and the voices of the world and all the pursuits and the rat race that fill us, and there’s very little truth, very little life, hope, grace, joy, love and life in these voices. 

They’re all geared to make us selfish, enclosed, isolated, to hide, to hold back, to protect, to cover up, to excuse, to defend, to run away, to separate, to divide, etc.

These voices are meant to drain us, with the promise to fill us. 

They are meant to destroy us, to steal from us, to scam us, to kill us little by little.

But to slow down it means to surrender. To let go. To trust. To believe God. TO believe His truth. To risk. To gamble. To bet. 

So, we have a choice. Is there hope in the way we’re going? The way we are living? In the things we are pursuing? In the way we’re leading our lives?

Is there? Hope? Joy? Fulfillment? Life? Peace? Rest? Healing?