Happy New Year…With the start of a New Year is the beginning of new resolutions…new words…new disciplines. Some of my fellow authors have shared their words, so I thought I’d share mine along with a Bible reading tool I discovered thanks to Tricia Goyer and am loving! Be sure to read all the way to the end for a way to enter a new giveaway I’m offering this month, too!
First my word…
Every year I pick a new one. When it’s a new year with a fresh calendar page, it’s time to pray about what my focus should be for the new year.
An opportunity to embrace the unknown of the future…
Or cower in fear of what’s to come as it hides behind the veil of the unknown.
As I look at 2015, there are a couple things I know. I will teach at Purdue this spring. I will homeschool my children. I will earn my MBA in May.
Yet there are a host of unknowns. When will I write my next book? Who will it be for? What will the genre be? Will I do more legal work after I complete my MBA? Will I teach more or fewer classes?
I’m a person who loves a ten-year plan. Yet lately it feels like I’m being asked to run on a five-month plan. It’s okay. I’ve walked with God long enough to trust that He has things in my future. Things I may not be able to anticipate at this moment, but still I know there is a plan. And in the right time, He’ll let me in on the next step. After all isn’t that what faith is about? Trusting Him with the full journey of my life?
So as I prayed about the word I should focus on this year, the word He whispered to my heart through songs, through prayers, through life, was BRAVE. At first I tried to shrug the word off. I’m not exactly known as a shrinking violet or someone who isn’t willing to do counter-culture things (As one of the older homeschoolers when it became legal in Nebraska — that definitely led to a need for bravery!) Yet as I tried the word on and prayed about it, it feels right.
Like 2015 might be a year filled with new opportunities…opportunities that will be uncomfortable, scary, and call me to be brave all over again. To follow God into unknown territory in ways that I know I can only do with His help.
So here I type…with a wee bit of hesitancy…as I embrace the word. Brave. Here’s to a year where each of us gather our courage and follow God a bit deeper into who He’s called each of us to be…all for Him!
Maybe you’re like me. Many years I start with the desire or will to read the Bible in a year. I’ve even done it a couple times. Not nearly often enough though.
I have a chronological Bible that I love because it puts all the passages in chronological order. It was a great way to mix up some of the passages that I know cold and see how the whole book fits together. This year the Bible is packed and I have no idea which box it is in…so I needed something else.
Tricia had posted on Facebook that one of her friends Joanna Weaver had created a Bible study tool that Tricia was using. Over the weekend I popped over…already feeling behind because I hadn’t started on January 1st. I could have. After all I spent the entire day in the car, but let’s face it — I simply didn’t. 
So on the fourth I popped over to Joanna’s website. And guess what? The page let me pick the day that the Bible reading plan would start. So I’m not behind! Anyone else find that psychologically comforting? To start knowing you’re not already behind?
I have a new Bible, the Holman Study Bible for Women, and I’m already loving all the notes and additional material. I think this is going to be a great year. Would you like to join me? Together let’s see what God reveals to us as we start the New Year with Him.
Let’s grab our Bibles, Journals, and reading guides and see what riches God has to reveal to us…maybe in the passages we think we know the best.
Anyone with me?
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I am hoping to THRIVE in 2015–physically, mentally and spiritually.
Blessings,
Connie
Thrive is a great word, Connie!
Giving.
By the end of 2015, I hope to find what that one word has meant in my extension of loving the Lord means ~ self-less.
Kathleen ~ Lane Hill House
There’s richness in that word, too.
I have read the Bible through in a year 3 times. Once with the NLT one year Bible and twice with the NLT chronological one year Bible. Twice I committed to a challenge with my church to read the Bible through in a year. Once I did it on my own. Actually I have read the Bible through many times . This year I will read a section each day that is laid out in our Sunday School quarterly . Also do the Sunday school lesson . This winter we have studied Ester, Ezra and now Nehemiah.
I just finished the NLT chronological Bible in one year in 2014. I loved it. Hope you enjoy it also.
Blessings
Shirley
Shirley, I love that. I’ve read through the Bible many times, just rarely in a year. Excited to see what God shows me!
Happy new year, Cara! I love how you describe yourself as someone who loves a 10 year plan, but has been given just a 5 month plan by God. God has often worked that way in my life. I’d prefer, sometimes, that He illuminate the path ahead with a search light. Instead, He sometimes seems to prefer to illuminate the way with a tiny flashlight. In my case, I think He’s tried to use the uncertainty He’s handed me to grow my faith and also to keep me from balking at some of the challenging things that have come my way. I think BRAVE is a great word for you to have chosen. God bless!
I guess it’s all part of the faith journey…I like that…illuminating with a tiny flashlight when I prefer the search light 🙂 I totally agree that He only gives us pieces of the journey because I know otherwise I would tell Him repeatedly He has the wrong girl!
Thank you for sharing! Don’t you just love when you have a plan and God takes you another way? The last few years I’ve been so busy taking care of other people’s needs that this year I’ve decided that I’m going to take some much needed time for myself. As a daughter, sister, mother, wife and woman that sounds selfish to me, but at this point it is very much needed. I’m looking forward to this new year and to the things that the Lord has planned for me 🙂
Lori, it is so hard to carve out that time for us. I’m getting slowly better at it. Emphasis on slowly!
2015 is going to be a stupendous year for me….I am positive!! I will grow closer to the Lord, my husband and my dear friends. I pray our daughter might meet her future spouse….and I pray that I will serve Jesus more each day!
Connie, I love that! Praying God meets you in an amazing way this year.
I have read the Bible through chronologically and enjoyed it. I do a different plan each year. I’m glad you found a reading plan that starts the day you want. It’s never fun to feel like you are behind. I want to be faithful in 2015. Dealing with my 87-year old mom after a corneal transplant has been challenging and how I have started 2015. I also want to be kind as she is a challenge…pay back from raising me I guess! Thanks for the giveaway!
Praying for you as you serve your mom right now.
My biggest hope for 2015 is that I’ll be able to finish the projects that I began in 2014–redecorating/reorganizing my office into more of an office/den, reorganizing my guest bedroom so that it has a bigger purpose, and reorganizing my laundry room/pantry so it isn’t so cluttered.
I don’t do well with only one year to read through the Bible. I’m glad you found a plan that will work for this year. I’m reading the MacArthur Topical Bible. It’s quite a different way to read the Bible, and of course doesn’t include everything. It would probably be confusing (and perhaps boring/uninteresting) to someone who wasn’t very familiar with the Bible.
Finish projects is always important — and challenging! Keeping the energy up for the whole thing! Good luck!
And I think the more we know the Bible, the more important it can be to find new, fresh ways to look at it!
My hope is to help my 90 year old father as much as I can.
susanlulu@yahoo.com
My biggest hope would be that this would be the year Jesus comes back, even though no man knows the hour or the day. All we need to know is to be ready before the time comes.