Originally this post was titled "Word for the Year", but as I've been thinking about it for the past week that title really doesn't fit what's going on in my life. There have been times in the past where God has given me a specific word to focus on during a calendar year, and the various things I read, studied, experienced, and taught during that year all came back to that one word. It was something that happened continually for a while, but then something happened and I really didn't connect with God in that way.
A few years ago I began a journey as I began uncovering my God given identity. For three years that was the primary thing I was focused on, and pretty much everything I wrote and studied personally focused on that topic, something that started in March 2015 and continued until this past June at a ceremony. For two years I spent time alone in the woods, intentionally seeking vision from God, all of which served to confirm my identity and help me understand what claiming it entailed. I had the intention of doing another night in the woods in 2018, but things kept coming up, and I was never able to make it happen.
At first I was upset with myself for not making it more of a priority, but as I reflected, I really didn't have a sense to do one when I had the time, and once I felt the urgency to do one, the time wasn't there. I didn't get my over night vision quest with God this year, but I still felt like God had spoken to me and given me direction for the next stage of my journey.
For three years, I was fully focused on identity, on discovering it and owning it, and it is something I feel like I have a very firm grasp of. In early July 2018 I felt the need to get away from everything that was going on. I loaded my pack and heading for the woods. I felt that God was calling me to just escape and process some things, and so I headed to a nearby trail, having no real plan on where to go or what my mind was going to process. I got there, parked, and started walking, asking God where I should go. A little way down the trail He gave me a vision of a spot I knew well, and when I turned around to head to that spot I felt that the sense that I needed to take the scenic route there. I turned around and hiked almost three miles to a spot that was less than half a mile from the parking lot.
I set my hammock up and began to write as the sun began to slowly set over the lake I was by. I have four central themes that I am focused on, Identity, Passion, Destiny, and Community, and I began to do some processing of each one. I filled a couple index cards with what I had learned about Identity, the Scriptural foundation, the support verses, the key concepts I had learned over the past three years, and a bit of my own experience with them. Then I got to Passion, I managed to write down the foundation verse, but then I got stuck, not really sure what to do. I moved on to Destiny, being able to give a little more for this one, but still not the detail of Identity. Community wasn't fully on my radar at that point so it didn't get any attention.
When I looked over what I had written for Passion I really began to get frustrated. I didn't get it, didn't know how to explain it or really what it looked like, and I wasn't sure what to do because this was the next area I was supposed to focus on. At that moment, during my mini vision quest, that God revealed what my focus would be for this next season, Passion.
Since that evening by the lack a lot has happened, most of which I can't share publicly yet, but I realized that my focus of Passion was off. I had made it too small and in some ways too complicated. Over the final months of 2018, God began to help me see that Passion is about Him, and specifically my relationship with Him. I spent three years focused on Identity, on who God says I am, and now that that part of the journey is complete it's time to move onto the next phase, focusing on Passion, my personal relationship and connection with God.
The word for this season of my life is Passion. If the past three years are any indication this season may not end until the next decade, honestly I think it's going to be something that continues to develop and unfold for the rest of my life, but during this season it is going to be the primary focus of my study and prayer. God has been calling me to a deeper intimacy with Him, and that is what this stage is about. I know who I am, and now I need to come to a deeper understanding of and intimacy with the one who named me.
Fight the lion, 1 Peter 5.1-11
TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!
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