As this year slowly comes to a close, and as I learn more about myself, about my cycle of years, my time, and how God designed me to interact with time I'm met with a lot of discovery and awe. Some people get "end of year" words, I ask for them when I hear this preaching start to come up, but it never really felt like the right 'time' to be getting a word for the year. Personally, the new year has always felt to be around March or April and seeing the pattern and cyclic lifecycle of each year as it has happened, I can point to many big things that took place in April and March in my life.
I can look back to April of 2016. I had graduated high school the year before and was about to turn 19 in July. Yet my life was in a disarray, I didn't like many parts of it, and I found that fewer and fewer of my interactions with people were truly meaningful or deep. Neither did I feel like I was living in a meaningful way as this was really the year I had partied, and illicitly exploited myself and others to immorality. I was beginning to learn what the power of persuasion was, but I didn't know what I was meant for or what I was put on this planet in the first place. In fact, I had a hard time believing Jesus as a true historical figure and really only had thoughts of God as being a master craftsman and intelligent designer, but never someone who was present and caring. That April lots of things took place to shift my life, and an opportunity came up where when I said "universe, is this what I'm supposed to be doing?" I felt a "yes" impression. This "yes" took me to Nashville, and I began to establish a life there as a salesperson for a pest control company, and eventually was found by Jesus through one of my customers.
Unfortunately, the illicit sin didn't stop there. The next April was the next big shift in my life, though I had been hired to do contracting work at Dell in November, I had to go through a 4-month internship/training program to see if I could land a real job at Dell. I landed a job at a position making more money than I had ever made in my life by almost quadruple. The Lord blessed me with this job as I was still looking for what I wanted to do, and had asked him "what if I did something like sales and computers combined?". That year was the year I truly started praying and submitting my life to God and decided that I wanted to live for the work that He would have me do, and not just the work that I would have me do. Though it was still a long process I eventually applied to do a DTS that started near the end of March of 2019. I felt the call to sacrifice, and to live a life wholly unto the Lord, consecrated to Him alone.
The next April that came around was special as the shift happened a couple months earlier as I was lead to make roots here at Ywam-Cevennes in the south of France. Though I don't know about timing and the sovereignty of God where this lines up, I do know that the shift in mood, in how God interacted with me, and what He started addressing within me changed a lot from submission and ideas of submission to living it out. So I did, and my life cleaned up significantly especially as I worked with a pastoral figure in my life to confess, repent, and renounce old ways. I think I was brought a little earlier because the Lord knew confinement was going to happen, and that He wanted me here for it.
As I look forward I don't know where this next April will take me. I do know that I want to continue to be wholly submitted to the Lord, and I know what I'd like to invest in. I pray that the investment and intensity of relationships in my life jumps a level as that is something that I know I was like to develop. I pray that I will be given new revelation about my design, and walk further into the way that God created me to be, and that I would fully claim my office. Yet these are multi-year projects, and I'm excited to see what God decides to say about this coming year, I'll just be getting my word in April where everyone else is getting theirs in January. However, I do hope that you pray about timeline patterns in your own life and that you take the time with the Lord to see where your new year is. I believe each person has their own unique new year, and it's probably accurate down to the hour. Yet you'll never know it if you don't ask.
No comments:
Post a Comment