My word for the year is PREPARATION. I can’t say I gave it a lot of consideration when I identified it as my key focus word for the year. It’s simply where God has me. When people ask how God is working in my life lately, I respond, “He’s preparing me.”
For what? I don’t know.
Is God using me in the meantime? Every moment!
I’m not focused on the end result. I’m focused on the preparation.
How is God using your today to prepare and purpose your tomorrow?
I’m setting this month aside to focus on helping you look for, notice, and acknowledge God working in your life. I’ll ask the above question over and over and invite you to engage in conversation by commenting on posts throughout the month. At the end of the month, I’ll give away a free ticket to the Living Proof Live with Beth Moore event in Springfield, IL, October 25-26, 2013. (Keep reading for the way the word PREPARATION ties me and my ministry with the event.) All you have to do to qualify for the free ticket drawing is to comment on one or more blog posts throughout the month of March. The ticket will be given away on April 1st (and it’s not an April Fools joke!). (If you live too far away to attend the event, I have an alternate giveaway and will then pass along the ticket to someone else.)
The posts throughout the month will include a variety of stories from friends who are willing to share with you how God has prepared or is preparing them. The responses they’ve shared are varied, which is a beautiful reminder of how God is committed to each of us individually and pours into us in uniquely-designed ways. These are real stories from real women, sharing God’s preparation in their lives. Some of the stories are the kind of life-altering experiences that make you say “whoa!” and many reveal how God works in the little details, weaving them together according to God’s will. I am thrilled these women are willing to walk alongside me through this journey to pour into, encourage, and challenge you.
God has been preparing me is so many ways!
One of those ways explains the tie between me and the Living Proof Live event in Springfield, IL, in October 2013. The City Coordinator contacted me last fall after seeing my name on a list of women who coordinated church groups to attend the last Living Proof Live event in the area. She asked if I wanted to be involved, and I committed to contacting churches in my area to help spread the word, foster community-building, and answer questions. With everything else on my calendar, I was fairly confident I could handle it, but I was certain I couldn’t handle anything additional. I was thrilled to be a part of the team, especially since the focus is about building a community of women, not just for an event, but fostering relationships leading up to the event as well as following the event. I was excited about the vision of outreach, reaching women who might not typically attend a Christian women’s conference or be able to attend.
A couple months later, I was on a conference call with the Springfield event team, sharing and discussing details with LifeWay staff. Something about the news and challenge of the Prayer Team stirred my heart. I thought about it several times in the following days, then received a team email letting us know the Prayer Team Coordinator had stepped aside and if we knew of anyone who might be a good fit, please share names. I knew I was supposed to speak up, but I didn’t immediately. I waited. I thought I might not have heard clearly, and if someone else stepped up, my hesitation would be confirmed.
After receiving no updates within a couple days, I knew I needed to contact the City Coordinator. I asked her if anyone had stepped up. She replied, “No. Why????”
“I think I’m supposed to step up.”
After sharing and praying, I shifted roles on the event team. I was so thankful for the preparation the woman who preceded me had done. I wouldn’t have stepped into the Prayer Team Coordinator role in the beginning of the team-building process for a variety of reasons. I wasn’t ready. She felt bad about stepping aside, but she played an important role of preparation. Plus, the very things said on the conference call that spurred me to step up were the same things she heard that spurred her to step down.
God knew.
God knows.
How is God using your today to prepare and purpose your tomorrow?
(Be certain you don’t miss a single story of God’s preparation shared this month and enter your email address in the “Sign Up Today” field to deliver new posts into your inbox.)
I like today’s post. I have really felt that God has been preparing me for being a stronger women of faith, wife, mother, mother-in-law and especially grandma. The almost 2 years that part of our family have been abroad have been very difficult to say the least. There have been many times when we have had to pray, console, mentor, encourage, etc. from thousands of miles away. In the times between I had long talks with God and tried to listen to how to be here for them. There were many time all I could say to a situation was “why?” Now that they are headed back to the USA, I feel much more prepared to be the grandma (and all the other titles) that I need to be. I know I still have much preparation spirtually, emotionally and especially physically to be the best I can be for them. I know I will be parterning with God a lot more in the weeks to come. I look back over these two years and see how much we have all grown in our relationships and marriages.I also can see some answers to my “why’s”. I am thankful that each day prepares me to be a better person, if I just remember to talk to God, read His word and listen.
I’m so excited for you, Julie! And I’m excited to see how God works in the coming months in your life! 🙂
Thanks, me too. He is SO amazing. Definately teaching me patience, endurance, preparation and to lean on Him!
I know the preparation god would have me doing even though I don’t know what He is preparing me for. Now if I would just be faithful daily to do it. God bless you Susan.
Thanks. 🙂
What a word PREPARATION.
It is amazing how GOD gives us a word for us to move forward in HIM. Just a word can lead everyone of us on different paths.
I’ve had a couple of words given to me a few years back ROCKET LAUNCHER. This has stuck with me. The Lord has been plugging it in my life ever since. I had ask the Lord about it recently, His reply was you are to launch things out like a rocket and let others take over the task and move aside and begin a new one. Now this was hard for me to start letting go of something I had started. But I am and every time I do or don’t want to let it go. I hear ROCKET LAUNCHER and I know I was created to make way for others to move in to their place. To be honest their are many times I don’t want to step out of my comfort zone. But when I do the peace that comes with it is over whelming.
Jeremiah 29:11 says: I know the plans I have for you,” declares The Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. NLV
I can trust in The Lord Jehovah!
PREPARATION is getting ready.
Thank you for sharing Pure Purpose.
Rocket Launcher😊
Love the phrase “Rocket Launcher”! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Pretty amazing God we have. Your theme of Preparation is so timely in my life right now. I am currently in the middle of leading a bible study on Lysa TerKeurst’s “What Happens When Women Say Yes to God”. I have a group of 11 women meeting in my home each week ready and willing to say YES to whatever God asks of them each day not knowing what that might be. Thank you for all the encouraging posts you bring to my inbox every day.
Isn’t God’s timing amazing?! Fantastic study. Dig in and enjoy!
A great reflective question that really reminds me that my right now is about learning. I humbled to know I will be learning all my life but being teachable is where I am at right now – literally. I just wrapped up my associates degree in psychology and will be transitioning into another campus for my bachelors degree. This entails not only a new schedule but a new full time job to accomadate this imperative education for where God needs me “tomorrow”.
My “right now” is all to Gods glory – being a highschool drop out after being sexually assualted I was pretty conetent on living in my yesterdays. For me it gave permission to get in an abusive relationship, become a meth addict, and squander my gifts God gave me. I wasn’t ready to become accoutable to the talents He gifted me and my life could have continued on for years in my yesterdays.
It wasn’t until I acknowledged that empty missing piece inside that the abuse, drugs and depression couldn’t fill that I saw what Gods plans were for my “tomorrow” were. I accepted Jesus into my life and in 36 months (Only He can do a transformation like this!) I have uncovered the gifts and treasures He placed in me – and how awesome is it discovering Gods potential! He helped me leave the abusive relationship and replaced it with supportive encouraging Godly women. He helped me leave the drug culture and overcome the addiction to meth to open so many more opportunities. He helped a highschool drop out get a diploma and continue on to college being a single mother of two little girls. He inspired me to graudate with my associates degree in a field where all my yesterdays are imperative to helping other women with “today”.
This is where my “today” is 🙂 and it is a progression of ” transforming todays” that God gives for my tomorrow! I am humbled to serve such a transforming inspiring teacher. In looking at where God has me today for my tomorrow? He has me in the palm of His hand leading, guiding, changing, encouraging, molding me right where He needs me today! I know I am right where I need to be 🙂
Praise God for transforming todays!
Love this! Love your word and love that you shared your story! Loving my front row seat watching God work in and through you as your pour so much of not only yourself into others but Jesus too! I know this because I am blessed to be on the receiving end of both! Love ya & thanks for all you do!
🙂
I am always encouraged by your ministry posts. Thank you for continuing to let the Lord lead you in your ministry. Will look forward to Living Proof Live in Springfield! It will be life changing and we girls here in Litchfield Illinois are praying for the event. Be blessed today. Kim Doolin
Blessings, Kim!
I am so thankful for your postings. i read them each one and sometimes they hit home for what I needed that day and sometimes maybe weeks later I am going through something and some of your words come back to me to uplfit me and help me stay strong for God. I am at at time in my life that I don’t know what God is preparing me for. There have been some things that have happened in our church that we just don’t agree with because I feel like they are concretrating on making the church bigger and better than on winning the lost and helping support the missionionaries. I feel like the church has lost its passion for lost souls. So my husband and I decided that maybe it was time we left this church and found another. A couple times we have told each other this is our last Sunday here, then the minister preaches a sermon or something happens that makes us think we are to stay planted here. so we are praying asking God to show us if we should leave or stay and what His will is for our lives. Maybe he is preparing us for something down the road. I know that God has a plan for our lives and right now He hasn’t seen fit to share that with us, so we are left praying and seeking His will.
I love Beth Moore, I have been to her last 4 Living Proof conferences through a simulcast at my sister in laws church. Our Bible study group at church right now is doing the study on the book of Daniel and boy is it a hard one. I love to hear Beth because she brings out God’s Word and she is so passinate about it. She makes me want to study God’s Word so that I can learn what she is talking about. I study about an hour each day and some days I walk away feeling uplifted and encouraged and somedays I come away from my study, thinking, “now what did I just study?”. I know that whatever it is I want to be prepared when God calls me, either into a ministry or when he calls me home. Either way I want to be prepared.
Thanks, Betty! Please keep in touch. God IS preparing you…even when you can’t see it. Trust and obey. There’s no other way! 🙂