Ever since I was a young girl, I have felt inspired to set goals. Some were reached, while others fell by the wayside. Some were self -serving and others were set to serve the Lord and others. As I matured as a believer, I learned to really seek the Lord in my goal planning. I would need to prepare my heart in order for it to be in the right place for planning. I want to be as close to His plan with my dreaming and mapping out and doing.
Throughout the years my prayer life has become stronger and stronger. I share this not because I want to gloat on my prayer skills, but to share that prayer is the key to my communication with my Lord. You can definitely gauge the temperature of my life by how consistently I am praying. I enjoy talking to the Lord and taking pause just to be with Him.
The co-mingling of praying with my goal planning has been the key to my being in His will. You can stake your claim on the fact that I have been out of His will far too many times in my lifetime. My life has graciously, come full circle several different times and in several different areas. Now, as I seek Him for guidance I never lose that awe factor when I know that He is guiding me.
Every November, I take some moments to reflect on the past year. With gratefulness, I journal as I see so vividly God’s presence and presents in my life. As I move towards my planning for the next year, I take in where I was and how far the Lord has brought me over the last year. I look at myself physically and health wise, spiritually and emotionally and financially. I look at my family life, our practical needs and wants. I reflect on my coaching practice and on my writing. I look closely at my company and ministry. I then pray for God’s leading over the coming year’s goals. When you ask the Lord for guidance, it is time to go quiet in order to hear Him. Often times He will give me a theme word to work on in all areas of my life… and He did exactly that in November of 2014 in preparation for 2015.
The word He gave me so clearly was PREPARE.
My immediate reaction was a bit of panic as PREPPING has a connotation of impending doom or disaster. As I looked at the different categories of my life, I quickly saw that preparation simply meant “responsible planning” and that seemed easy enough. But, because I didn’t know what God was calling me to responsibly plan for, that year’s goals took on an exciting and much needed faith walk which continues on even now.
Financially, David and I attended Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. It is our goal to live debt free. We do not drive the prettiest cars or have the latest and greatest of a lot of things we once found necessary, but we were prepared to put a sizable down on the property we now live on.
Company wise, we had some significant growth. It became easier to delegate certain tasks as quality women who were called to work in adoption, came on board to be part of our team. In doing so, I was prepared to hand off work and duties to free myself up to deal with the growth aspects of the company and some stuff I need to personally.
These are just a couple of examples of how being readily prepared blessed me. The theme surrounding PREPARATION continues on in my life. I recently learned the lesson of not prepping my garden before planting all my flowers. As a result, Bermuda grass has taken over everything. This garden was my sanctuary and now, it stresses me out. It is a complete do over. If you do not prepare for things, you will miss out on blessings or be forced to waste valuable time, money, energy and emotions in order to do it again – properly. Sometimes, this may not be too major a thing to deal with, and sometimes it could make all the difference in the world. I want to encourage you that if God has laid it upon your heart to make preparation in some area of your life, then take the necessary steps to do so. I remember my father telling me when I was a child, “If you are going to do something, do it right.” This is what PREPARING means to me – taking the time to plan it out and do it right.
Recently, our family completed a full blown emergency plan. If a catastrophe is to take place in our home, we have a plan. If an issue is to arise when we are away from each other, we have a plan. It eases my mind to know that in the midst of turmoil, we have set a plan and are at least prepared in some way.
Currently I am working on food preparation. Short term food preparation saves our family time and money. It also takes away a daily stress factor from me. Long term food preparation allows us to store things for future needs or in case of emergency. Either way, we are hopefully more prepared.
Being prepared is a gift that we give to ourselves.