Strengthen what Remains...

Every day is a day of pondering for me, but I find myself often reflecting harder and deeper as the dusky sky gives way to inky blackness over the last days of a year. What have I done with the year God gave me? Is what I have done going to be something that lasts? Have I grown in my walk with Jesus? Have I walked in the design I am created to walk in?

The other day, I was going through some discouragement and the devil was trying to tell me that my prayers go unanswered. I was not ready to fall for that and in a surge of 'anti enemy' one evening, I decided to get out my journals from the past five years (there are 10. Guess I must have had alot to say, huh?!) and see what God has been up to. I was not prepared for the HUGE encouragement I found from the first month I read! So many answered prayers, so many positive things to reflect on, things that were a real struggle/burden at the time I wrote my supplications to God and today, I see the fruit of those prayers. I was thoroughly amazed and awed at the hand of God I saw as I read. With renewed zeal, fresh courage and great reverence to God, I rise to continue in the things which I have learned and to strengthen what remains.

I read this quote this morning that really inspired me:

"As we leave 2013, these words are echoing in my heart ... 

"Nothing is wasted. You work all things for good. Nothing is wasted. Your promise remains. Forever you remain. You are loving. You are wise. There is nothing in my life you cannot revive."

Last night, Francis Chan preached and as he said the words, " strengthen what remains and is about to die", tears fell. So much "hard" this past year in so many ways .... But He is what remains in us. Strengthen what remai...ns this upcoming year ....by more time in the Bible, more prayer and worship, and more gathering with the saints. Another friend once told me, "your distraction becomes your traction" (what slows you down). What needs to go this year? Do it. Strengthen what remains. I am talking to myself here too .... Some things need to go and/or change. 

Change comes through surrender and exchange. Will we trust him to do as He has promised?"

Strengthen what remains, my friends. Get up and move forward in the things that are yours to do. Be who you are created to be whether a daughter, wife, mother, sister in Christ, part of the Body of Christ. Don't sit around waiting for all to be perfect and 'right' in your life before you get up and be the change you wish to see in the world and before you rise up and be all that He created you to be. If you wait, it will never happen because nothing in this old, sinful world is perfect. And what a waste of a life that will have been.

Strengthen what remains. If it keeps you from being fully alive in Him, then get rid of it, whatever it is (love of the world, love of 'me', selfish ambitions, unfulfilled dreams that I pine away over, hurt that I keep from wrongs done against me because I keep reliving it instead of forgiving and letting it fade away, false teaching I have from books that I may be reading, you fill in the blanks...all the ones I listed are things I have had to deal with and throw out of my life so that I could keep going forward in HIM; I have not regretted anything I have exchanged for real LIFE...not once).

Strengthen what remains, He says in Revelation 3:2. The next verse tells us:

"Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, 

and hold fast, and repent. 

If therefore thou shalt not watch,

 I will come on thee as a thief,

 and thou shalt not know what hour I will come 

upon thee."

My times are in His hands.

 The shadows of the evening hours of time 

draw long over the lands. 

He is coming soon. Hallelujah! 

But oh, I want to strengthen what remains. 

I want to:

love Jesus more

cast my lot wholly and completely with Him

turn from anything that will not make 

me love Him more

listen for His voice and promptly follow

strengthen what remains

because I want Rev. 3:5 to be my story when 

it is all said and done:

"(S)He that overcometh,

 the same shall be clothed in white raiment;

 and I will not blot out h(er) name out of the book of life,

 but I will confess h(er) name before my Father,

 and before his angels."

Jesus is all the world to me.

I hope He is to you, too.

Happy 2014, dear friends.