This is the road I walk almost every day, one of my favorite pathways, just around the bend from my house and looks toward the mountains. You will see this from different perspectives many times in my blog.
I love pathway scenes. I have taken hundreds of pathway photos in the last years. It seems there is such promise in them. A new adventure might be just around the corner. There is promise ahead and possibility. There are opportunities for more love, friendships, things to learn, places to visit, books to read, ideas to stimulate, events to celebrate, family times to enjoy. I look at God as a possibility maker and often get a little bit giddy just thinking about it.
Probably since I became a believer, I embraced verses that spoke to my heart of God's plans for me. From studying scripture, I began to develop a conviction that my life was not just random, but that God had created me purpose in mind. That meant my days and my years had meaning, significance. Verses like these became my favorite:
"For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11
Even as God spoke to Israel, the principles of HIs commitment to His children was the same for me--God has plans for my welfare. I can have a future with a hope because He is good and He is my Father.
"But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, That shines brighter and brighter until the full day." Proverbs 4: 18
If I walk with God, my pathway will shine more brightly each year, I will follow Him and He will lead me, show me his will, increase my understanding. My path of life will get brighter and brighter. And so it has--each year has brought more understanding, more wisdom, more humility, more grace to love others, more space in my heart to be patient and to cultivate faith.
" I pray that the eyes of your heart [x]may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe." Ephesians 1:18
Inside, where my hearts sees the reality of life, I can find hope in His calling, the eternal riches he has stored up for me, his saint, and the personal and real greatness He will show me as I walk with Him in faith, and choose to believe.
"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." Ephesians 2: 10
Amazing to see that my personality, my strengths and weaknesses, my story were crafted by God and in Christ, with works that He wanted me to accomplish in my lifetime. I actually have a part in His story and He prepared these works for me to journey in, to discover on my path, to walk in.
And so, by God's grace, I have walked into each year with an expectancy of the plans he had for me and ways of faith that He wanted me to discover. This deeply seated belief has led me to see HIs fingerprints all over my life. It has helped me to believe that finding His will was not all up to me alone as some kind of mysterious plan to follow, but that He would guide and grant ideas within the strengths and gifts of my own unique personality.
And when hard times came, many times, I could trust that somehow, because He was on the path with me, that there would be significance and meaning, even in the dark, and lessons for me to learn.
And so I see pathways with all sorts of possibilities.
The next 10 weeks, I will be leading all of us through a podcast series based on my book, Own Your Life and the Bible study guide and planner. It is my hope that this series will remind all of us about the ways God desires each of us to find our place in His story, meaning through our every day and the way to live life in such a way that we can follow along His path of love, purpose and fruitfulness that will last for eternity.
I will be discussing the vision of life as well as the details of life that happen every day. Join me and I hope it will be of great encouragement.
