New Year, New Thoughts

I am so excited about what God has in store for this new year!  2011 was a great year for learning about God.   He proved himself faithful to my physical family with healing and restoration.  He proved himself faithful to our spiritual family on the hill with new excitement, new energy, changed lives and financial blessings in the last three months.  What does He have in store for this year.

We had a great time of worship and teaching on "contentment" on Sunday.  Contentment is such a great concept and yet it may be one of the most difficult things to achieve in our current climate and culture.  God proves Himself so faithful and what do we seem to need ... "Just a Little Bit More".  I wonder why?  I have known the words of Phillipians 4:8-13 for a long time, but still struggle living it out.  Read these words from Paul as translated by Eugene Peterson in The Message,
^8-9Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies. ^10-14I'm glad in God, far happier than you would ever guess—happy that you're again showing such strong concern for me. Not that you ever quit praying and thinking about me. You just had no chance to show it. Actually, I don't have a sense of needing anything personally. I've learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I'm just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I've found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am. I don't mean that your help didn't mean a lot to me—it did. It was a beautiful thing that you came alongside me in my troubles.

I have a lot of hopes and dreams for myself, my family and my church ... but my biggest goal for right now is to be content with what God has in store for me and not to run ahead of the one who created and me and let His Son die for me.  What I deserved was hell, but God stepped in!  So my prayer for you is that you will dream big dreams, lift them up to God in prayer and then be content with His response.