Repurpose what’s already been done before, but with a new beginning. As I write this, I’m thinking about design elements of my renewed website. After many years of maintaining a website, and neglecting it for the past few years, I am now embracing blogging once again. The pandemic has brought life almost to a standstill with on and off lockdowns and restrictions for the past 10 months. And as of today our province shutdown with stay-at-home order. But one thing it cannot do is stop me from writing. Or rediscovering my renewed purpose, and renewing my faith in God and humanity.
We all need encouragement more than ever before. Afterall, this new normal is abnormal and detrimental to our wellbeing in so many ways unless we seek God in it. If there is a silver lining in all of this, it’s that Christians have more time to seek God more than ever before through prayer and His Word.
But an absolute truth has not changed is that God will never leave us. His promises are true. He loves us with an everlasting love.
A quote I read somewhere.
You can’t go back and change the beginning but you can start where you are and change the ending.
Dream it
A new decade on the calendar. And my 70s decade just began at the end of 2020. We’ve turned the corner into a new decade under dire circumstances. Covid-19 virus spreading all around the world like a plague, political unrest, business disasters, violent protests, killings, etc. But we don’t need to lose hope, but embrace a new beginning. I’m embarking on a very personal blog about living our purpose. I’m finding out that it’s never too late to start something new. Perhaps a creative idea will come into your thoughts but you may think it’s impossible. It’s never too late dream of that idea you had stuffed away somewhere in the back of your mind. Ask the Lord to bring dreams to your remembrance.
Look forward into the new
During this pandemic I, like many of you probably, did some decluttering or photo cataloging. Sorting, discarding and organizing thousands of photos that had moved with us from house to house and city to city was no small task. And the old disorganized albums! And then the pailfuls of duplicates and unfocussed photos to be shredded. Remembering the old is not a bad idea but if you keep looking back, life will not go forward into the new. As this tumultuous decade started none of us had any idea what the world would face and how our lives would be impacted. Everyone experienced it in some way or another. Some at a smaller scale but others had greater difficulties. The loss of lives and livelihood due to the virus, and the effect of all of this has been the biggest tragedy so far.
But here we are at the beginning of 2021. And Covid-19 is still with us!
Some of the prophetic voices are saying that we are entering a new era in the church, and all is not lost as God is still on the throne. Changes will come. But it’s all for the glory of God. And the dividing line will be that as believers in Christ we have the choice to seek Him with all our heart or lay back in fear of what will become of our world. We don’t need to fear but that there will be new visions and dreams given to those who have an ear to hear.
Open doors of opportunities await us. Spreading the gospel through social media. Meeting virtually. Connecting worldwide has never been easier. On Christmas Day, our extended family met together virtually from 3 different countries and 3 different provinces!
A dream collision
I don’t usually listen to a lot of podcasts but just as I was literally writing this, I felt led to listen to this minister of the gospel speak about a dream she had a month ago. This confirmed what I had been feeling about the renewed purpose of my writing. She talked about a vision. A dream collision. A human shape covered the world. A bright comet-like form dropped from heaven and filled the universe. She went on to explain that out of God’s presence we will get in touch with dreams in our heart that are congruent with God’s heart. His purpose will be in us. Supernaturally we will know when it’s God if we seek his presence, pray and read his Word. Our dream will collide with God’s purpose for us and it will bring fruit. What’s on God’s heart will be the same as in our heart. As an example of connecting to dreams this minister’s own life was ignited. She had a new vision to get involved in human trafficking, something she had not thought of before.
Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires. Psalm 37:4 (NLT)
The verse encourages us to seek the Lord. And especially in these circumstances in right now it is more important than ever before. Let’s desire God’s plans and keep up with our mental, emotional, relational and physical self-care. Take care to cast your cares. On the Lord.