So many people start off the new year by setting goals. Whether it’s a weight goal, a financial goal, or a business goal, we all have goals in mind, right?
But my sister sent me a picture the other day of a woman we both follow on Instagram named Lindsay Matway (she’s an influencer who has done well at a young age.) She typically does a Vision board each year and posts it. Ya know, one those boards that you make and you cut out pictures from magazines to visualize your goals? But instead this year, she held up her vision board and the only thing it said was “God’s Vision.” That was her goal. It was pretty powerful considering that every year I’ve seen this business woman set massive business goals on her vision board and attain them.
It was powerful to me because the board that usually held so many freshly and worldly desires, now held a spiritual desire. It let go of everything SHE wanted and handed it all over to what GOD wanted for her.
This is not an easy thing to do for anyone. But especially for someone who knows that they have literally envisioned a mansion and the next year it was theirs. I mean, that is this girls story!
I say all that because this year I started this YouTube channel with one goal in mind: Making God a part of everything. From clothes, to home, to kids, to marriage… all of it! And when I sat down on January 1st to make my “word of the year,” God was so clear that mine wasn’t a word. It was a phrase. And it’s this: “Remain in Me.” He repeated the words so many times. First, in my Bible as I was reading. Then when I watched a sermon. When I prayed. It was constant. That was where my focus needed to be and I was super excited about it.
I thought: Yes God! If I just remain in You, You will prune me and make me fruitful.
John 15:4 says “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. … “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
I knew that everything I attained without God really meant nothing. I’ve experienced that. Sure, it gave me short term happiness, but that’s about it. I know though that thus far, everything I’ve experienced with God, have been the things that have had impact. I don’t mean little impact, I mean like kingdom impact. Where what I’ve attained with God changes not just my own life but the lives of many. And that’s the kind of impact God wants to make through me and YOU!
So seeing that picture my sent me just a few days after God giving me my goal to “remain in Him”, it was like a sweet wink from heaven.
Guys, we must give up our fleshly desires because the impact that we can have outside of those are so much bigger. They are more rewarding and they have eternal satisfaction as opposed to temporary happiness.
So this year as we think of our goals, let’s make sure we ask God if that’s what he wants for us. I pray that everything we do this year whether as moms, a wives, girlfriends, friends, business women etc.. that we do it with a kingdom mindset.
P.S. One more encouragement: one of the biggest things we learned in 2020 was that we are not in control. There were so many goals set that could not be accomplished, yet again reminding us that not everything is in our hands. So when we ask God what path He wants us to take, the circumstances in the world have no effect on the goals God gives us.
XOXO,
Jill Rohrbaugh
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