A One Word Resolution - Just A Thought #50

Compassion sent a challenge out to their bloggers this week to seek the Lord for a word for 2012 instead of making a New Years Resolution.

Literally, ONE word.

If the Lord was to give us one word for 2012 what would it be?

I knew mine before I was even sent the email from Compassion. The Lord gave me that word a few weeks ago...and it began with a dream! Actually, it began in January of 2011!

2011 has not been a good year at work. Staff went out with injuries and illness, clients were--how shall I say it--not on their best behavior, and things just seemed to snowball from there. At home my son broke his leg and shortly after he was back to good health, my daughter broke her arm! Not to mention my own health issues this year and some stressful church issues. I thought I was going to end 2011 in the fetal position, sucking my thumb and waiting for the bad things to go away!

Then I had the dream. It began with a tornado off in the distance. It looked so far away that my wife and I decided it was no threat and we went to sleep. We awoke to sirens blaring and when we looked out the door, we were in the eye of a tornado! We never felt it hit us, but once we woke to what was going on, the destruction was all around us. We began praying for safety and praying for the tornado to stop. The more we prayed, the smaller the tornado became. Finally, the tornado vanished and we saw clear skies everywhere.

I feel like my word is the one God gave me when I awoke from this dream! PRAYER.

I have been chewing on this for weeks and praying harder than I have in some time. I feel like the storms are shrinking...though they are not completely gone yet. So I will keep praying. Funny (scary) thing is, prayer has always been the area I have felt the weakest in my walk with the Lord. So this journey will be interesting, but I look forward to 2012 and all that God has planned for me. I am holding on to this word (prayer) and the Scripture God has been speaking to me all through the fall, "Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10)

I know that prayer does not always make the bad things disappear, but it does give us peace in the midst of the storm.

Prayer and the Word. Yeah I look forward to 2012!

So what is God speaking to you for the New Year?