Happy New Year Well Ministries Community!
God has great things in store!
As I was doing my year end review I ran across this journal entry. It really encouraged me. So I am just going to sit it right here without any edits and pray that it blesses you also. May it be a reminder as you lean into planning and preparing for what’s to come this year to stop and celebrate what God has done in and through you and remember He is faithful to complete it!
Lord, I woke up early this morning to the sound of your voice shaking my spirit. “Good work” you seemed to say over and over, “Good work”. As I write this now I feel maybe partly you were congratulating me on a job well done, which seems rather contradictory to what I feel like I’ve been producing lately. I have been trying to be more intentional about meeting you in quiet time but Lord you know I have been far from consistent. I try to pray everyday several times a day but my personal assessment of those sporadic bursts of prayer, that seem to come only in response to some random thought or temptation to worry, would hardly warrant a “Good work” from you in the wee hours of the morning.
But because I am learning to trust that “You’re thoughts are not like my thoughts and that maybe just maybe you meant it when you said you’re mercies are new every morning, I am just gonna go out on a limb and say thank you, I am going to give myself the permission to believe that obedience is really all that you require of me and that my desire and willingness to abide with you is really all that you need to produce the fruit that I so desperately wish I could see in my life. “ You have begun a good work and it is you who is faithful to complete it in me. You!
Again I am getting that just right now as I write this out, but this morning when I heard the words, they felt like a reminder that work, itself, indeed was good. Somehow I just knew you were saying to me that the work you were calling me to was indeed a good work. I am reminded of the creation story and how you sealed every day of work with a stamp of approval. Maybe I am reading too much into this but I just get the sense that it was good because you perceived it to be good. You had nothing to compare it to. Nothing for it to be better or worse than. This was the beginning and there was no one around to give an opinion or approval and it didn’t matter. You had done the work you set out to do and because of that it was good. With or without a final product the actual effort of doing the work in itself was good. You produced the heavens and the earth and all of mankind and because they are all a reflection of you and because you are good, they are all good. Plain and simple.
I am challenged by this. If my work is a reflection of who I am and who you are in me, why do I have such a struggle with calling it good? Why do I struggle to be pleased with my random bursts of sporadic prayer that occur throughout the day? I would surely have no problem condemning myself if they were instead random bursts of profanity. Why is it such a struggle to identify with the good you see in me? What does that say about how I see myself?
Lord, help me change my perspective and see the way you see.
Today, as an act of my will, I choose to agree that I am good because you are good. I choose to believe that I am good just because you said I am. I choose to step away from this laptop and look down at these words and say very good Sherika very good. Why? Because they are my words placed on my heart by my God, And I am good! And my God is good!
So I choose to look at myself in the mirror and say today, “Very good, honey, very good!”
I don’t know all that you have planned for me to do today or even how much of it I will actually accomplish but what I do know is this, you are doing a good work in me and today that is something I choose to be proud of!!
Well Words 