For the last decade I’ve enjoyed choosing a word for the year instead of making New Year’s resolutions – amazing to think it’s been that many years. I’ve blogged about this topic a bit over the years if you’d like to read more, including how to discern your word with God.
I haven’t yet settled on my word for 2024. I think it will have a “re” at the beginning – some of the words I’m playing with are renew, restore, rejuvenate, recover, rejoice. My word last year was “renew” – I’m wondering about renewing renew as my word, as a friend commented! Shifting the narrative from having failed at the word in 2023 to renewing its place in my life. Hmm.
I’d love to hear your word, if you have one and feel able to share.
It’s a perennial question, and one that I explore in 7 Ways to Pray, my book coming out this autumn. Yesterday I had a delightful little experience of hearing God that helps in pondering how God speaks to his children.
Yesterday was a bit of a mess—and today will be too, I fear. I woke this morning and looked over to the clock but it wasn’t lit up, meaning that half of the house is without electricity. Including the hot water and heat (please do pray that we can get an electrician in to sort it out today!). Yesterday the electrics went out yesterday twice, and both times the desktop computer I was using died (but thankfully I didn’t lose too much work). Of course the wifi router is plugged into the half of the house shrouded in darkness. Then last night one of the kids’ beds broke, so we had to disassemble it and put the guest bed in there until we can get another one.
The hassles of life, right? We all know and experience them. But the timing for these hassles isn’t great as I need to submit the rewrites on my two books this week and next.
So in the backdrop of these distractions and the kids trying to stream online school with wifi that was going out and me being on a couple of video calls and also trying to make lots of progress on the rewriting, I wasn’t anticipating receiving from God my word for the year (a spiritual practice I write about here). But that’s what happened, to my delight. Hearing God can take us by surprise—we don’t control the experience but when we keep our ears and hearts open to God, we put ourselves in a position to receive.
I had an article published with Our Daily Bread yesterday, and thus was interacting on their website with the comments about the article. One of the comments was this:
My daughter felt God leading her to get a tattoo of the word ABIDE. The woman doing the tattoo asked what that meant and she was able to tell her redemption story! May Your children all abide in You, Lord. Let us tell Your story of love and grace! Amen.
As I replied I had a flash of insight:
Abide is such a good word. We abide in Christ; we abide in His word. Hmmm… thank you! Maybe this is to be my word for the year! I’m going to pray about that!
I asked God for confirmation, but I also sensed within a quick yes, abide is my word for 2021. It was a deep feeling of knowing that this was God’s answer. I hadn’t set out to hear God on this yesterday; it was his gift of love. But since the beginning of the year I have been expectant, wondering when God might answer my desire.
How do you communicate with God? Does my experience resonate with you?
One of the chapters in 7 Ways to Pray explores hearing God. I will be sharing more about the release of this book in my monthly newsletter. To receive it, click here.
We’re still enjoying our Christmas decorations during this season of Christmas. Are you? Painting by Leo Boucher. Used with permission; all rights reserved.
We have reached the final day of 2018. Many people will be grateful to leave behind this year with its acrimony, fear, tragedy, disappointment, and divisiveness. May we find greater unity and joy in 2019.
In the middle of this Christmas season of celebration, and battling a head cold, I lost track of the days and realized with a jolt that today was New Year’s Eve – and the end of 2018. In my blocked-up state I’ve been pondering a bit about my word for 2019 (#myoneword).
Some years ago I joined this movement that embraces a word
for the year instead of making a lot of resolutions that are forgotten after a
few weeks. Keeping one word before us – through a visual representation or a
reminder on our phone – can help us to stay focused on a word that helps us to
live as we wish with God. I usually choose a verse from Scripture to accompany
the word as well.
I’ve blogged about #myoneword previously – you can find all of the posts here. One post that might be helpful is how to hear God on your word for the year. My review of the book that started it all off, My One Word, is here.
The first year I tried out this practice I chose flourish, with Isaiah 55:10–11 as the verses:
As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
I loved the idea of this word and all of its richness, but for
many months forgot about the practice. But in the late spring I remembered it,
and printed out some reminders of the word to keep it before me. As I was more intentional
about praying about how with God I could flourish, I started to get excited
about the possibilities. I saw the word as a promise from God – one that I
could forget and ignore, or one that I could embrace as I joined my hands in
his.
Other words have been train, with the
accompanying verse 2
Timothy 3:16 (about Scripture being God-breathed and useful for
training in righteousness); breathe, which
spoke to me about rest and breathing in the Spirit of God; present, with the lovely meanings of God’s presence, receiving the
present of God’s presence, and the need for me to stay present and in the
moment; and in 2018, replenish, with
the emphasis on resting and rejuvenating after a very busy couple of years.
As I mentioned above, I haven’t yet discerned what my word
will be for 2019. I need to set aside some time to think and pray about this – including
going for a walk, which I find is a wonderful way to ponder and pray and enjoy
creation.
How about you? Do you choose a word for the year? If so, how has the practice helped you? Do you have a word for 2019?
I enjoyed a replenishing time on retreat in February with the Sheldon community in Devon with walks in the countryside and time to try out a new type of writing. This quotation from Jeremiah 31:25.
My word for the year (#myoneword) has been replenish, which I chose following the exhaustion of writing books and completing an MA in Christian spirituality over a compressed period of time. This year has been for rest, but as we reach the end of it I wonder if I’ve fulfilled my creative hopes that bring life to my soul and refill the well. I’m not sure that I have, but perhaps I started at a very low deficit, being so tired that at times I felt that all I could do was binge-watch a television series. I would cycle between this kind of collapse and then scurrying to finish off my regular deadlines, such as my monthly articles for OurDaily Bread and running the Woman Alive book club, as well as writing other Bible reading notes, such as Inspiring Women Every Day.
But finally, in this last month of the year, I feel I have more energy for the creative projects that I love pursuing. To make way for them, however, I seem to need to declutter some of the gathered stuff that I didn’t sort out when I was so focused on writing and academic study. I have many more areas of the house to attack, but I’m pleased when I can attend to one, such as the weekend’s job of sorting through the computer table.
Okay, so we still have a lot of papers to sort through on the top shelf…
I really should have taken a “before” photo, for this large wooden-box-on-stilts was filled to the brim with stuff—Christmas boxes, papers galore, and an old computer that needed dumping. I’m thrilled to have it cleaned out. Now the working computer has a new home, releasing the dining-room table from its temporary captivity under said computer, and our daughter has a new workplace for the increased amount of homework she has with secondary school. Do you need to clear out before you can create?
I like being able to close the doors to the clutter!
I still have a long list of books to read, creative projects to make, and even Christmas cookies to start baking. But instead of seeing all of the things undone, I can rest in what I have been able to do, giving thanks for that clean dining-room table and tidy home for the computer. In a small way, this approach echoes the way we can embrace the incomplete nature the #myoneword experience over a year. I’m guessing that we probably will not have reached a perfect state of contentment with our progress on the particular word, but we may be farther along than we anticipated.
And so as you come to the end of 2018, might you take some time to consider how you’ve grown or where you’ve stagnated, particularly in the area related to your word for the year, if you’ve chosen one? As we reflect on how God has moved in and through us, we can give thanks for his grace in our lives.
Over to you: Did you choose a word for 2018? If so, what was it, and how did having that word before you shape you over the months?
This January, I’ve read many blogs on the #MyOneWord phenomenon, and I even wrote one about how to discern God’s voice in choosing a word. But I haven’t yet shared my word for the year, because at first it feels so fragile and tender. I’m still testing it out with God, waiting to hear any whiff of confirmation.
But as we’re now almost halfway through the month, I will share, especially as my word fits beautifully with the graphic above that my fabulous publisher put together for me (and another one I will share later in the year). That quotation comes from from the Parallel Lives chapter in Finding Myself in Britain, from an email I wrote to Jo Saxton, a Nigerian Brit who lives in Minnesota, when we were swapping homes and I was sitting on her comfy couch in the basement while the rest of the family slept (ah, jetlag).
Can you guess my word? It felt a bit of an odd one when it popped up into my mind, but as I’ve been sitting with it, I think it’s right.
No doubt meanings will emerge over the year, but the obvious one for me right now hints at being present, as I write above about the sacrament of the present moment. When I’m with my family and tempted to whip out my phone, for instance, I remind myself, “present,” that instead I should be living in the moment and relishing the gifts in front of me.
I have some idea of other shades of meaning, but they are whisps just now so I will leave them there.
How about you? Did you choose a word for the year? What spiritual practices do you employ to keep your attention present?
Have you chosen a word for 2016 yet? Or to be more precise, has a word chosen you? (See here for background on this movement; I also write about this practice and my New Year’s spiritual traditions in Finding Myself in Britain.)
When I’ve mentioned this practice of holding one word before ourselves for a year, the question often posed to me is, “How do you know what word to choose?” with the subtext of, “How can I hear from God?”
Eli and Samuel, from the well-known story in the Old Testament about Samuel hearing God while in the temple. The Lord was speaking, but Samuel didn’t know it was him. Painting by John Singleton Copley.
Huge topic, with many a book written on it – I like Dallas Willard’s Hearing God and Leanne Payne’s Listening Prayer in particular, but Bill Hybels’s The Power of a Whisper is good too, and Pete Greig’s God on Mute is the best book on unanswered prayer. Here’s a story I told about hearing God – a couple decades into my quest to communicate with our Creator, I’m still learning.
So in the case of hearing from God when choosing a word for the year, how can we know? What can we do? Here are some short pointers from my experience, but know that hearing God is an individual thing, and what works for one person may feel like a deadend for another.
Ask
It’s obvious, but sometimes we forget to do the first thing. Quiet yourself and specifically ask God to give you a word for the year. He loves to communicate with his children, so we shouldn’t therefore be surprised when we do hear from him. He also loves for us to voice our desires.
Wait
God is God and we are not – which means we can’t demand an answer right now like a petulant child and expect him to jump to it. (Sometimes he does respond to our demands, of course, just as sometimes parents out of love give an answer right away to children-with-attitudes.) Waiting teaches us humility and patience.
Expect
Trusting that God will speak to us helps as we wait, and keeping an expectant disposition also keeps us alert – watching, noticing, hoping. Having a posture of receiving opens us up to God’s word for us.
Receive
We might be reading Scripture when a word pops out to us that we can’t ignore, or perhaps we experience a few days of the same concept coming up again and again – ever had that? A lyric from a song might loop through our minds without stopping. We might sense a whisper from the Lord, that still, small voice that through time we recognize as God’s.
Test
A key part in the process is to hold your word once you think you have it, testing it out to see if the Lord confirms it. Often I have a sense that what I’ve chosen is right – I don’t have a clear, “Yes, Amy, this is your word for the year” kind of a revelation. Talking with trusted friends helps in the testing process as well.
But that’s my word for the year (see my other posts on this movement) – train, with the accompanying verse is 2 Timothy 3:16 (about Scripture being God-breathed and useful for training in righteousness). Not exactly the word I was looking for in January, but it kept popping up in my mind, demanding to be heard. Is that from you, Lord? Okay, I’ll accept your gifts. The gift of training. Um, is that really a gift?
Last year, in contrast, I had the rather lovely word flourish, with Isaiah 55:10-11 as the accompanying verse (about the word of God bringing about the flourishing of his people and earth). I don’t know about you, but flourish seems a rather more fun word than train.
For training seems like hard work, marathon or not. (Not.) Sacrifice and graft. Saying no, no, no. Focusing down. But how can we flourish if we don’t train? How can we become the people God wants us to be if we don’t curb our tongues (against false words or too much indulgence or…) or practice our skills or share our gifts?
I’m seeing more and more how flourish and train go hand in hand.
When I first sensed that train was my word for the year, I immediately applied it to my writing life. That first longed-for book, I thought, I’ll have to train to write it and get it done. But of course my vision is too small, and the word doesn’t apply just to that first book, but to the whole of life.
Nearing the finish line, the result of many hours of training.
Who can I become if I train my tongue? One who brings life or death?
Who can I become if I train my body? One fit, able to run the race, or one easily winded?
Who can I become if I train my mind? One who thinks and explores and delves into the riches of God’s wisdom and world or one who atrophies, settling on past revelations and understanding?
Who can I become if I train my emotions? One thrown by the latest wind or fashion or crisis, or one anchored in the truths of God and of his love?
Who can I become if I train my heart? One who loves or one who doesn’t? And not just my family, but can I love people online (that pesky irritant who keeps spamming me), the young mother struggling with feeding her babe, the older gentleman at church who finds walking difficult, the person next to me on the Tube, those whom I come into contact with professionally?
And so on, and so on.
How about you? What comes to mind when you think of the word train? (Thanks in advance to those who restrain from the cheeky responses about wheels and engines and Thomas the Tank Engine.)
Have you chosen a word for the year yet? This movement seems to be catching on, which doesn’t surprise me. It’s a simple but powerful idea (read my review of the book behind it here). One word is something we can remember and return to throughout the year. The word can inspire or encourage us; motivate and challenge us.
Some of my friends have been choosing their words: outward, recharge, joy, abundance. Rich words that speak to the individual’s creativity and circumstances. But me? Although I’ve been mulling over ideas, nothing has struck me yet. The page is blank.
I also like to choose a verse from Scripture for the year, and have been waiting to see if the Lord prompts one to me. Again, I’m not sure. One has come up two or three times, but it’s such an obvious verse that I’m questioning whether it’s actually the right one. Yep, I think I might be overthinking things…
But one beginning-of-the-year practice has borne fruit, as I’ve read through my 2013 spiritual journals and noted highlights from each month. My “word” for last year was flourish, and as I looked back over my journals – my conversations with God – I can see glimpses of growth, joy, peace, and contentment.
I love reading through journals because they instantly transport me back to the sights and smells of the moment. I had forgotten how leveled I was in February with flu, which took weeks for me to recover from. Or the times of waiting – one issue was before me five long weeks, during which I had to let go or go crazy (I finally let go). The journals also brought alive again our five-week trip to the States this summer, including our epic road trip. I relived the enriching conversations with friends and family from whom we are usually separated by a large body of water.
So as I wait for a word and a verse, I give thanks for God’s goodness in all the days of 2013. How about you? Have you chosen a word? Made resolutions? What do you hope for in 2014?
Are you a list person? Do this; do that; scratch it off your list. Lists can focus the mind, but sometimes we create lists to foster (or manufacture) spiritual growth. Change this; read that; be that person. And yet we aren’t made to respond to such dictates, as if we were robots. Love, rather than guilt, is a better inducer of change.
My One Word is a brilliant seemingly easy approach to spiritual growth, and a way to lose the lists and effect real change. Before God, choose one word for the year. The word will be “the lens through which you examine your heart and mind for an entire year” (p. 24). It will best reflect what you hope God will do in and through you. Say you choose trust. That’s the word you bring to mind when you receive the shattering news that you’ve lost your job. Or when you send off your teenage daughter on an overnight visit with her friend. Or when your grandson needs a medical procedure. Or when you move out of your comfort zone and visit the neighbour you suspect is hurting. Choosing one word becomes the way to change our outlook and behaviour, especially when we pray through it and seek it (or the principles behind it) in Scripture.
When I first read this book last January, I loved the idea. After praying for a few weeks, a word reverberated through my being: flourish, with a verse to go along with it: Isaiah 55:10–11 (“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it”). But I questioned that I got the word right. It seemed a bit cheeky to choose such a wonderful word. Yet I couldn’t get away from the idea that this was to be my word for the year.
But I didn’t put into place the many helpful suggestions the authors give about how we can own our word and incorporate it into our daily lives – I didn’t slap it on my computer monitor, for instance, or stick it up on the fridge. After a month or so I forgot about it. And only when I was leafing through my stacks of review books did I realize I’d let this drop. So a few months later, I started to follow through on my earlier good intentions. And as I look back at 2013, I do see flourishing and growth: the joy of friendships. The love of family. Stretching and enriching work. Finally joining a gym and loving group exercise. The close presence of God through it all.
What might your word be for the coming year? According to the authors, the ten most-chosen words are: trust, patience, love, discipline, focus, faith, surrender, peace, listen, and joy. All rich and wonderful words, but no doubt God will have just the right one for you.
I invite you to read this encouraging and often moving book and to join me in choosing just one word. May God transform our hearts and minds through the work of his Spirit.
My One Word: Change Your Life with Just One Word.Mike Ashcraft & Rachel Olsen (Zondervan, ISBN 978-0310318774)
