Joyful & Triumphant!

It's that time of year to reflect upon the past 12 months and look forward with eagerness and anticipation to the New Year ahead!  Traditionally, we also make those "so very difficult to keep" New Year's resolutions….  What resolutions are you making?

For me, I'm keeping it pretty simple this year ~

• Develop "a heart of thanksgiving."  Find things in each day to be thankful for, even if it's that I'm still breathing or made it through another day.  Posting this daily on my Facebook page.  I'm on day 61 today. Life changing. 
• Spending time daily in growing my faith.  I am a believer in Jesus Christ.  The more I learn in God's Word, the more challenges and trials I go through, the more time spent in prayer, the more God helps me learn and grow and let go, the more I love others as He has loved me - my faith grows. It's a wondrous and amazing gift daily.
• Perspective.  It changes everything.  Learning more about perspective every day.
• People.  Family and friends and neighbors and strangers.  Being available to God for He blesses me to be a blessing to others.  My Heavenly Father is in the people business.  (Re)committing my life to supporting the family business full time.
• Health and healing.  Daily exercise, better eating, herb learning. 
• Joy Bell Farm.  We have encountered some big obstacles, given away much and are not currently farming (on any level), but we are determined to follow our dreams and trust that God can and will provide.  His timing.  His plan.  We are not giving up!  Continuing farm education, as we wait.  And, helping others when I can.
• Joyful & Triumphant!  Living this out daily.  Definition:  feeling, expressing or causing great pleasure and happiness AND victorious; conquering.  Amen and amen.  

Over the past few days, God has been speaking into our spirits:

God Calling:  December 26:  Health and Wealth ~

Be not afraid, health and wealth are coming to you both.  My wealth which is sufficiency for your needs, and for My work you long to do.

Money, as some call wealth, to hoard, to display, you know is not for My disciples.

Journey through this world simply seeking the means to do My Will and work.  Never keep anything you are not using.  Remember all I give you will be Mine, only given to you to use.  Could you think of Me hoarding My Treasures?  You must never do it.  Rely on Me.

To store for the future is to fear and to doubt Me.  Check every doubt of Me at once.  Live in the Joy of My constant Presence.  Yield every moment to Me.  Perform every task, however humble, as at My gentle bidding, and for Me, for love of Me.  So live, so love, so  work.  

You are the Apostles of the Little Services.

God Calling:  December 27:  Glorious Work ~

I have stripped you of much, that it should be truly a life of well-being.  Build up stone by stone upon a firm foundation, and that Rock is your Master - that Rock is Christ.

A life of discipline and of joyous fulfillment is to be yours… Never lose sight of the glorious work to which you have been called.

Let no riches, no ease entice you from the path of miracle-working with Me upon which your feet are set.  Love and laugh.  Trust and pray.  Ride on now in a loving humility to victory.

God Calling:  December 29:  Work and Prayer ~

Work and prayer represent the two forces that will ensure your success.  Your work and My work.

For prayer, believing prayer, is based on the certainty that I Am working for you and with you and in you. 

Go forward gladly and unafraid, I Am with you.  With men your task may be impossible, but with God all things are possible.

God Calling:  December 31:  Jesus the Conqueror ~

Jesus.  That is the Name by which you conquer.  Jesus. Not as cringing suppliants but as those recognizing a friend, say My Name - Jesus.  "Thou shall call His Name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins."

And in that word "sins" read not only vice and degradation, but doubts, fears, tempers, despondencies, impatience, lack of Love in big and little things.  Jesus.  "He shall save His people from their sins."  The very uttering of the Name lifts the soul away from petty valley irritations to mountain heights.

"He shall save His people from their sins."  Saviour and Friend, Joy-bringer and Rescuer, Leader and Guide - Jesus.  Do you need delivering from cowardice, from adverse circumstances, from poverty, from failure, from weakness?

"There is none other Name….whereby you can be saved" - Jesus.  Say it often.  Claim the Power it brings.

So now dear friends and family, many thoughts run through my mind.  So much I desire to say, but I shall say nothing more…. for now.

My encouragement to you:  take time to reflect on the past year, the new year arriving and the words shared.  What does God desire to do in you?  Your life?  Through you?  May we all be:

Happy New Year and abundant blessings in 2014!