The Year of Delight

The year 2014, Rest, was a challenging year!   It was my heart’s desire to get to a point of total trust in the Lord’s grace and love, resting in His provision, and it was exactly what the Lord provided.  I’m in total awe off the journey I’m with the Lord, since I started Naming the Years. 

In 2012 it was the Year of Eucharisteo. Through heartbreaking and joyful events the Lord taught me about thankfulness and walking in thankfulness.  

2013  was Grace… Wow, the Lord overshadowed me with His grace in situations I couldn’t possibly have imagined. 

Then in 2014 I longed to take the next step after experiencing the fruit of thankfulness and tasting the unconditional grace of God - I wanted to rest in Him. I thought with my knowledge of giving thanks in every situation and remembering how the Lord extended His grace, I would be able to enter true rest.

I knew it will be no easy road. From my previous two years’ experience, I knew that if this word - “Rest” - is from the Lord, He is going to take me on a journey that will teach me how to rest… I will have to prevail through some serious trials and tribulation. 

And so it happened within 6 weeks after I committed myself to “Rest”. Heidi-Mari and I was on our way to the USA middle July and I had to trust the Lord with all the logistics of making it happen. 

I had to rest in Him for finances; for taking care of my family, some small boys staying behind; our family business while I’m away for 19 days; Heidi-Mari and my health while in the USA; and most of all my daughter’s performance at the Archery World Championships and All Star Archery Championships.

During the exact time we were invited to the USA, CJ had to prepare and write his GED exam. 

We thought he had a couple of months to prepare, but due to circumstances he had to write within 5 weeks. I wish I could say I passed the test of resting in the Lord…. I didn’t.  It was once again the Lord’s grace that amazingly let CJ pass His GED exam in the high 90th percentile.  

By now Lord had set the stage for quite an amazing learning curve…  He had my full attention and I was living in the constant consciousness that the Lord is teaching me about rest.  While preparing for the USA, numerous miracles happened, but also a lot of heartache were experienced.  The Lord provided amazingly in certain areas, while things went wrong big time in other. I failed some serious tests of faith. So much so, that when I came back from the USA, end of July, I was filled with questions I never asked before.

Why would some of my prayers be answered beyond what I could ask for or imagine, and others not at all? I was working so hard in praying and doing all the right things. Pressing froward to trust the Lord and constantly reminding myself to rest.  But understanding true rest was still eluding me.

It was only in September, when I was at my wits end, that I was ready for God’s answer.  Christo received a book from a trusted friend and we were introduced to Andrew Womack ministries. Within weeks I read numerous of his books. I seldom finish a book, but this message was different. I finished every single one I picked up.  It changed my life dramatically and the truth set me free!  I received the truth about His grace, the truth of His love for me, the truth of His power in me through Faith!  I thought I have to earn the rest, but I came to understand the rest was already accomplished at Calvary and I only have to receive it.  

It is all about me receiving it!  God already gave it to me, but I wasn’t ‘there’ to receive it.  I had to renew my mind big time, and am still doing so daily! The results are amazing!  And I can through God’s grace proclaim, I came to know true rest in the Lord! I’m at the verge of trusting the Lord for big things!

And so by the 11th month of 2014, a peace settled in my heart.  The Name of my Year, REST, was an awesome learning experience and I’m in expectation for how the Lord is going to take it from here. 

So I started to pray about the Name of 2015… I knew it would expand on the previous names, so I started seeking the Lord to reveal it to me.  It was early one morning, while reading Psalm 37, my absolute favourite Psalm in the Bible, that the word jumped out from the pages… For days I was playing with the word in my mind… weighing it as it grew on me… 

This year will be the Year of Delight!  

It is my heart’s desire to delight myself in the Lord. I want to get rid of everything that entangles me in the world and my flesh, my thoughts and my shortsighted plans. I want to delight myself in the Lord and walk more in the Spirit.  But I also want to delight myself in my husband and my children, in homeschooling my children and playing with numbers when taking care of our business finances.  

I want to take thankfulness, experiencing His grace and receiving His rest, as experienced the past three years, to a next level - I have an awesome God, who loves me more than I can imagine. Who paid a price and accomplished everything I will ever need and I want to delight myself in that knowledge.  

In this year of 2015 I’m going to delight myself in the One who is Love, Grace and Rest.  Through Faith in His love, grace and rest, I’m going to please my God and get a little closer to His purpose for my life - bringing Him joy!

With love

Linnie

Ps. What is the name of your year? Please share in the comments below.

The Year of Rest

After experiencing the Lord mightily in 2013, especially in the context of the name of my Year 2013, I was in great anticipation for what He wanted me to call this coming year - 2014.  

I started Naming the Year in 2011, after reading Ann Voskamp’s blog, A Holy Experience. There is power, growth, blessing in giving a name to your year - allowing the Lord to make you focus on one truth for 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days. This through joy and memory making moments, as well as despairing and disappointing situations. 

2011 was the Year of Rebuilding Relationships. It was my first year. To say the truth, quite a wobbly year, and by December 2011, I wasn’t sure I had accomplished my goal. 

2012 was the Year of Eucharisteo - Being thankful! It was just after I read One Thousand Gifts. It changed my life, my perspective and my picture of God, tremendously! It was a difficult year - two more miscarriages, after 7 healthy babies in 14 years. You can do the math, it wasn’t like I had any problems in getting pregnant or keeping my babies! The Lord sustained me with Eucharisteo.

2013 was the Year of Charis - Grace.

One thing I knew while praying for the Lord’s guidance in the Name of this Year, was that I want to have more of Him… more of His amazing grace that will pull me towards loving Him more and serving Him more, trusting Him more, so I would toil less, wait on Him, let Him be God in my life.

For a week, days before Christmas I prayed day and night. Lord what was the name of 2014 to be?  It came to me the day after Christmas, but I only recognised it a few days later. Three times over a few days I ran into verses with the name and it was only after it was posted on my Facebook wall that it hit me! 

Twice in 48 hours I got the verses in Matthew 11:28

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Then I got Hosea 11:11 in the Knox translation:

“And in their own home, says the Lord, I will give them rest.”

Oh, the joy and peace - I just knew it was right - REST.

The Lord wants me to rest in Him in 2014. Wow, what a hope, expectation, what a promise.

The past 3 months I’m studying Hebrews. And all the time while I was seeking the Lord for a name of this year, I knew it will have to do with the powerful message of Hebrews. The message of growing in my faith, but also in trusting the Lord more and more, pleasing Him more and more with my faith. But the most important, I remembered from the very first verses, “Entering His Rest.”  Oh, how I long to enter His rest, even more so since I’ve experienced his grace so powerful in my life in 2013.

It was almost like mountains lifting off my shoulders. The knowing in this year my goal will be to rest in my Lord. How I’m looking forward to undergo Real-Life-Training in How to rest in the Lord!

When I look back at the passing year, 2013, and how the Lord taught me about His grace in my life, I’m in absolute awe.  Coming from a conservative church as a child, grace was almost…. cheap. Everything was grace. Then in my thirtieth year I came to know the wrath of the Lord, and how He hates sin. He took us through the dessert and He taught us about obedience. He showed us His truths and how He long for us to walk in His truths, throwing off everything that entangled us - sin.  I came to know the Lord as the Lion, and not only the Lamb I knew in my first 25years or so. 

But as in everything when you stumble upon a new truth, you can easily become off balance. I only focused on truth and obedience. I knew I couldn’t earn my salvation, but I was pretty sure I could earn blessings from the Lord through my obedience. And whenever things went wrong, I was convinced I brought if over myself with disobedience of some kind. 

Through counting the gifts in 2012, I gradually came to see a new grace. A totally different grace than what I came to know as a child in the conservative church. Through 2013’s Name, Charis - Grace, I wanted to know the true meaning of grace. I wanted to experience my Lord’s grace. It was beyond what I could ever have thought or asked… The Lord just overwhelmed me with His grace and wiped out all the distorted believes I had about grace. Through real life experiences, often hopeless and desperate situations, He personally taught me about His REAL grace. The grace that He demonstrated to me on the cross, while I was still in the depths of despair, become more real in every day situations of despair and hopelessness. Nothing I did in the past, will do in the future or does in the present, could validate the blessings I received from the Lord in the Year 2013.

It overwhelmed me, day after day, and it was all grace. The beauty of it all was, the more I received His grace, the more I was drawn to God, to His love and to love Him. To love Him for Whom He is, my Heavenly Father.

As I studied the scriptures on Rest the past two days, it was awesome to read the true meaning of “Anapavo” - Rest. 

It describes a cessation from toil, a refreshment, an intermission.  

When I read it alongside Hebrews 4, I came to understand true rest come by diligently hearing the Word of God and to let it profit me, mixed with faith.  That was exactly what I sensed in my spirit, while praying for the Name of 2014.

How I long to be a Giant in Faith!  But for that to surface I need to go through gigantic tests of faith. That is a scary thought. I had to ask myself, why do I want to be a Giant in Faith? The answer: So I can rest, and have peace, while feeding on God’s grace and faithfulness, in this world of toil and hardship, lies and deception. This past year I came to have a taste of His grace, now I am in anticipation to experience all the facets of His rest in the next 12 months, 52 weeks and 365 days.

My prayer for 2014:

"Dear LordThank you for this Word. I’m so looking forward to experiencing your faithfulness in showing me You can give me rest in situations that I’ll see impossible. Just as you already proved Yourself faithful to extend grace in situations where I deserved noting, was beyond hope, with little or total lack of faith. Thank you Lord, I’m waiting on You.In Jesus’ precious NameAmen”

What is the Name of your Year?

With much love

Linnie

This post is linked to:

The Year of Charis. Grace

In November a tummy bug swept through our home. It started with one of the little boys waking me one morning with: "Mommy I'm nauseous..." I frantically cleaned up after him. Sent everyone out of the room. I did everything in my power to avoid the other children getting this too. Everything went well. Three days passed, no one else got sick. Then Wednesday afternoon, as we were preparing to visit the dentist, my little girl bent over with tummy ache. "Mommy, I'm not feeling well..."  As I cleaned up, I tried to convince myself, it was only an anxiety attack, she feared the dentist, the drill, the injection etc. Nothing to worry about. Then on Friday night our baby boy laid weak in my arms, and without warning it came. My big girl cleaned up, while baby boy and me got in the bath. Everyone was helping. Me to deeply in need to send anyone away in fear they will catch the germ. During Sunday night three children came down with the bug and before dawn three loads of washing were ready for the washing line. Praise the Lord for extra linen and an automatic washing machine, working all by itself while I tried to get some sleep and listened for the slightest sound of discomfort from my little ones.  By Tuesday I've cleaned the home from top to bottom, loaded the washing machine more than I could count, washed hands over and over again, but still all 10 of us got the tummy bug!

How does one know where the germs’ hiding place is? 

How do I get rid of that which is unknown? 

So much havoc caused by that which cannot be seen.

This past year was the year of Eucharisteo - thankfulness. 

It was no easy year. 

Two miscarriages. Dreams trampled in the ground, leaving nothing more than me with empty heart and, empty hands. 

A son who entered adulthood. Quite challenging to watch him in his independence. Could this be, my firstborn baby, dependent on me for everything, now driving himself to where he needs to be? 

My little girl breaking her arm, my sensitive one. The one who so easily get worried and stressed out. Also the one to whom taking care of others come as second nature. How do I comfort her in her pain, while waiting in uncertainty for when they will take care of her?

In this all, and much more, Eucharisteo was the life line to my loving Father. The window through which I could look into heaven. See Him taking care of me. The mirror of His love reflecting on to me.

But then in my thankfulness I identified my biggest need... As I observed God’s grace to me, I identified my need for grace.

Eucharisteo in the original language means “give thanks”.

The root word of Eucharisteo is Charis, meaning “grace”. 

It isn’t possible to live in Eucharisteo, without Charis - grace. 

As I counted the gifts of thankfulness, I saw God’s grace in the every moments of my life. And I realized I’m lacking grace on my loved ones, grace on myself, grace on friends and acquaintances. Big time. 

I’m very much a control freak, a perfectionist, hard on myself, hard on every one around me. I like things to be done the correct way, little mistakes… little grace.

I know all the verses, I'm memorizing them, I know the truth, I know my Father of grace. I know the amount of grace I have for others, will be be given to me... And when I'm trying hard, be intentional, I'm capable of walking in that grace, but what about those tiring, overwhelming moments, when grace just slips through my fingers, robbed from me, even before I owned it?

I’m frantically trying to get hold of grace. Almost like getting hold of the germs in my home, that month of November.

Where is grace hiding from me? 

Without grace there is havoc in my life, in the life of my loved ones, loss in relationships.

How do I practice more grace?

Might there be more to this walking in grace? Something deeper? 

I'm yearning to truly possess grace and gradually I came to identify it.  Grace is in the here and now. In the hurry and running around of every day life, grace is missed. That is the story of my life. I’m constantly rushing to the next thing, missing the now, due to what happened a few minutes ago or because of what need to be done a few minutes from now.  But what about the now?

"Life is not an emergency.In our rushing, bulls in china shops, we break our own lives.Haste makes waste. The hurry makes us hurt.Whatever the pace, time will keep it and there’s no outrunning it, only speeding it up and pounding the feet harder; the minutes pound faster too.  Race for more and you’ll snag on time and leak empty. Hurry always empties a soul.”          Ann Voskamp

I often run on empty, exhausted, little left to give, but I thought it was because I’m to slow. It might be the contrary:

“Life is so urgent it necessitates living slow.”      Ann Voskamp

What if I intentionally focus to be slow? Yes, life in 2013 will be busy! Little children are demanding, unable to provide for their own needs; foolish in their actions, getting into trouble in no time; then there are my older children who needs more of my undivided attention, more of my mothering instinct to recognize their unspoken emotional needs. 

"Life is not an emergency. Emergencies are sudden, unexpected events - but is anything under the sun a surprise to God?”    Ann Voskamp

This is where I need my training for 2013.  A whole new mindset on the ‘emergency’ situations in my home. What if my goal is not for me to get everything under control, but to slow down and take care, thank God for the moment of being even more dependent on Him and making a difference in the life of my loved ones.

Taking in the moments with my large family, the good and the bad. Let these moments, which I already know are filled to the brim with God’s grace, fill me with grace. 

I have no idea how I’m going to do it, but I’m surely willing to learn and eagerly looking forward to master the how.

This year I will name - Grace.  I will deliberately walk in slowing down, experience the grace.  

Living in Eucharisteo, took me a whole year to accomplish, and I'm only at the beginning. 

May the Lord in 2013 grant me the grace to hurry less, slow down more, experience more of His grace, extended His grace more to my loved ones.

It is my prayer that the Lord may also reveal to you more of His Grace in 2013.  A Blessed and happy New Year!

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With much love

Linnie