Last week we left off in the awareness. I believe before any real change can happen you must first realize where you are. Not unlike a GPS signal that will calculate the time and distance between two destinations with the proper starting and ending points, our lives are the same. To get to where we want to go, we must first be willing to take an honest look at where we are. So that’s what I did. I asked God to show me – me. Not the mask that I show the public, not the extrovert that is always the life of the party – but the me that I’m not often brave enough to see.
Taking a real look at me was what changed everything. Becoming hyperaware of where I was at the beginning of 2023 gave God a clean canvas to put in His coordinates for what’s next. As my intentions for my business, finances, time and emotions were purified, God began to trust me with more. It’s amazing how that works – it seemed like the harder I worked, the further behind I got.
‘Commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be achieved.’ Proverbs 16:3
‘Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.’ Psalm 127:1.
After self awareness, came self acknowledgement. I had to admit to where I was and how I had gotten there. Like every 3rd person in the US, I started a business during the pandemic and I believed the hype that I could get to 5 figures in 30 days, and made some pretty hefty investments in programs that promised to teach me how to do it. I had to acknowledge that while the programs and process wasn’t necessarily wrong, my motives were.
I wanted an enlarged territory so that others could see my accomplishments, because I deserved to be seen and heard – because it was ‘my time’. I thought fame and notoriety were my lot, and it was about time that the world was introduced to me. Of course when this didn’t happen in the first few months, I was so disappointed. I went from paying a virtual assistant to virtually NOT assist me with anything, to working 40 hours at my 8-5 and then another 30 at my 5-8 (or if I’m honest sometimes 5-11pm) only to not get the breakthrough that I believed I deserved.
Then I realized that what I really deserved was death, judgement and the grave. But what I was receiving was grace. And it felt oh so good.
So, I begin to check my motives. To walk worthy of the blessing that I was praying for, BEFORE I received it. To water, till, cultivate and weed the territory that God had trusted me with – sharing messages with the 4 faithful followers that I had – posting messages more focused on truth than some every changing template, leaning more into my accountability to the message He has given me than chasing the algorithm.
And I started to truly understand the meaning of Jabez’s prayer – and it became my heart’s cry.
Journey with me to discuss the meaning in the next blog, and let’s see if you have the same revelation.