Remembering Your Year

January 1, 2014                Remembering Your Year

At this time of the year I remember a particular time when I was serving as the spiritual director on a Walk to Emmaus spiritual retreat. During a break, I was having coffee with one of the pilgrims, and I asked him about his decision to attend the retreat. He said that each year during the Christmas/New Year holidays, he and his wife make it a practice to have a conversation about the quality of their life together. When they had their conversation in the previous season, they both concluded they wanted to grow spiritually, and the advice of their pastor and friends led them to the Emmaus retreat.

I admire that couple for their discipline and the commitment to their marriage by taking the time to honestly ask each other, “How are we doing?” Perhaps you too would benefit from a similar conversation. There’s still time during this holiday season to recall your experiences of this last year, and to become intentional about where you want your relationship to grow in the coming year.

My wife, Cheryl, has a slightly different variation on this. Over the holidays, she will ask herself how different she is at the end of this year, as compared to last year. She will process how she has experienced growth in the past year. Using the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5: 22-23 as her guide, she prayerfully seeks to identify which of the fruit the Lord wants her to focus on in the coming year: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Then she set her sails for the coming year.

There are many other ways to practice self-awareness and to hold yourself accountable as you yield your life to God so that Christ may be formed with you. Please don’t let the sun rise tomorrow before you have carved out some time in your personal prayer space, and asked the Holy Spirit to guide you into an appropriate assessment of your discipleship this last year. Then, together, you and the Spirit can chart your course for walking in harmony with God throughout 2014.

Thank you for being one of my companions on this incredible journey as we seek the life in Christ as our way of life. With great anticipation of Christ being formed within us, I look forward to our journey together in 2014.

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.