It’s Sunday night! Time to gear up for a new week. As always, the best way to do that is to PUT ON THE ARMOR OF GOD (Ephesians 6:10-18) but we also will focus on ONE area to strengthen our walk with the Lord. Just one focus to help us grow a faith that cannot fade with the demands of life and the pressures of this world. This week we will focus on REFLECTION!

Last week we reflected on the true meaning of Christmas. This week we are going to reflect on the past year. Businesses take inventory at the close of each year; we are going to check stock in our spiritual lives.

What lessons has the Lord given you that you feel like you’ve aced and can move on? Which ones have you continued to fail? What strengths do you have? Weaknesses? (These can change as we age. These SHOULD change. I may have a list of things I struggle with but I hope that some of them will eventually roll off. Otherwise I’m not growing.)

What did you learn to do differently? What did you change? What worked? What didn’t.

I’ll give you an example. For the first fifteen years of my marriage, my husband and I had a pattern we followed when we got into a disagreement. After the initial, usually minor conflict, you might as well have handed us a script because it turned into the same argument with the same dialogue that escalated into extremely hurt feelings. We finally realized that we had a fight pattern that was never going to change unless we did something to change it. We prayed (at a time when we were NOT in a disagreement!) and asked the Lord to help us break this pattern. He probably tried harder than I did at first. We would be on the verge of an argument and he would just stop talking and hug me. It felt weird and completely threw me but it worked. Sometimes I would be the one to acquiesce quickly, heading off confrontation. After a while, we weren’t even having minor disagreements to begin with. The more peace was restored to our marriage, the more we cherished it. Now I consider our communication to be one of our biggest strengths instead of our greatest weakness. It all started with recognizing and changing a pattern.

What about you? Do you have patterns that need to change in your life? An area to commit to the Lord? Spend this week reflecting on the things that make you GREAT and the things you want to move from the WEAKNESS to the STRENGTH category.