2018: Nourish (and Cherish) and Ephesians 4: Walking with a Word through the Lens of Scripture

Why choose a word (or two, or a phrase and a Bible verse) for the year? Well, I think sometimes we have a hard time focusing with so much going on around us. Choosing a word, for me, helps me to dig deeper into God’s Word, not to just find my word (although I do look for what God says about it, for He is the author of all and His wisdom is immense), but also to just really hear Him speak to me. He still speaks! Just open the scriptures and read. How kind and loving a Savior we have that He left us His very words to speak to us. Along with choosing my words, I made it a goal to read through the entire Bible with the word so that I do not miss what my Savior has for me, how I can better know Him and serve Him. I also choose a Bible verse or two to try to recall throughout my studying. God’s Word proves itself. When we look at scripture in light of scripture, it grows deeper and richer.

When I chose faith in 2016, I read the scripture and saw how incredibly faithful my God is and that faith is truly a gift from the Faithful One, Who is overly and abundantly worthy of my faith. I saw that faith doesn’t come easily, that sometimes questioning everything we believe helps us see why we have faith in the first place. When I chose mercy in 2017, I saw how merciful my Savior is and how I can be merciful because I belong to the Merciful One.

I love how the words don’t just go away when the year ends. I still see faith and mercy every day as I sit down and read God’s beautiful truth. As I add a new word, the richness increases, and maybe it has absolutely nothing to do with these words. Maybe it has absolutely everything to do with the time I spend with my Savior, the time I spend with His words. As His Word makes a home deep inside us, it become the lens we look at everything through, and when we look through the lens of scripture, we see God’s faithful, merciful work all around us. We see how His plan beautifully continues to unfold under His sovereign care.

In late December, I read something that someone wrote, and the word nourish stuck out at me. I thought that would be a beautiful word to focus on in 2018 as I continue to dig in and be nourished by God’s Holy Word. I know God wants me to be nourished by His truth.

In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and the sound doctrine which you have been following. (1 Timothy 4:6)

I also know that He wants me to nourish my children with His truth.

You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road when you lie down and when you rise up. (Deuteronomy 11:9)

I want to continue this, to read the Bible personally and to read it with my children (Reading the scripture with my children this last year has been an immense blessing as I see them grow in their knowledge and understanding, our family growing together the way God created us to thrive). Teaching the Bible to other children and to other women has also been an immense blessing. Oh how we grow as we search to be able to teach. What a gift God gave us allowing us to learn and to grow in knowledge and understanding and wisdom. He is a good, good Father indeed.

            I also knew that the word nourish was about more than just the spiritual food we need, it is also about what we can do when we are spiritually nourished. I want 2018 to be a year that I nourish relationships, with my family, with my friends, within my community, and within my church. I have seen so many heartaches, so much tearing down in this last year, and I know that we need to be coming alongside one another to build one another up, to edify the body. Ephesians 4 is a chapter in the Bible about the church and unity and the Christian walk. I pray that this year God will guide me to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling which I have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to reserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” I am a part of one body, and by His grace I have been given gifts to work for His service, to build up the body of Christ. We are not to be tossed here and there but to grow together by sound doctrine, “speaking the truth in love.” My walk should not look like the world. My relationships should not look like the world. I know Christ. I have the truth found in Jesus. I am to “be angry, and yet do not sin.” I am to “let no unwholesome word proceed from my mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.” I have been sealed with the Holy Spirit. May I “let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from me, along with all malice.” May I “be kind to others, tender-hearted, forgiving others, just as God in Christ also has forgiven me.”

            I am so excited to walk with purpose this year. My husband and I are making efforts to spend time with each other, as a family, and with our children individually. We are reading the scriptures together and we are reading good literature together. We have recently read The Hiding Place and are currently reading Tramp for the Lord. Corrie ten Boom has been and continues to be a great encourager to us to be nourished by God’s Word that we might walk out our purpose of serving Him, showing others the way to the Kingdom, to our loving Savior who will never leave our sides. We saw how very dear the Holy Scriptures were to Corrie and her sister Betsie and how God did miracles to make them available in the depths of darkness, to shine His light and truth where evil seemed to prevail. We saw how powerful the Bible was to save and know it continues to be. We saw how the ten Boom’s cherished it.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. (Romans 1:16)

           

Cherish. I was only going to chose one word, but the word cherish keeps coming to my mind as well. I think that there is a lesson there, that what we nourish and what nourishes us is what we cherish. So I will walk out 2018 with nourish and cherish. I will seek to cherish the life-giving Word of my God while I seek to be nourished by it and to nourish others with it. And I will cherish my family and friends and my church, while seeking to nourish those relationships. Oh how I look forward to all God has to teach me this year and how He will choose to work in me and through me for His glory!