Vision and Focus

I've been wearing glasses or contacts since I was in 6th grade (maybe even earlier).  I can hardly see 2 feet in front of me without them now.  Sometimes in my walk with God I feel as if my vision and focus is just as messed up if not more than my sight.  I've been doing a study with some friends from the devotional Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow and this week's lesson was titled A Faulty Focus.  Linda challenges the reader to find a focus and have a vision.  I remember back in January when I was reading Passionate Homemaking that Lindsay was challenging her readers to come up with a personal missions statement.  The verse that came to mind then was Proverbs 29:18 (AMP) "Where there is no vision the people perish. . . "  Now I know that is not exactly what this verse is talking about but I do find many Biblical reasons to have a focus, a goal and a renewed purpose.  So this week I started thinking about my own.

My life verse has been Zephaniah 3:17 "The Lord your God is mighty to save, He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing."  We don't have to guess how much He loves us - He tells us and shows us over and over again!
And another verse that I recently found new meaning in Philippians 3:10, "For my determined purpose is that I may know Him that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly" (AMP).  Just today I put those two verses together and came up with my own personal missions statement.  Although my purpose in life is continually in progress, I am more clear in the direction the Lord wants me to take.  My missions statement is: To purposefully and faithfully live a life of creativity and gratitude.

• Purposefully: To daily ask God what He has for me to do, to love Him intensly, to love and serve my husband and children, to inspire and encourage, and to pray for others (especially my children) and above all to love with a purpose
• Faithfully: To do this with consistency, trusting God even when I can not see Him working, believing He can do in others (particularly my children) what I can not
• Creativity: Creating beauty all around me, seeking it and making it, teaching my children and others how to create beauty and trusting God to create beauty within me
• Gratitude: to daily journal my thanksgiving; seeing all that God has given me (whether I perceive it as good or bad) as his blessing, grace and mercy in my life and recognizing that all comes through His perfect and loving hands

 I hope you find encouragement in this today my friend!  God sings over me and loves me (& you) - because of that love I desire to know Him even more deeply.  Ann Voskamp has encouraged me greatly in the gratitude part of this statement, check out her blog and go find or make beauty today!