One Word for 2016

Every January, rather than jotting down a list of resolutions I’ll fail to keep, I ask God to give me one word for the upcoming year. It’s a simple way to focus on what He’s already teaching me.  My word for 2016 is adore. This one word captures all my heart was designed to do here on earth and for all eternity.

Adore. (verb)

1.     To regard with the utmost esteem, love, and respect; honor; worship

2.     To love intensely or deeply

3.     To honor and admire profoundly and respectfully; implies love and stresses the notion of an individual and personal attachment

  

To adore God means I’m enthralled in what God thinks of me rather than what others think of me. It means everything I do, speak, and think attempts to honor His name. It changes the way I spend my time and the way I spend my money. It sinks down deep into the cracks below the surface. It involves far more than singing a few songs one morning a week.

Adoring God is a lifestyle hinged on Love.

I discovered in my twenties that something was missing from my life. I grew up loving Jesus, reading my Bible, going to church. For years I believed the huge empty hole was children. I was wrong.  What was missing was a passionate love affair with Jesus. Back then I loved Jesus, but I’d never fallen head-over-heels in love with Him. 

Much of this discovery came when I struggled with a God who claimed to love me yet did not seem to answer my prayers for a baby. He seemed to be answering everyone else’s but mine. It was the struggle that drew me to His Word, but somewhere within those tissue paper pages, He began to do an amazing work. I began to want Jesus more than I wanted my prayers answered.  I still longed to hold a baby in my arms, but something was happening in the secret crevices of my heart. Love was taking over. Love was changing me.

In my thirties, I realize that not only do I need Jesus, but my heart desperately wants Him. This year, I want to give more and more of myself over to the One who loves me perfectly and passionately.  I want to love the one who loved me first.

It isn’t a box to be checked off some list. It’s way more personal than that.  I don’t know about you, but I want to experience the full effect of a heart that adores Him. I want that more than anything. We can’t accomplish it on our own, but we can ask the Holy Spirit to teach our hearts how to adore God with every aspect of our being. As a desire for God intensifies on the inside, a dramatic change occurs on the outside.

The more we love God, the more we love what God loves.

As we give more and more of ourselves over to Perfect Love, our hearts begin to look more like His. Deep burdens that never existed before all of a sudden begin to burn with holy passion. Compassion that has been foreign to us our entire lives becomes our new motivation. And most of all, we start to see everything through a whole new set of eyes- eyes that can no longer look away. Our hearts will beg God to keep opening them wider and wider even though it means our hearts will break deeper and deeper. Love never leaves us as we were.

Love takes us where we never knew we always wanted to go.

O come, let us adore Him...

… and let Love light a flame within our hearts this year.

What is your one word for 2016? I'd love to hear from you!

Jesus Loves You,

Kelly