Verse of the Year

I started this tradition in high school. So, you know...a couple of years ago. :)

I picked out a verse to concentrate on throughout the course of the year. As I've gotten older (not old, but older) I've tried to ask God more about what verse HE wants me to choose as the year's guidance. Often I get the verse on one of the very last days of the year. So it was this year.

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. - Isaiah 43:18-19.

This year, I'm joining Beth Moore's "Siesta Scripture Memory Team" in an effort to memorize 24 verses throughout the year. Do keep in mind that memorization is NOT one of the gifts bestowed upon me. Remember the church Christmas play? So this is a challenge for me.

Since we're allowed to pick whatever verses best fit our journey, I thought I would start with the verse God has prompted me to focus on over the entire year.
Just like Beth said to do, I've written it in my own handwriting in my spiral bound verse index, but you can (barely) see in that picture that it's also highlighted in my Bible. I try to write the date beside a highlighted verse...so I can go back to see when it became meaningful to me. According to this - October 11, 2010.


That was, of course, my Dad's birthday, but it was also a week before I left on my impromptu vacation to Wisconsin. And I had no idea when I highlighted the verse, that just a little over a week later, I would be standing beside an actual stream that bubbled forth from the ground.

A stream God would use so purposefully to begin healing work in my broken heart.

This is the year of the word studies, remember? Well let me tell you what I learned about this verse!

I'm not going to recap my 2010 for you. If you've been here very long, you know what transpired. And if you're new - you can browse back through and see the various lessons God had for me. But one thing I struggled with - clear up to (and including) the end of 2010 was the conviction that I had heard (and heard correctly) God's plan for the journey I took. And when it did not end the way I heard it should and would, I had the hardest time understanding what that meant for my faith. I chose to trust that God was still faithful to His Word, but His words to me were not unfolding as He said...and I wrestled with that. He was so kind to comfort my heart with explanations that are too personal to share in this forum, but I accepted them...and yet still had nagging questions.

And then, on New Year's Day, I did a word study on this verse. "Forget the former things." Yeah, yeah, we know what former means. But the word study said - specifically regarding this verse - that it means "things which had been foretold." I read it twice just to make sure I hadn't mixed it up with another verse.

Forget what had been foretold.

"Do not dwell on the past." Do not pay attention to...attend to your past. God had said to me a couple of months ago on a prayer-path drive, "You may remember your desert for the purposes of using it in writing and ministry. You may not pine for it or anything regarding it."

"See, I am doing a new thing!" The word "doing" means to create or prepare, and sometimes even goes so far as to convey the idea of creation or to describe God's creative activity. I love that! He is doing a new thing right now. Not "He did it." He is doing it. And the writer in me loves the exclamation point at the end. He's excited about it! Whatever it is He's creating or preparing for me is new...it's creative...it's personal...and I will love it.

"Now it springs up. Do you not perceive it?" I love the idea that whatever new thing He has is going to show up in beauty...And I want to recognize it when it appears. When I was in Wisconsin at the farm where I encountered the spring, my friend Allison told me that as her ancestors traveled west in the covered wagons, they happened upon this spring and knew it would sustain the land, so they settled there. We looked around at the rolling hills of land and marveled that they would stumble upon that tiny stream out of all that land. They perceived it.

"I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." The word making means to set, put, establish, plant, set down, appoint. It essentially means to put something somewhere. And you know...He'd have to do just that to put water in a desert. It would have to be established and appointed, because it sure wouldn't be natural.

I don't know what or where or when, but God is establishing and appointing something in this girl's life. Oh how I love that. And I can't wait to see it unfold.