365 Days Ahead

by Dottie Compton

Guest Post

It is the time of year when there are a million options about what to do next.

I have 365 days ahead of me. What can I do to make my life better?

After being in this moment many times, I’ve learned some choices do more good than the latest journal, self-help program, or quick fix.

For some reason, I have to keep working on less and less about what the world offers and more about my relationship with God and myself.

It took me way too long to stop looking for acceptance, approval, or value from anyone but God—don’t let that happen to you.

Finding myself in God’s classroom again, I walk away with the same simple yet life-altering wisdom that I’d like to share with you.

These steps should be practiced each day:

1. Look back with genuine gratitude for every experience. Recount the pleasant and the hard times without the emotion of the moment and measure it against God’s Word. Then ask the Holy Spirit to help you see through His eyes so you can learn from, grow, and avoid the same mistakes.

2. Don’t take pain from prior experiences with you into the following day. Forgiveness is essential to creating peace between you and God, within yourself, and with others.

3. Keep life simple. Be real. Stay flexible. Commit each day before Him and be willing to walk it out His way.

True success requires God at the forefront of your personal-private world, where people rarely see.

True success brings God in the middle of whatever you do. It will always be about people in some form unless we step off His path and into our own desires, creating pain for you and those around you.

We’ve all been there, I’m simply saying now is a good time for us to ask ourselves why do we keep doing it over and over again.

I pray for you as I do for myself that the most important things in this life will fall into place as you lean into God.

May His peace flow like a river and take you through beautiful experiences in 2023.