Romans 6:16 “Don't you realize that Grace frees you to choose your own master? But choose carefully for you surrender yourself to become a servant – bound to the one you choose to obey. If you choose to love sin, it will become your master, and it will own you and reward you with death. But if you choose to love and obey God, he will lead you into perfect righteousness.” Today's episode talks about how important it is to live intentionally. Today is the last day of 2024. Before going into the new year it is a great idea to stop and see how you want to grow in your faith in the upcoming year. How are you going to grow closer to the Lord in this upcoming year? How can we try to ensure we choose loving and obey God instead of loving sin? Music:"Adding the Sun"fine us. It is not fun, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Choose Carefully!
Romans 6:16 “Don't you realize that Grace frees you to choose your own master? But choose carefully for you surrender yourself to become a servant – bound to the one you choose to obey. If you choose to love sin, it will become your master, and it will own you and reward you with death. But if you choose to love and obey God, he will lead you into perfect righteousness.”
The bookmark in my Passion Translation Bible happened to be in Romans today. Although now that I see the verse, I can see it wasn’t an accident. This is a great verse to end 2024 and begin 2025. I love the end of a year and the beginning of a new year. I get so excited to think about what this year has in store for me. I go through a process with God to select a word and mantra for the year. I am part of Big Life Mentoring, and Pamela Crim has put together some great worksheets that guide you in a conversation with the Lord to figure out your word and mantra.
I believe my word for this year is going to be STEP. After praying with the Lord and asking what I want for next year and what is getting in my way, I feel as though the Lord is telling me this is the year to step out in faith more. This is the year to stop thinking about what I want to do and actually do it. Also, I would like to respond more when He asks me to do something instead of being too afraid of what others may think of me. This has been a problem in the past and I would like to overcome it this year.
Here is my mantra for 2025:
STEP- Every day I STEP out in Total Trust that God is leading the way. When He calls me to do something, I do it BOLDLY, without hesitation. I am FOCUSED and INTENTIONAL with my time because I know it is a gift from God. I have so much potential, and this year, I will PARTNER with God in a NEW way to achieve all he has planned for me!
I mention my word and mantra for the year because I feel it is important to live intentionally. I think the beginning of the year is a great time to spend some time with the Lord and ask what He has planned for you this year. What would He like you to do? It is also a great time to let Him know what you would like to do and see if He is on board. Setting goals for the year is a great idea because it gives you focus and it gives you direction. If you set a goal and you don’t hit it, you will at least have gotten closer than you would have if you didn’t set a goal.
I love goals. However, you may not be a goal-setting person, and that is great. We are who we are. If you are not someone that likes to set goals can I invite you to at least sit with the Lord and ask Him where your focus should be this year? How are you going to grow in your faith this year? Are you going to work on your connection with others? Are you going to grow in your love of others? Are you going to pray more? Are you going to read more? Are you going to say the rosary daily? Are you going to try to be less judgmental? Are you going to try to love your enemies? Are you going to work on forgiveness? Do you see how many different ways you can grow this year?
However, a lot of times, we don’t focus on how we will grow. We aren’t intentional with our faith and how we live it out. Today’s verse is telling us to be careful about living without intention. It is telling us to choose carefully and not just go about our day without consciously making a choice. Did you know that you make about 35,000 decisions a day, and most experts say that the majority of them are made automatically or subconsciously? Some experts say up to 95% of our decisions can be made subconsciously. That means we aren’t actually even thinking about them. We just make them without thinking. Can you imagine that?
The decision in this verse is so important. The verse says,“Don't you realize that Grace frees you to choose your own master? But choose carefully for you surrender yourself to become a servant – bound to the one you choose to obey. If you choose to love sin, it will become your master, and it will own you and reward you with death. But if you choose to love and obey God, he will lead you into perfect righteousness.” Who doesn’t want perfect righteousness? If we are making 95% of our decisions subconsciously, then what are the odds we are going to choose to love and obey God instead of choosing sin? It seems like most of our day we aren’t even consciously making the choices.
This can actually be good or bad. This is where living intentionally comes in. If you are intentionally living your life as if you love God, then your brain is more likely to default to loving God. If you are staying close to God throughout the day, then your mind is likely to default to loving God. For instance, think about those who have given their lives for the Lord. I have often wondered how they did that. I wondered how they were strong enough to not waiver in their faith even when presented with death. And, it was not always a quick and easy death. Sometimes, it was a long, drawn-out, or very painful death. How could they willingly choose that?
I was talking with a priest about this one day, and he said for them, it wasn’t a choice. They had developed such a deep relationship with the Lord, and they loved Him so much. There wasn’t a way they could renounce the Lord or say anything bad against Him. They felt so strongly about what they believed that they couldn’t deny it. They couldn’t reject the Lord. For them, there was no other choice but to die for their love of the Lord. I don’t know if I am saying that right or if that makes sense, but when he told me that, it made a lot of sense to me.
What do you believe in so strongly that you would be willing to die for it? That is another great question for the new year. Let’s take some time this New Year’s Eve and think about how we lived in 2024 and how we want to live in 2025. I am not saying we need to come up with a hundred New Year’s Resolutions that we will forget all about next week. I am suggesting that we think about how we can set ourselves up for success. How can we ensure that our default decision will be loving the Lord instead of loving sin? What in our lives would need to change in order for us to love the Lord instead of sin intentionally?
The reason behind a word and mantra is that our brains believe what we tell them. I may not currently be stepping out boldly and without hesitation every time the Lord asks me to do something. However, after 365 days of telling myself that I am, I believe I will be, and I can’t wait for that day. I actually don’t think it will be one day. I think there will be a lot of little moments when sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t, and yet, over the year, I will begin to see more days when I do step out boldly and without hesitation than when I don’t. What are you going to be telling your brain this year?
I invite you to sit with the Lord and ask these questions today. How will I intentionally grow in my love for the Lord this year? What will my focus be for this year? What is one thing I would like to be able to say on December 31, 2025, about my relationship with the Lord and how it has grown over the last year? Then, if you are really brave, you can say, “Lord, I want to partner with you this year; what should we do together?” and really listen to what He wants to do with you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, I ask for a special blessing for everyone for the New Year. May you bless them and their family and friends. May you rain down your graces and mercy upon them this year. May each one of us grow closer and closer to you. Lord, please help us to choose to love you and not to love sin. Please help us to live intentionally and not just go through our days, letting our subconscious make all of our decisions. We love you, Lord, and we want to love you more and more each and every day of 2025. We need your help though, Lord. Let’s partner together. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me for another year of walking boldly with Jesus. Can you believe another year is over already? Time flies, and it is not unlimited, so let’s enter today intentionally. I would like to invite you to join me for mentoring in January. The topic will be identity, and it is something I think so many of us struggle with. The world tells us who they think we are, and we just believe them without stopping to ask God who He thinks we are. Come join me as we explore who the Lord says we are and our identity as children of God. My prayer is that after this month of mentoring, you will have a better understanding of how amazing you are. I pray you will join me. Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Think of me when you have problems. Come to me. I should be the first one that you come to, for I can help you in all things, my children. I love you, and I want what is best. So when you have any type of problems, come to me first and I will help you.”