This year, just like every year since I got married, I have looked at my life, asked God to search my heart and see where I can best grow, and then picked a personal theme. After picking that theme, looking up the definition in a webster 1828 dictionary and then beginning a word search, I try to find how God wants me to best apply that theme to my life.
For 2026, that theme is “Worship”.
Some of the definitions in Websters 1828 are as follows:
Chiefly and eminently, the act of paying divine honors to the Supreme Being; or the reverence and homage paid to him in religious exercises, consisting in adoration, confession, prayer, thanksgiving and the like.
To honor with extravagant love and extreme submission
To adore; to pay divine honors to; to reverence with supreme respect and veneration
In the Bible, you will find the idea of worship corelating to obedience and sacrifice. Look at Abraham when he tells the young man, Isaac that they were going “Up the mountain to worship God”; Abraham already knew that God was requiring the life of Isaac.
Worship is not a person, making themselves bigger, gaining this spiritual experience of being filled by some warm feeling during a song service that speaks only to their emotions, worship is getting little before the object or God you are worshipping, in humility. The entire reason we worship is because that being is greater than ourselves and we cannot accomplish thing things that being has or will do. In fact, the first time the word “worship” is used in the Bible in relation to music is when King Nebuchadnezzar commanded everyone to worship once the music started playing.
True worship is an act of sacrifice wrapped in humble obedience with a clean heart to the Lord. The Psalms talk to us about worshipping at the footstool of the Lord. How little must one become to worship at a footstool?
Psalm 95:6
O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.
So, looking at my life, the many flaws to pick from and where I’d like to be in life, how am I going to apply this, personally?
- I had to recognize who God made me: I am a woman, I am a born again believer, I am a wife, I am a mother, respectively. I must find God’s will for my life in those categories.
- I had to recognize what my struggle is: I struggled with being a wife to my husband and mom to my children. I was struggling with resentment towards my husband for not being where I felt like he needed to be, when I wasn’t either. I struggled with being the kind of mom I needed to be because my children kept “getting in the way” of the other things I felt like I needed to do, like moving the refrigerator and cleaning behind it. Instead of seeing God’s strength being extended to me to include my children in the daily grind, I wanted “my space” about 12 hours a day or more.
- I had to recognize that I needed to humbly come before God, ask Him for the forgiveness in these areas and to strengthen me in each of these. I then had to change my mindset and begin looking at being a wife to the husband God gave me and a mother to the children God gave me as worship – an act of sacrifice wrapped in humble obedience with a clean heart to the Lord.
- Next, I needed to see what sins prevent me from reaching this goal? While there are a multitude of them I could point to, the biggest one was my struggle in accepting who God made me to be. The struggle I had in being a woman, the hair and eye color I have, being made this way without the choice – but isn’t that silly? Does a butterfly look at God and say, “Dude, I don’t like being made with orange wings. I don’t like my design.” Or what about a cup to a potter who made it so he can have a vessel to drink or serve others drinks with. Who is the clay to say the potter messed up? The same for us, we were but dust and the Master Potter then transformed us into the people we are, with a beautiful design and we were made for purpose!
- After dealing with that, I then had to take a deeper look at how my outlook of my husband was hindering our relationship, my view of him and the way I served God. Many times I question, “Why can’t we just have normal things? Why can’t our lives be normal? Why do we put ourselves through the stress of NOT going into debt which means building our home takes so much more time and energy. My husband is infamous for starting one project and when it is ALMOST done, stopping and saving it for later. He says the 20% left takes 80% of the energy. And sometimes, when the brat in me flares up, my feelings get hurt that he doesn’t feel like he can spend that energy finishing that up (for me) The issue isn’t that he feels like he has SO MUCH to do that he can’t get to it. The issue is that I take it personally and sit and pout about it in my heart instead of asking God to give him the focus and energy to finish things.
Just a little side note, at the beginning of January, I began asking God to give him energy, motivation, and focus for each project he sets his hands to. I have never seen that man get so many things done in one month. He is a Mac truck. It takes a bit to get the steam rolling and once he is rolling, it uses a lot of energy to keep it rolling, and he can be a very ADHD Mac Truck. But the focus and energy I began seeing in him throughout January really made me see how much I was lacking as a wife. I lacked thankfulness for my husband, I lacked in praying for him, and I lacked in being okay with the fact that God made him my ADHD MAC truck instead of making him like me. (I really don’t know what I could be compared to – a little yapper dog that bounces around and hyper focuses to the demise of everything she’s not focusing on, maybe??) - Then I realized the way I was viewing my children was getting in the way of how I was worshipping God. Yes, I need time every day to get away and be refreshed by the water of the Word. I may need some time once a week or twice a month to go to the store and be able to walk around and get groceries in peace. But to resent my children for needing so much of me showed a deeper heart issue – I was no longer grateful for the blessings God had given me. I also had to start changing my schedule and take life a LOT slower. I also had to cut out Facebook, Instagram and many other social media platforms and limit my time on Pinterest to be able to achieve the more important goals. I traded those tools of checking out of my reality for productive things I could do with my hands like crochet, and embroidery.
Something amazing happened, I actually started enjoying who God made me. I began to enjoy my home, as imperfect as it was, I began to look forward to my children waking up after I had taken the necessary time to get into the Word of God, and by slowing down our lives, by implementing “Pajama and Putter Days”, by being okay with everything not going exactly how I felt like it should and making myself work on each aspect for 20 minutes instead of waiting for it to pile up, what was once a burden became something I enjoyed. I don’t enjoy washing dishes still, but I do enjoy the freedom of “If I work on the kitchen for 20 minutes today, then I only have to work on it for 20 tomorrow instead of 40.” and it changed the way I viewed dirty dishes. I began thanking God for the food to eat and the little bodies that were eating it.
As long winded as it was, I pray it was a blessing and help. To recap, when you are looking to build character in a certain part of your life, this is the way I have found works best for me:
- Find the area of lack or a goal you want to achieve.
- Study through the Bible and find an applicable phrase or verse to keep before your eyes.
- Allow God to show you how you fail, ask Him to show you what sins hinder you and ask Him for forgiveness.
- List what changes you can make to conquer and grow in this. Be specific. Instead of saying “I want to wash dishes every day.” say, “I am going to set a timer for 20 minutes and create a habit of washing dishes every day.” Then add a reward of “Any extra time can be spent doing xyz.” Also, finding a sermon or audiobook or music you enjoy can help that time be done with joy as well.
- Be sure to set aside time with God every day to refresh the strength needed to accomplish the goals and make a list of things you can do in your free time that you enjoy so the energy sucking beast we call social media doesn’t end up draining you of all that has already been accomplished.
- Sometimes you may accomplish this goal and set up the good habit within one or two months, if that’s the case, then open the door to another point of growth.
I pray this is an encouragement to you!
With all the love of Christ,
C.C.
2 Corinthians 3:1-18
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