2020 Words of the Year

I’ve already mentioned that I am sucker for goals and goal planning, but another thing that I absolutely love is choosing a word for the year.

I know that it’s not for everyone, and that is ok! But I always like to chose a word of the year so that I can be intentional about looking for it throughout the year. I don’t just flippantly choose a word that I want to see more of, or I would choose something like “money” or “sleep”- HA! Instead, this is a word that I choose after much reflection and prayer. It is a word that refers to something I find lacking in my life, or that I am looking forward to anticipating being more intentional about in my life during the next year.

Last year, my word of the year was “abundance”. I greatly anticipated finding the abundance of the Lord in 2019, and I’ve already talked at great lengths about how his abundance didn’t look like I expected! And yet….he did provide abundantly more than I could have asked or wanted. There are things that happened to us in 2019 that I know were wrapped up in God’s abundance, but we still haven’t seen it yet (or may never actually see it!).

This year I have chosen two words that go hand in hand.

Dwell & Abide

Dwell- to make one’s home; reside

Dwell on- to think or talk about at length

Abide- to remain or to reside

I chose these words after spending time with our church studying Psalm 91. Ps 91 says, “The one who lives under the protection of the Most Hight dwells in the shadow of the Almighty. I say concerning the Lord, who is my refuge and fortress, my God in whom I trust.” It goes on to talk about some of the dire straights of the world- plague and famine and pestilence and sword, and how God holds his people close in the midst of all those things. It ends by saying, “because he has his heart set on me, I will deliver him. I will protect him because he knows my name. When he calls out to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble. I will rescue him and give him honor. I will satisfy him with long life and show him my salvation.”

Now, it is important to point out here that I do not believe that this is the prosperity gospel for my life this year. There very well could be many thought things ahead in 2020. In fact, it is highly likely that there will be crap and hard things and things that don’t feel like the Lord’s protection. But what I love from this passage is that if I CHOOSE to dwell in him, I have all that I need. I love the line that says “I will be with him in trouble”.

I found that as I looked back at 2019, I didn’t feel closer to the Lord through all the trials that we encountered. And that is not because the Lord was not there. It is because I choose to not dwell in the presence of the Lord in the midst of those trials. Honestly, I still find that hard. Even as we are facing this current trial of sick kids, I am finding it HARD to dwell in the presence of the Lord. My natural tendency is to say “that’s not fair!” and question “why?”.

And that is exactly why I want this to be my word of the year- because I want to find myself dwelling and abiding in the presence of the Lord.

Some more passages that contain the words dwell & abide:

Psalms 23

Ps 27

Ps 61

Ps 84

John 1:14

John 15

Ephesians 3

Collosians 3

As I look forward to 2020, I look forward to putting these words into action in my life. I hope that when I look back at 2020, I see a year that I was able to dwell in the refuge of the most High, and abide in his Holy Word.