Place Your D.O.T.S

The accumulation of past experiences, the opportunities or trials that you faced, the knowledge you have gained and the battles you have fought have simply brought you to today. This day of life is a cumulation of every day you’ve lived up until now. So I wonder how does that make you feel? Content or disappointed, at peace or fearful, happy or sad.

The scripture verse(s) we talk about today include: Deuteronomy 5:33

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xoxox

Sarah Elizabeth 

Our Faith Your Day Declaration!

Jesus, thank you so much for loving me in the way that you do! You designed me on purpose for a purpose. I want to live to my full potential today, with a mindset that honors you and a soul that seeks to know you better. Jesus I know that you are the way, the truth and the life, and I ask you to guide me and reveal to me what it is that you want to show me here, have me experience here, and learn from this season. Help mold me and shape me into the best version of me. I will live today as your vessel ready to receive your word, respond to your promptings, and pour out your overflowing love to those all around me. Please allow your thoughts to become my thoughts, your ways to become my ways and your will to become what I truly desire. Jesus if you are in it I want it and if you are not I don’t! I choose to faith this day of life! I am so grateful to be your girl! In Jesus name Amen!

Transcript

Do you ever think back over your life and wonder where it has gone? Do you look back and wish you hadn’t taken so many of your previous days for granted. Or maybe you have little to no recollection of the past. Some big memories stick out, but for the most part it’s all become a type of blur that is foggy at best. If you’ve ever questioned what the point of all of what you’ve previously lived is, well here is the key. All of it…the parts you can remember and the parts that you can’t, the parts that you want to remember and the parts that you’d love to forget, have all led you here. Here, today, now. The accumulation of past experiences, the opportunities or trials that you faced, the knowledge you have gained and the battles you have fought have simply brought you to today. This day of life is a cumulation of every day you’ve lived up until now. So I wonder how does that make you feel? Content or disappointed, at peace or fearful, happy or sad. 

We’re going to do some mental image work together. I want you to form a mental image of a map. It doesn’t have to be a particular place that you know of or have any particular boundaries …I simply want you to envision it with the title YOUR LIFE across the top. Within the landmass I want you to just take note of a few areas that have been labelled already. I want you to take note of a region that says Joy, one that says Sorrow, one that says Hope, one that says doubt, one that says fear, one that says courage, one that says loss, one that says prosperity, one that says heartbreak and one that says love. In fact you might come back to this mental image after this episode, and you might discover that you have many more regions that you’d like to add to your map. And then what I want you to do is to imagine that each season of your life is represented by a pin…you know the kind that you would stick in a map of the world to show where you have been. Now start poking your pins into the regions that represent the memories you have of those seasons. I want you to place your dots on the map. In this case we are going to give an acronym to the word dot. Dot- your Days Over Time…where are your days over time located? Do you notice a bunch of dots in the land of despair? Do you notice a collection in discouragement or shame? Are they clustered around insecurity or are they collecting around resentment? Did you manage to place some in the region of joy, or gratitude or exuberance? Do you have dots located in peace and faith and love? 

Before we go any further I want to give you a second acronym for today. The one is MAP…M.A.P and it stands for My Arranged Past. The dots on your map reflect the way your past has been arranged…the way it’s been organized and played out. So are your days over time arranged in a way that reflect the future you want as well? Or do they reflect a past that you want to move forward from. Let’s face it, much of our past was often not in our control. Our childhoods, school experience, siblings, parents…all of that has an element of you kind of get what you get right…so you might find that your map of memories has a lot of dots in regions that you don’t want to frequent anymore…maybe the area of abuse, or abandonment, or neglect or chaos or lack. Seasons you wish to never revisit again…and that’s perfectly ok…today is a new day to move forward from your past and towards the future God has for you. 

Maybe in your case it’s not so much about season’s you don’t want to revisit, it’s more about season’s that you can’t let go of…areas you can’t move forward from, habits and choices that are holding you back. My sister are you stuck? Stuck in a land of guilt, shame, loss, regret, worry, disappointment, and angst…stuck spending all of your now there. Are you willing to place future dots… your upcoming days over time in those places? Or do you want to make a change? Do you want to have your future dots organized differently? Do you want to be able to change your map? To be able to look back in one year, 5 years, 10 years and say…that was the day I made a change. That is the day that I decided that I wasn’t going back to all of those emotions, and all of those memories that I couldn’t move forward from. What if instead you could choose to dwell in hope, and worthiness, and gratitude and faith, and surrender. To let joy be a destination you visit daily. Your whole future MAP…can look totally different my dear. 

In the book of Exodus we get to read about the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. You see at the time the Israelites were in a season of slavery in Egypt. Their dots on their map would be located in the areas of bondage, enslavement and captivity, and Moses knew that God was calling him to lead the people to a land of freedom and prosperity. God knew that the dots on their map had to change. So Moses was tasked with leading over a million Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised land. And like when facing any challenging situation, you can bet that opposition could be found. Pharaoh was not going to let them go easily, and it took over 12 plagues and a miracle in the Red Sea for Moses to be able to get his people out of a season…a land that they had been stuck in for hundreds of years. Finally they were out though…across the Red Sea and ready to reach their final destination right? Joy, Peace, Freedom, Prosperity…well not quite. What should have been less than a two week journey for this mass of people, became a 40 year trial of endurance in the desert. You see there were some dots on the map of Moses’ past that kept them all stuck. Moses had some doubt and uncertainty that was placed on his MAP. His heart didn’t fully trust at first where God was leading them, he wasn’t ready to be obedient to the process. And because of that, the process took 1000x’s longer than it should have. A two week journey took 40 years…I did the math…that’s a big delay in their progress wouldn’t you say. And Moses himself actually died before his people reached their destination…delay and distrust can kill your dreams girl. 

I wonder if this example can’t teach us a powerful lesson about how important it is to let God lead us to our future dots on our map, and to be fully surrendered, fully obedient, and fully trusting in the process. HIS process. He is going to bring you to some stuff, but he is also going to bring you through some stuff. If you are tired of your days leading you to despair, discouragement, dissatisfaction, well then maybe it’s worth considering letting him help you place your dots. Deuteronomy 5:33 says: Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess. It’s all right there my sister, walk in obedience, alongside God and he will lead you to your own promised land that he has laid out for you discover.