I bought a new calendar yesterday. Each month, it has a different word or phrase essential to the faith across a beautiful black and white picture. So simplistic, yet so powerful. I think these will be God’s reminders to me this year as I walk with Him. To focus each month on a different element of my faith … something that He needs to teach me, and I need to just sit and listen to Him. Shut out the clamoring of my anxious mind, and simply kneel at His feet and bask in His presence.

Being a lover of alliteration as well, I was wont to find some alliterative word for each month of the year as well, and tie the two together … the word on my calendar and the theme “word” for the month.

So we begin with January’s Journey. All of life really is a journey … our faith, our relationships, our goal in life – they are all journeys with bends in the road, storms along the way, and bumps and ruts to navigate through. But this month, I feel God calling me to especially focus on my journey of faith with Him. He’s calling me to lay aside anything that hinders my focus on Him … books, movies, music … anything that doesn’t specifically point me to His face, and just entrench myself in the Word of God. I want to be thirsty again … I want to never have enough of Scripture in my life … I want to be saturated with all of Him … I want my Abba to become my sweet obsession.

And those two words on my calendar only emphasize this call even more: Potter’s Clay. “We are the clay, You are the potter; we are all the work of Your hand.” (Isaiah 64:8) He’s ready to shape me and mold me into a vessel for His use – will I yield to His touch? Will I allow Him to chip and break away all the parts of me that are dishonorable to Him and re-shape my mind so that it’s like unto His own?

The mind. That’s where it all begins … that’s where the Potter’s work must start, and that’s where I must surrender to the whirring wheel of His sanctification. And why should I be afraid? Our Father knows what He’s doing. He only has the best plans in store for me. This January, as the journey takes me – this broken vessel – from day to day, I know that the Potter will pick up my clay pieces and re-form them into something beautiful. I just have to listen. And look … and surrender … and whisper prayers to Him every single minute if necessary. He loves to hear the sound of our voices lifted up in worship to Him … even if it’s only a broken cry of desperate dependence on His grace that we can muster out. He is the one who gives the strength. And He is the Master, leading us on the journey He’s called us to.

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7)