You’re Just Over 43% Through The Year. There’s Time To Reset Your Year & Do This:

The snowball tree out at the mailbox is this flurry of flakes in the middle of June.

So you can go out to get the mail and stand there with all these petals fall around your feet.

You can realize: A year can evaporate before you know it.

In the middle of all kinds culture of noise and outrage, where judgement can be be our dialect of choice and angry, finger pointing posts can go viral and sicken our communal well, you can just want to stop at the end of the lane and watch the sun for a moment over the fields.

“The best way to live a good year is to do a reset halfway through the year.”

You can want to really live, and really, actually, smell the flowers and inhale deeply, you can want to make your moments count, want to make your days make something meaningful, that will last beyond all of the loud.

You can walk into the house, sort the mail, put the farm paper down on the table, turn and look at the calendar and just quietly exhale:

The best way to live a good year is to do a real reset just before you’re halfway through the year.

June is the Second January — and now is the time to not waste another second, because the way you spend your seconds is how you’re making your life.

Get up early and watch the sun rise. Like you open a window, open your heart to God.

Open a window so you can breathe it all in, and open your heart wide open to God. Open His Word. Linger. Gaze on the One who never stops gazing on you.

What you look upon — is what your soul becomes like.

Pour a steaming cup of something. Don’t try to face anything facing you — until you’ve faced Him: First 10 Minutes always with your First Love.

Always: Word In. Work Out. Then Work the Day’s Plan.

I set a vase of snowballs out in the middle of the table. The light catches in them, frees something in us.

Since the Farmer first planted our crops, you can see how he’s walked the fields. How he has time to breathe, how he has time to bend and watch how seeds grow.

You can see it, when you watch how he works:

“To love your life, do nothing with rush or resentment, but do everything with deep love for here and now and God.”

To love your life, do nothing with rush or resentment, but do everything with deep love for here and now and God.

Every morning, there’s this simple habit of making our bed, smoothing out the coverlet under my hand. This is a small way to I love us.

He works late into the night, stays up with a sow giving birth. He tells me this without saying a word, just by the way he smiles:

He makes the most of his work — who makes most of this gift of actually getting to do his work. Because this makes the most of the grace of God.

When he walks the rows of his fields, I watch him at the window:

He’s not looking to be seen or noticed, he’s not looking to jump on any soapbox or get anyone riled up — anger and outrage and striving and discontent can be exhausting — and anywhere there’s outrage, there needs to be outreach.

Let the world go ahead and get loud and large. There are fresh starts in our daily quiet starts. There are small and hidden seeds that are growing into forests, that are growing into the greatest yield.

Growth takes time and this need not take us by surprise.

Change is a slow and steady process and Christ is steady in His sure work to remake you:

“I am convinced and confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will [continue to] perfect and complete it until the day of Christ Jesus [the time of His return].” Phil. 1:6 AMP

The doorway to change is as powerful as, moment by moment, opening your heart to God.

Keep practicing a deep awareness of His presence.

When the Farmer walks the fields, no, he’s not thinking of sales or return on investment — because he knows that: Successful people are the ones who choose to let the joy and satisfaction of simply getting to show up be their real reward.

“Genius is only a fraction of cleverness and ninety-nine percent just the faithfulness of a very long endurance.”

The Farmer lives that everyday: Genius is only a fraction of cleverness and ninety-nine percent just the faithfulness of a very long endurance.

Keep going and never, ever give up — and you can when you keep going with God, when you keep looking up.

It’s its own kind of miracle everyday: When you work faithfully, creativity comes faithfully.

Keep showing up before the face of God — because this is how you never, ever give up.

It’s never, ever too late to begin again. Every June can be about new beginnings in Him.

You can even tell by the way he wears his cap, by the way his smile comes easy out in a field of seeds: He makes it a habit to hope. Even in the middle, even when you have to begin again.

Let every moment be a seed that opens to God to grow real change within.

“Change your habits and your trajectory — and you can change anything into a possibility.”

Change your habits and your trajectory — and God can change anything into a possibility.

I light a candle every day. Write a bit in my journal, not words of mine, but Words of His, copied out, like writing them with my hand can shape my hand, can shape a life. These are simple practices, life-giving habits.

We set timers for our work, each of us, the best timers, used at the piano, at the computer, at the desk.

My Professor in my Doctor of Ministry program at Biola says these words this week in a lecture to our class, and I write them down:

“Spiritual development and formation will move at the speed of your habits… “

I can’t stop thinking about this:

Our habits unclothe us — they expose our wounds, our insecurities, our idols, our addictions — or our hopes, our dreams, our prayers. Our habits are so much us.

The shape of our days reveals much about the shape of our souls.

“The shape of our days reveals much about the shape of our souls.”

A pail with a pinhole loses as much as the pail pushed right over.  A whole life can be lost in minutes wasted… in the small moments missed.

Read more words on papers than on screens.

Make gratitude your attitude of habit — there’s no other way to make joy your life.

Every little day just has to be just a little bit better: Small things done consistently, consistently make the biggest turn around.

And you get to do hard & holy things, you can do hard and holy things — for the joy, for the love.

Because whatever you do for joy, you can do forever.

“You change your life when you change what you do everyday.”

How resistant are our habits to the ways of God?

How recalcitrant are our habits to opening to the power of the Spirit of God who has the power to change our souls, our whole lives?

Habits matter because they are what keep us, moment by moment, turning us to His Spirit, and it’s the Holy Spirit alone who is the spine of our self-control.

You change your life when you change what you keep turning to every day.

I listen to His Word while I wash my face. Set the timer on my phone to make a complete hard stop and pray — because life without hard stops crashes. Habits are small gears that leverage your life, that turn you away or toward His Spirit — and the habit of hoping in Him can resuscitate anything.

Even what looks like it has a snowball’s chance in hades of happening or changing… 

The snowball tree releases petals in the wind, a habit of letting go and hoping better things….

And all these small seeds keep across the field grow —

like this growing trust that the smallness of A Seed Life, of faithfully stewarding seed moments to keep opening to the Spirit of God, is what slowly grows a life of astonishing abundance.

This is the sure and certain promise of God.

When you want to know & see signs of His loving-kindness…

When you want to know a real way through the world — the map of your own heart, and the map of God’s….

When you’re looking for a reset, a turn around, a different trajectory…

For every person who has faced a no-way sign on the way to their dreams, WayMaker is your sign, that there is hope, that there are miracles, and that everything you are trying to find a way to, is actually coming to meet you in ways far more fulfilling than you ever imagined.

Gr ab Your Copy of WayMaker — and begin the journey you’ve secretly been hoping for.