2020... Day 1.

I start this new year 2020, January 1... with some positive hopes and dreams..

I want my life to win, to be optimistic and positive.

I want to defeat some inner challenges and to try and combat the ways I handle things around me.

I have a good wife, an amazing family, we each have some huge challenges ...
but it (the challenges)doesn’t need to stay that way, we can all win and I seriously hope for 2020 that in fact that is the case. Wins for each of us.

One of my plans for 2020 is to record a daily journal of thoughts and observations. 365 days of opportunity. A blank canvas. Waiting to be written each and every day. It is up to me how I live it and what I do with my own 365 days.

It’s up to us each .

We all have exactly the same amount of hours and days to live out, and until we are called home... it is up to each of us in how we will live out those days.

2019, and even 2018 were incredibly challenging ministry years for me (us) but one of the brilliant things about a brand new year is to face it with optimism and hope.
And thats what I am doing today. Dreaming for a good year.

A year where my calling, and the deep, very deep desire I have to please my God, is fulfilled in crazy amazing ways in my ministry role.

I want this year to lift my game in some ways.... To stretch my spiritual tent pegs.... to be more disciplined in some personal ways, and also to live out with integrity my call.

I actually believe that God is calling us each to specific ministry tasks as His kids... and we say, we are not called...but actually we are all called to something somewhere...if its being a plumber or pastor or professor... or politician.... do it for His purposes.

I dont know if people still do it these days, setting resolutions or goals for the year ahead... but I like to.

I think its in our nature to hope for better days. To dream of better times. To see opportunity and possibilities.

Some try to dash those dreams, to pour cold water over our hopes.

Can I encourage you as I do to myself also... take each day as it comes, we only really have this day..today... we can’t change yesterday.. or last week or month or even year... But we can choose that this day will be a positive one.

I am hopeful, very very hopeful that the desire that God has placed in my heart..that really only He and Me know about... will find its way to the surface and be used by Him for His glory. and His glory alone.

When I was commissioned as an Officer in The Salvation Army, I was trained under the banner of being a “Messenger of Hope”, I still pray these 24 years on... that this is still the case for my life.

Gosh who would want to be a messenger of the opposite.

Have a great day and a great year. And remember..

Please remember...

#itsallaboutJesus.

Always has been and always will be.