Many of my friends choose a special word for the year. It helps them focus on annual goals and gives them the motivation they need every day. For some reason, the word of the year has not worked for me. Instead, I hang on to a verse for the year.
During the last weeks of December, I begin to proactively pray about my verse for the next year. Always, God answers. When we seek him, we find.
While sipping on egg nog, I look back through my Bible and journal to discover the amazing verses of the past and how they played out.
2016: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news…to bind up the brokenhearted…to proclaim freedom for the captives… (Isaiah 61:1 TNIV).
For six years and throughout 2016, I served as a life coach in a nonprofit that helped women. Several of my clients were working through the trauma of spiritual abuse, physical and emotional abuse. Some of them had been abused by their husbands, betrayed by people who were supposed to support them.
It was a time of helping my clients acknowledge the deep darkness, then work toward a place of light and freedom. So much pain, yet God was there to offer hope. Not only to my clients, but also to me. Almost every day, I could see how God was binding up the brokenhearted and bringing freedom to the captives.
2017: “God is my helper and ally. The Lord upholds me” (Psalm 54:4 AMP).
When I first read this verse, my heart lurched. What would happen in 2017 that would cause me to be upheld, to be helped by God himself?
It soon became apparent in the month of March when I resigned from my position and began therapy for ministry exhaustion. I needed God to help me financially, emotionally, and spiritually as I rested. He was indeed my helper and ally.
Then he upheld me when a terrible loss defined my days. The unexpected death of my best friend, Deb, sent me into the darkness of grief. Without God holding me and literally being with me each day, I do not know how I would have survived the loss with any semblance of hope. Psalm 54:4 became my reality.
2018: “Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed, happy, fortunate are those who trust in him” (Psalm 34:8 AMP).
My healing came gradually, and God grew my writing clients. Finances increased, so some of the anxiety eased. My therapist released me, and friends surrounded me. While the grief continued, it lost some of its severity.
Then God made it possible for me to spend a week in Santa Fe. I attended the Creatives Conference where I met Julia Cameron in person and several other artists who continue as friends today. As I strolled through the plaza, ate wonderful dishes topped with green chiles, and shopped the stores filled with southwest designs, hope began to return. This grief trip completed my healing and helped me look forward to the future.
I caught myself smiling, even on the return trip back to Kansas. To this day, 2018 is colored with that beautiful experience and the goodness of the God who made it happen.
2019: “Feast on the abundance of God’s house and drink from the river of his delights” (Psalm 36:8 AMP).
During 2019, my client base increased. I taught workshops at writers conferences and published three books. Words poured out of me, healing those taut places, releasing like salve out of a wound.
My CPA surprised me when he finished my taxes. “You’re still doing ministry, Rebecca. You’re helping others with their words.”
It felt like I had purpose again, and I could breathe. The river of God’s goodness delighted me. Thankfully. Because 2020 was about to spring itself on us.
2020: “God marked out appointed times in history and the boundaries of lands…so that they [the nations] would seek him and reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us” (Acts 17:26-27 TNIV).
As we know, 2020 was the year COVID invaded and changed so much of our lives. People died by the hundreds — some of them — my clients. Family dynamics changed. Political turmoil and arguments about vaccines peppered the airwaves and dominated the news cycles. Chaos everywhere.
Yet these verses kept me anchored as I prayed every day for the nations — for this global pandemic to blow itself out. My hope centered around the desire of God to have people reach out for him and find him, to realize he was not far away.
2021: “The Lord gives the word of power; the women who bear and publish the news are a great host” (Psalm 68:11 AMP).
As the effects of COVID tromped all over my life, I hung on to the directive God gave me along with this verse, “Keep writing.” God would breathe his words through me, then give them the power to impact lives.
Even as workshops and conferences disappeared. Even as some of my clients needed to take a break. Even as I isolated myself during lockdown and set up a Zoom account, I kept writing. Even as so much of life changed, the words continued.
In August, I helped my son and his bride write their wedding vows. A sweet time. In December, I wrote my mother’s obituary. A bittersweet task.
2022: “Depend and rely on God. The Lord Almighty is his name” (Isaiah 48:2).
As inflation increased and COVID left its side effects, some of my freelancing income decreased. I returned to the financial place of living month to month — the way I lived and survived as a single mom. While it was not easy, this familiar path reminded me how much God cares for the orphan and the widow.
Each month, God provided enough money to pay the bills. I still had a roof over my head and plenty of food to share Sunday lunches with my son and his bride. We all had enough to exchange Christmas gifts, and we still lived in a free country.
El Shaddai is the Hebrew name for the Lord Almighty. It means he is the God who satisfies our every need. He is the God of sufficiency and great power. He is the one who loves us so deeply. He works all the puzzle pieces together. This same Almighty God continued to be faithful all the way through December 31.
2023: God sent me back to a familiar passage from the prophet Isaiah. “You, oh God, are my Father. I am the clay. You are the Potter. I am the work of your hand” (Isaiah 64:8).
As the uncertainty of this year unfolded with the potential of a vicious presidential campaign threatening our sanity, I had to keep reminding myself that I was being held in God’s hands and fashioned like clay. God continued to bless me with the publishing of my clients’ books and my own efforts at impacting the world with the words he breathed through me.
At God’s direct command — the Potter designing the clay — I joined a different church and became an ordained deacon. Every prayer time, every shut-in visit, every serving of communion was a reminder that the Potter was working through me and in me.
I could only hope that the shape of my spiritual vessel was something that would somehow honor God.
2024: Another verse, just next door to the previous year’s verse. “As the juice of the grape is found in the cluster and one says, ‘Do not destroy it, for there is a blessing in it,’ so will God do for his servants’ sake” (Isaiah 65:8).
Although I read this verse in every version and studied its context, I struggled to understand its message. Even now, at the end of 2024, I am not sure what I was supposed to be learning from 2024’s verse. The only thing that came to me was that I still had enough juice to serve God. He would provide a blessing through the work I did and the life I lived.
My part was to just follow. To accept the calling of clinging to the Vine — Jesus.
2025: The verse this year coincides with some health challenges I am facing. From one of my favorite Psalms that is so rich in its meaning, I plan to memorize the whole thing.
“You shall not be afraid of the terror of the night, nor of the arrow (the evil plots and slanders of the wicked) that flies by day . . . Only a spectator shall you be [yourself inaccessible in the secret place of the Most High]” (Psalm 91:5 & 8).
It does feel as if we are moving into a scary time. Perilous times. Days when we will be tested as seekers and bearers of the truth. And maybe we need this testing time to wake up. To realize how Jesus calls us to himself. Not to a political system. Not to a ‘fixing’ of everything that seems wrong.
But always and ever, trusting God so deeply that we are inaccessible in God’s secret place. Even while terror reigns.
Whatever occurs in the next months, I will find my hope in the verses God has given me and the ways he has been faithful throughout each year.
So happy new year to all my followers. I hope it’s a good one for you.
©2025 RJ Thesman – All Rights Reserved
Image Attribution: Hellio42 / Pixabay
With the new year, comes the opportunity to begin a new study. Check out It’s All About Trust: How to Grow Your Trust in God.
While I draw strength from passages in scripture and the writing of others, and keep hope as alive as possible, there have been times in my life when I decided to be proactive. Just as you have done. And are doing. The foundation of that action is to “reach out and draw in.” Maybe that is just another way of saying what Matthew 7:7 says, taken from the Sermon on the Mount, but in reference to God’s response to prayer. My reaching out includes that, but is also somewhat more worldly. Like when I reached out to the Kansas City Writer’s Group and asked for help. Your ministry was and continues to be the help I needed to “draw in.”
So true. Faith often requires action and stepping forward by faith cements those beliefs within us.
Thank you for that scripture from Psalms. I needed that!
You’re most welcome. I often need something from Psalms as well.
Thank you for inviting your readers to trek with you down this memory lane. Inspiring. Hope-fueled. Best of new years to you.
And to you, Jerry. May your 2025 be a personal and spiritual blessing.