Embrace Faith: New Word

For more than a decade, I’ve delighted in receiving one word from the Lord to guide me through the year. I’ve been stretched by learning to better communicate with my family and within my ministry. I’ve been bolstered by hope and joy as I’ve dug into Scripture to learn about God’s brand of each and how they can be part of my daily living. 

So when a pastor friend suggested adding a Word to my annual word, I knew he was right. A simple word might help guide, but it doesn’t plant itself in my heart; it doesn’t grow roots or produce fruit. But God’s Word does.

Now my annual January rhythm includes listening for God to point me to a new Word every year. In past years, I would scour the Bible for verses including my word of the year – verses like:

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
    will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

Psalm 91:1-2 ESV, emphasis mine

or

For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.

Colossians 3:3 NLT, emphasis mine

For 2025, God had a different plan. The word He’d handed me for the coming year, embrace, came in the fall of 2024, which left me plenty of time to ponder and pray. And to look for verses with embrace. And while there are a few, none stood out to me as a New Word for the year.

Instead of worrying about it, I moved forward with a planned study with The Devoted Collective – through the book of Acts.¹ And it was wonderful. The structure gave us new ways to read Scripture for ourselves and made room for others to speak into what we were discovering. I devoured a book I thought I already knew pretty well – for eight weeks.

As I approached chapter twenty-two, nothing about my rhythms changed. I underlined passages and circled key words. I read and reread. But when I read this verse, I came to a full stop.

“The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth.”

Acts 22:14

For the first time in my life, words in my Bible seemed to supernaturally be highlighted on the page, very nearly glowing. My heart palpitations sped. And everything around me just ceased to exist. Just this verse. 

I knew these words once spoken by Ananias to Saul in Damascus were now being spoken over me. God was telling me that I am chosen to know His will, to see His Righteous One, and to hear words from His mouth. 

Admittedly, I did not at first realize this verse would be my Word of the year. Nevertheless, I felt its significance deeply – even if I didn’t fully understand why.

But. I did have an inkling of what it meant in the moment.

Some context – in my curiosity about the Holy Spirit after witnessing His power among trusted believing friends and knowing His presence in my own being, I had gotten interested in the spiritual gift of prophecy, specifically. And during the weeks of studying Acts, I had also been reading a book about the prophetic gift.²  

…know His will …see His Righteous One …hear words from His mouth.

Each of these phrases encapsulate the prophetic. In the moment of this never before noticed verse coming to life in my Bible, I recognized the phrases for what they were – permission giving. God was asking me to embrace a supernatural, spiritual gift. And not just in the general sense, but for myself. 

Y’all, I wept. Okay, sobbed. 

I felt so seen. So cared for. So incredibly blessed.

New Year, New Word

That was November. 

Yet as the final days of 2024 passed, I still wondered what my new Word would be. Until I had my ‘oh-duh’ moment. 

We’d sold our house, so I was slowly organizing drawers and closets for the packers and movers; I was saving my desk for last. And I’m so glad I did because on an early January day, I opened my drawer and saw the blue sticky note I’d written that Acts 22:14 verse on. (I’d taken it off my wall for a showing in December). 

As I reaffixed that note on my wall directly above my desk and reread its words, something in me clicked. A knowing. This verse is all about embracing what God has for us. Somehow this verse that meant so much to me that November day as I studied Acts was going to become a guide for the new year. 

And now it’s February. 

We’ve just moved into our Georgia house, still working toward making it our home. I’ve been distracted and disrupted – rather frazzled and unfocused, at least on this Word. But, here we are. Getting our eyes readjusted to what God has for us – in the moment and for the coming months.

Know His will.
See His Righteous One.
Hear words from His mouth.

Won’t it be the adventure to see what it looks and feels like to embrace such chosenness. Such goodness – to actually know God’s will. Such blessedness – to see His Righteous One. Such giftedness – to hear words from God’s mouth. 

I suspect for each of us, God will speak in different ways even as His makes His will known through various inputs of inspiration. With the Spirit in us, the Word comes to life – and builds a life of faith within us. We can trust the Word of God to open our eyes and hearts and minds in new ways. And that means we can watch with great expectancy for all the ways God will reveal His Righteous One to us.

Embrace Faith

The year is still new. We have much to learn and live out. We have much to embrace.

Like faith.

We can choose faith instead of doubt. We can focus on faith instead of worry. But the very best way to grow our faith is to remain in God’s Word. The Psalms have much to say about God’s Word – its impact and effect. Psalm One, for instance, points out the beauty of delighting in God’s Word rather than coming at it with the drudgery of duty (v.1). The Message puts it this way:

Instead you thrill to God’s Word,
    you chew on Scripture day and night.
You’re a tree replanted in Eden,
    bearing fresh fruit every month,
Never dropping a leaf,
    always in blossom.

Psalm 1:2 MSG

In Eden, life as humans was as God always intended it – fruitful and full of faith, in right relationship with Him. Do you hear the good news of planting ourselves in God’s Word? It gets planted in us, and our relationship with Him blossoms. We become fruitful in a world that dies a little more everyday.

Paul tells us how much he thanks God for those who receive the word of God for what it is – GOD’S WORD. And how he celebrates the way God’s Word works in all who believe (1 Thessalonians 2:13). 

James, the brother of Jesus, tells us that if we will humbly accept the Word planted in us, we will be saved from the evil of the world (James 1:21). 

Embracing faith is embracing God’s Word. I wonder if we could say we’ll only have as much faith as God’s Word in us. For certain, I’m believing more and more that God’s Word is meant to be soaked in as much as it is to be devoured. We can study Scripture, but we also need to be planting it into our souls so that it can take root and become our very essence.

But, here’s the beauty of it. This getting God’s Word in us is not a race or a striving or an achievement. It’s a rhythm of simply being in it – so that it can be in us. And we do this one verse at a time. 

Can you imagine it? If we grabbed hold of one verse every year and let it really become part of us, think of how many verses we’d have in our fields of Word In Us by the time we leave this earth. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Just one verse a year. Not memorizing it but ingesting it. Ruminating on it. Giving it space to root deeply in us until we begin to look and act like it.

Friends, if you don’t have a New Word for this New Year, it’s never too late. Ask the Lord to do a revealing work in your life. Open the Bible and read – not for information but to know God better. Not to educate yourself but to hear a word from The Word. I promise, you’ll hear words from God’s mouth that will bless you and stretch you. And they will become such a guiding presence in your life that you’ll be forever changed.

Father God, thank You for getting your Word written down so that it could be passed down through all the thousands of generations to us. Forgive us for taking your Word for granted. And we ask that You would awaken within us a hunger for more of You – for more of your Word. Lord Jesus, the One who is the Word, we confess how limited our understanding of You is. But we desire more. We desire to delight in your Word – to approach it with a giddiness and a glee because it is there, in your pages, that we encounter You. It’s where we find truth to guide us and a voice to lead us. Holy Spirit, we know that without You we would miss out on what the Word is trying to tell us, what it is trying to do in us. Thank You for giving us ears to hear words straight from God’s mouth. We ask that You would highlight words from God for us so that we will know His will and see His Righteous One more consistently – day in and day out. We seek to embrace faith, so we reach our hands out and take hold of the Word. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
(inspired by Isaiah 40:8; 1 Peter 1:25; Matthew 5:6; John 1:1; Psalm 1:1-3; Psalm 119:105; John 14:26; Acts 22:14)

Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.

• 1 – The Devoted Collective is a ministry I’m greatly honored to be part of and to write for. Each year we publish a book that guides a deep dive into one book of the Bible. In 2024, we dove into Acts. And it was our best collective experience to date. The books are still available – in the US on Amazon^ and from our website – a digital version. Not only does this particular book guide its participants through a how-to of reading Scripture by giving daily and weekly structures, but it offers a daily ‘devotion’ that is meaty and full of insight for each day’s passage. So good.
• 2 – The book I read about the prophetic gift is from Seedbed’s president, Ivan Filby – a man full of the Holy Spirit and anointed in multiple gifts, including the gift of encouragement via prophecy. Speak Tenderly^ can be a quick read. But I quickly realized, it’s one I will need to go back to over and over. Its aim is to shape us to be receptors of God’s words so that we can share them as a means for encouraging other believers. Yes, please.
• If you know me at all, you will recognize that my pastor friend who inspires me to this whole New Year, New Word every January is JD Walt, author of the daily Wake Up Call on Seedbed. I’ve been reading or listening to JD”s posts for over a decade now. And he’s been showing me what it looks like to abide in God’s Word — not just read it for information. In fact, he has come up with a Five-R mnemonic device — each finger of the hand helps us remember to Read, Ruminate, Rememberize, Research, and Rehearse God’s Word. A recent series of posts on each of the Five R’s begins here.
• Well, I’ve extended our series, Embrace Faith for another four weeks as we look at how the Word and the Spirit play roles in our faith journeys. As such, I’ve tucked four new songs into our Embrace Faith playlist — all about the Word of God. Enjoy!
• The Abiding Life Newsletter is one way we continue the conversations about embracing faith and abiding in Christ. Its most recent edition is available on Substack. Our next issue should hit inboxes and Substack this week!

Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but even more so be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is what aids us in our desire and ability to become more Christlike.

If you don’t have a rhythm of being in the Word, may I recommend finding one that fits you. Not reading to expand your knowledge but to simply give the Word space to do a work in you. Maybe you could pick up a journal that offers verses to respond to — like this one or this one.^ Or you could start a reading plan on the YouVersion Bible app — like this one. Or you could just open to a book of the Bible, like Psalms or John, and just read. Our forefathers in the Church have a method of reading Scripture called Lectio Divina — it’s one way to read Scripture. A simple explanation is to:

Read: Read a short passage of the Bible slowly and aloud.
Reflect: Meditate on what you read.
Respond: Pray in response to what you read.
Rest: Come to rest in God’s presence.

On YouVersion, there’s a four-day reading plan using Lectio Divina.

But, truly, there’s no one way to get in the Word. Find the rhythm that works for you. And maybe it begins with finding one verse to sink your teeth — and soul — into. XOXO

• Finally, as a community, let us not neglect sharing God’s amazing grace with others! Share your God-stories with people around you. Share this site. Share God’s Word. Shine His light into the world!

Featured Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash. “All the Bits and Pieces” photo by Sahand Babali on Unsplash.
^Denotes an affiliate link, with which this ministry earns a bit to help it keep going. 😉