I believe in journaling. I’ve been writing my thoughts and devotions in a plethora of notebooks and journals before I ever knew “daily journaling “ was a thing. This morning as I was preparing for my morning devotion time, (aka making coffee) ☕️ I had the thought that I need to drill down deeper into the things I’m believing for right now. To write out everything, specifically some things I may be thinking about but haven’t specifically prayed about. This thought led me to go find my old prayer journal and begin using it again. (Last entry was in 2020.) 😳 🫣 Its companion book, Prayers that avail much, was my guide in learning how to pray according to God’s Word over 30 years ago. Side note: It was such a blessing to see a prayer that I wrote over our goals to buy a house almost 20 years ago and the follow-up entry of the answer. We still live in and love our little house 19 years later! 🏡 As Christian Goal Achieving Ladies, praying scriptural prayers over our goals is a holy turbo boost for not only our achievement, but also our alignment. (There’s no shame in crossing out a goal that we thought was right at the time, but the Lord steers us in a different direction.) Question: Would you find it helpful to have a module in our Classroom that has scriptural prayers that you can use as a guide to pray over your goals? Please put yes, no, or maybe so in comments. 😁 (GIFs encouraged!)

Well, I finally did it. I sat down and wrote my top 7 goals. I already keep some of them, but am working hard on others. I’m hopeful that this will help me set up a regular routine to maintain.

Hi, Friends! I have paused a few days on posting as I ponder our path forward here. Also, if you read my earlier post about my trip to the ER and that it turned out that I had a stroke, well… I have a tendency to just keep going as if it never happened and assume I can keep up the same pace. As I sit here with ice on my foot while typing due to a wildly ungraceful tumble I took this morning while taking the trash can to the curb, I realize that I need to make a few tweaks. For our group, I’d like to start by going back a bit to share the history of how the idea for this group came about and what I hope we can accomplish together here. I will start with that tomorrow, as honestly I’m finding it a struggle to think creatively with throbbing toes. 😝🚨 For now I’ll just say as both old and new friends join the group, I can sense your hopefulness for dreams and ideas that you’re excited about achieving and I believe we are all going to support each other forward. 🥰 PS: Will you please say a prayer for my toes, my knee, and my wrist? 🤪 I’m a little banged up at the moment. 🙃 Thank you!

As we consider the state of our mindset today (and every day), the direction of our thoughts will follow the direction of our identity. In other words, who or what we think we are will determine what we do. The first identity crisis we see in the Bible is in Genesis chapter 3, right after Eve and Adam ate the forbidden fruit. Most translations of Genesis 3:10 read, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” But if you look at the way it was written in the original Hebrew, the sentence is actually formed as: "And he said, 'Your voice I heard in the garden, and I feared, because naked I am, and I hid myself.'" "Naked I am" has a very different meaning than, "I was naked." It's a statement of identity, rather than a wardrobe emergency. Then God's response, from the literal Hebrew: "And He said, 'Who told you that naked you are? Is it from the tree that I commanded you so as not to eat from it — you have eaten?'" That was mankind's first experience of shame, and God has been working from that time until this to teach mankind that we can be released from that shame and once again be clothed in His righteousness. The literal Greek translation of Galations 3:27 says "For as many as into Christ were baptized, Christ you clothed yourselves with." 2 Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" So what does this have to do with pursuing our dreams and goals? I think that many times when we sit down to begin working toward something we really want or need, we feel like we're starting from way behind where we've been somehow convinced we "should" be. But the truth is, in God's sight we are already way ahead of where we think we are. He's been trying to convince us of that. We may be at the very beginning of a new idea or dream, but we're coming at it as a child of the Most High King, blessed, highly favored and supernaturally supported; loved, and abundantly supplied with wisdom for the asking, and blessing for the taking. Isaiah 1:19 "If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:"

Wouldn't it be awesome if we could just take our daily to-do list and just blow right through it? ✔️Done! ✔️Done! ✔️Done! ✔️Done! ✔️Done! ✔️Done! ✔️Done! Well, since that's not reality...(mostly happy to get halfway through the list anyway) there are ways we can make our tasks less taxing. A couple of days ago I briefly mentioned the importance of prioritizing and that can actually be a way to effectively lighten your mental load as you chop away at that list. (And I know, it's so easy for our goal-achieving tasks to get moved closer the bottom of the list as our daily-life tasks just keep getting piled on.) A simple strategy is to look at that list of 15 or so things that are waiting for your attention and pick 3 that are either the hardest, most unpleasant, or most needle-moving tasks on the list. (OK, be honest, you wanted to do the easiest ones first, right?) Getting the big ones out of the way early can give you a big sigh of relief and a good 'ol dopamine hit of accomplishment. What's one task on your list that you're willing to tackle rather than trade for 5 easier ones? 💪🏼