by Dr Gayle Claxton
Dear Partners
2024 is now well behind us and 2025 is marching on with pace. I don’t know about you, but the older I get the faster the years seem to go by. It hardly seems that a full year has passed, but the truth is that it has!
So, as we contemplate what we see ahead for 2025, let me encourage you to look beyond the possibilities and opportunities that we had in 2024 – they are gone and cannot be changed, modified or regained.
Let the regrets we may have had, challenge us to achieve successes in 2025.
Let the hurts, disappointments or negative things we experienced, serve to encourage us to let go and not look back, and to not allow these things to cause a drifting from what God has for us in 2025.
Let the successes and fruitfulness we may have experienced in our lives in 2024 draw us to the place of humility in the knowledge that we have only been able to achieve all we did only with the help of the Lord. Let’s not allow a spirit of pride to be the attitude of our hearts!
All of this in itself is a huge challenge, but it is all possible.
So many New Year’s resolutions are made regarding how we want to change and set goals and visions in our lives, family, churches, and finances, and yet so many of these are not achieved and end after a few short months in discouragement.
Setting such goals may be a good starting point, but let’s make goals to move our visions from the starting blocks, and to be intentional with our decisions and actions.
I believe the Vision for 2025 for us as a Ministry and me as a person and leader of where God has intrusted me, is to be intentional with His Vision for me. Not just to know what He wants and has planned for me, but to act with full intention towards what I feel is in my heart.
So, what does that look like?
The dictionary definition for the word “intentional”, is “done with intention or on purpose”. It refers to actions that are planned or intended. An intentional act is deliberate and not accidental.
There are several passages in the Bible that emphasize for you and me the importance of living deliberately and purposefully in order to please God and produce good fruit in our lives.
A wonderful passage I would like to drop into your spirit is found in Proverbs 4: 25-27 “Look straight ahead, and fix your eyes on what lies before you. Mark out a straight path for your feet; stay on the safe path. Don’t get sidetracked; keep your feet from following evil”. (NLT)
This is one of so many verses that teach us to live with intention. Maybe do a personal study on how many times Scripture directs us to be Intentional with our lifestyles, not for our sake but to bring about the Kingdom of God where we are right now!
So, as 2025 finds feet in our lives with all that it has in store, let me encourage you as I will do myself, to look beyond, to set my face as flint toward that which I am being called for this year; to give all I did last year and so much more, to step out in new areas of Faith, and to love and live 2025 in all that God has for me, being Intentional each day to run the race, and hold the vision before me, for the sake of the Kingdom of God being built in and through me!
The Lord Bless you and keep you and may 2025 be your best year yet!
Dr Gayle Claxton
Reference: New Living Translation (NLT)