Mid Year Check-In: My Word for 2019

This year I chose communicate as the word around which all my goals were centered. I’m working to communicate love, faithfulness, appreciation, respect, friendship and closeness with my husband. With others, I’m working to communicate a gentle and quiet spirit who hopes in God.

I can definitely say I’ve made progress with my goals, but I can absolutely say I have a long way to go! So often I communicate frustration, impatience, pride and selfishness instead of the things I listed above.

The thing that makes the biggest difference is an extremely simple principle that we all know: the things that I put into my heart and mind are the things that come out of my mouth. Jesus said it this way in Matthew 12:34, “Whatever is in your heart determines what you say.”

I have found that when I’m intentionally filling my mind with wisdom and truth, I have so many opportunities to communicate those things with other people. Otherwise I’m just stumbling over my own wisdom (yikes) with meaningless comments and more of that frustration, impatience, pride and selfishness.

Here’s how I do that:

• Listen to worship music (here’s my YouTube playlist) or podcasts on the way to work
• Listen to the Proverb for the day and the passages in my daily Bible reading early in the day
• Pray Scripture for the people in my life: family, friends, co-workers

Of course I still listen to fun music, watch entertaining shows and tell funny stories throughout the day. But I’ve found that being intentional with how I start my day makes a huge difference toward my success in communicating a gentle and quiet spirit to those around me.

I talked a little bit more about this in a recent From My Heart Friday video – you can watch/listen to that here.

How are you doing with your word or goals for this year? Do you need to adjust what you’re taking in to improve what you’re putting out?

Read More: 14 Days To A Hopeful Marriage