Do You Have Your Theme Word for the Year?

Last year I wrote a post on coming up with one word or a theme word for the year. This is what I do each year instead of New Year’s resolutions. The idea is to come up with a theme word, preferably one that God reveals to us, that we will focus on for the year. The process to come up with our theme word consists of evaluating the previous year, spending some time in prayer asking God for direction, listening to God and paying attention during quiet times and bible readings, and looking for anything that stands out or has a pattern or repetition. Through this process (which could take a couple of days up to a couple of weeks), a word is revealed, and that sets our course and focus for the upcoming year.

Today I thought I’d share this recent process for me to hopefully give you a practical, tangible example of what that looked like in action for me.

First I started the reading plan again

Each year, I go through the 4-day devotional reading plan on the YouVersion Bible app, called “One Word That Will Change Your Life”. This plan gives more in depth instructions, daily meditation verses, and guidance on deciding my one word or theme word. I could probably do without the plan at this point, but it’s nice to have a step-by-step guide or plan to fall back on. I actually started this on New Year’s Eve this time which is a little earlier than usual for me.

I went in thinking that I probably wouldn’t come up with my word right away and especially not in the four days it would take to go through the reading plan. Primarily I believed this because that’s what happened last year! It took me a couple of weeks to really “find” my word because I really wanted to be led by God instead of just picking a word (even though that probably would have been just fine). Surprisingly, I settled on my theme word this year in just 3 days.

Lessons from the previous year

I’ve shared before that I’m big on journaling and taking notes, especially during quiet times and study times. So this step is fairly easy for me because I have my journal to look back on. I took some time to flip through and scan the pages from the previous year. As I did, I wrote down some of the lessons I learned. Here were a few of the things I wrote down…

• Give up! Give up trying to do and control things myself and hand the reigns over to God. Let God do the work—When I am weak, He is strong.
• Peace with change and new things (in new relationships, in transitions from losing old relationships, in the face of job changes and the possibility of relocation, etc.).
• Rest, relax, refresh. More time (i.e. downtime) for myself. I did LOTS of book reading this year for the first time in a LONG time. I’m learning to become more laid-back and less rigid and structured all the time.
• Learning new ways to pray and do spiritual battle (training and preparation for a prayer team I was on). I had so many answered prayers in this specific area.
• Many “back-to-basics” moments where I had to go back to what I’ve done before in times of struggle.
• More loving view of unbelievers and sinners…seeing them in new ways, seeing them the way God sees them, and becoming less judgmental and condemning of them.
• LOTS of removal of pride, lots of humbling.
• Stepping out of comfort zone in several areas.
• 2018 was a preparation year…nothing really big or major or difficult…I feel like it was maybe preparation stuff.

Looking at my previous theme word and how it played out over the previous year

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