Hindsight is 2020.

Sub-title: GREATER.

As we approached the end of 2019, I repeatedly heard prophesies and affirmations that 2020 would be the year of blessing, favor, and increase. I kept seeing IG posts proclaiming that 2020 would be the year of answered prayers, dreams delivered, and a release of promise into the lives of God’s people. I began to internalize this, became excited, and even impatient about the year to come. My soul was deeply discontented and the sound of increase filled me with great anticipation.

As I sit here writing this I’m challenged to ponder why that is when in hindsight, 2019 was the year that I grew the most in my entire life. It was a challenging year for me both internally and externally. For starters, I faced serious health issues. I was diagnosed with endometriosis on January 3rd of 2019. I was forced to navigate painful treatment options. I was in pain every single day for 4 months. Not to mention the depressing thoughts of all the possible side-effects that endo brings, specifically, infertility. I navigated through this and found myself on the other side. But as I was navigating I found myself in deep financial trouble and for the first time in my life I felt that I wasn’t supposed to go to my parents for help, but to God. This year I went through deeply painful emotional healing, disappointment, and extreme discontentment. It was a year where God really challenged my trust in him and brought me to a greater level of reliance on him alone. My intimacy with God was insane. I felt closer to him and I fell deeply in love with him. I experienced the greatest of amount of spiritual growth and prosperity of my soul than I ever have in my life in 2019.

So why, with all of this said, at the end of the year did I find myself so disappointed, fidgeting? I was deeply desiring more for myself, better things, and to transition into a life that was more fitting for where I thought I’d be by now. I began to seek how I could move around, change. I even considered leaving the team help lead at my church. I felt like I needed to be somewhere new, where new things could happen. Career wise, I’m not where I always thought I’d be. I have an amazing job and I have found an amazing family with the people I get to work with but, something in me felt that I was failing. I found myself asking God is this really where he saw me being when he created me; did he really think ahead to the 26th year of my life and say this is where I’d be. I felt like a disappointment to God, my parents and most deeply, myself. So naturally, in hearing about the year that 2020 was to be, I became hopeful and in my heart, I had abandoned where God had placed me. I found comfort in the idea of moving forward, changing, and transitioning out of what I thought was bad. Loving and being with God was not enough for me. But all throughout these feelings, thoughts, movements, and discomfort I kept hearing God’s voice in a whisper “Be Still”. So, I finally stopped fidgeting and I got still.

At the end/start of each year, I sit with God myself and ask him what the theme of the next season is that he’d like for us as the church to focus on. The word he gave me this year was “Greater”. He told me it would be the year of “greater love, greater grace, greater anointing, greater blessing, greater favor, and greater intimacy”.  Of course I got super excited, considering the condition of my heart. This confirmed what I had been seeing and hearing and it gave me a sense of direction for the year that I felt I was in need of. It excited me and gave me peace with the being still thing. But as I really sat with this I realized that in the same vein, it validated my inner feelings of discontentment, encouraged my dependence of self, and provided me with happiness in knowing that where I am now in my life would soon come to an end. I’d finally be released. Things were going to be better, greater, and once again my heart abandoned where God had me.

Greater. The word is simple yet so complex. It implies growth, depth, height, length, and increase. As I was sitting with God about this word as it applies to this new season we’ve entered he pointed out to me that it also can induce comparison. It can imply that where you are currently just isn’t cutting it anymore, it can encourage discontentment if we don’t take a look at it closer. At first glance it can be perceived to mean that that where you are going is greater than where you have been. It can incite a desire to work harder, make changes in an upward direction, move forward and grow. God began to speak to me about the shift that is about to take place and he told me that there is a great temptation to get out of position right now because of what he is about to unfold. He told me for every promise that 2020 would bring there was a temptation or distraction. The greatest of them is discontentment.

I stopped and began to analyze how I’d received this prophetic word of greater and realized that I had began to put my hope in what was to come and had rejected the idea that God alone is enough. I realized that I needed to be in a place where if things never shifted externally that having God would be enough for me.

I began to ask God about what “greater” means for his children and for me personally. I began to interpret this word “greater” in a sense of my soul and my relationship with God and realized that I want 2020 to be a year of greater relationship with him alone. Periodt. By greater I mean deeper. He began to speak to me about my own discontentment. It is true that God is doing a new thing within me, he has promised me greater, and he will deliver but he challenged me on setting out this new season by being still and laying aside weight that I’ve carried. He told me to “travel light”.

He began to adjust my vision by looking back on the years passed. I began to look at all the ways he was in them, and worked through them in ways I was unable to see. Things I thought that broke me actually grew me. Things I saw as unbearable I’ve faced them with God. I grew so much that sometimes I am unrecognizable to myself. I realized that the reason I never saw these things before is because when I heard the prophesies for previous years, I had expectations for what that would mean. I had visuals of what I expected God to do. So sitting with this God challenged me on the 2020 word “greater”. He asked me a simple question “How can you expect greater when you haven’t seen the greater in where you already are”. He challenged to take a closer look at my current situation to see the greater blessing that already exists in my reality. As I took a closer look I was enlightened to see all the ways that God has brought increase into my life and how where I am now is enabling me to do things that, should I be elsewhere, I would not be able to do.

In him asking me this I realized that I was in the way of God and that my discontentment and expectations, if not dealt with, would block me from truly perceiving the greater in this season. By releasing expectations of what His word will mean to us, being still, being attentive to him, being more intimate with him than we ever have, and seeking out the “greater” where we already are.

What I saw is that it will be impossible for us to truly perceive the “greater” in 2020 that God has for us when we have discontent hearts. It will be impossible for us to fully receive what he has for us if we have set specific ideas and expectations of what greater is to mean for us. What I realized though is that it is possible to dream with God about the future and allow him to prepare you for it while remaining content with where he has you now.  In my own life yearly prophetic words have become the “light at the end of the tunnel” after a “rough” year, but God challenged me to shift my perspective and I believe that perspective shifts are in order for us to receive the blessing that is to come in 2020.