A Year of Hope and Bearing Fruit

 

My sister gave me a gift at the end of last year, one that she had handcrafted herself from copper wire that had come from some of Dad’s left over fuse wire that he uses to fix the powerlines. 

It was this beautiful wire tree, and unbeknownst to her, just two weeks prior, I had asked Stephen to make me a wire tree for Christmas, and he said he was too busy. 

I wrote about bearing fruit with a baby
earlier in the year . . .

It wasn’t just a gift in and of its own right, she had actually made each of us a gift, praying over it and receiving a word of encouragement to pass on from God, and mine was that 2014 would be a year of bearing fruit.

At the beginning of the year, I was reading on the website www.aholyexperience.com about the concept of naming your year, knowing the season you are in and how to walk in that and we decided to name our year:

HOPE

(I wrote the following earlier this year)

After discovering that the true definition is not just a wish or abstract thought but a: well founded and confident belief that a specific vision (goal, desire or promise) will be achieved or fulfilled within a specific amount of time. 

So I’m not going to have resolutions this year, but I’m going to have hopes to be fulfilled in different areas of ministry, family and my writing. 

I challenge you to think, what are my hopes this year and how can I see them fulfilled?  What goals can I set to get there?  How can I break those goals down into achievable tasks, remember with a specific time frame, not unrealistic but something to work towards, because may I remind you gently that hope deferred makes a heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life. 

***

I was wondering how that all tied in exactly with bearing fruit, other than having another baby, which we didn’t feel called to do just yet.

Looking back now, I can see how it all tied in, but at the time I couldn’t.  I figured bearing fruit meant adding more stuff to my already busy life, and so we planned and organised, set goals, moved house and pushed forwards.  None of which was bad stuff, in fact we wrote down a good many goals this year for our future, our dreams and visions for the next 1-5 years and beyond.  We read through many of our prophetic words and prayed into them, but it felt like we weren’t really getting anywhere.

Hey guys, write your goals down because a revelation I had was: Goals Inspire Faith,

Sunday School board

Sometimes you forget that in order to bear fruit, you need to prune first, and there came a point where I had to drop a lot of the activities I had been involved in and take a pay cut on my job so that I could prioritise my baby and being a Mummy. 

Yet, at the same time I was definitely meeting my goals of setting up a blog where Mum and I would write, revamping my old blog about writing, books and authors, teaching on the topic of health at our church and trying to find myself a little business that I could get into. 

Sometimes in the middle of bearing fruit it doesn’t look like much.  The fruit starts at lots of little flowers that don’t amount to much but look nice, and then after the excitement of the start has worn off, you are sitting there producing effort and growing fruit, and if you don’t take in the right nourishment for your body, soul and spirit, the fruit is going to get stunted.   Even if you are trying to get started in business, unless you feed the spirit part of you, it will still be stunted.

Finally my fruit has started to become ripe and beneficial to others.   All year I’ve wanted to help people with health, and possibly make money if it were possible.  At the beginning of the year I even wondered about doing a naturopathy course, but I knew I couldn’t handle it along with everything else I was doing.

Then in September of this year I became involved in Youngevity 90 for Life.   I’ve written briefly about the book that I read, Dead Doctors Don’t Lie, and the incredible information contained within, about how beneficial vitamins and minerals are for supporting health and helping with about 900 diseases. 

I knew that God must have put in nature somewhere nutrition that could help people who were sick.   If vitamin C is as incredible as people say, what about the rest of the 90 minerals, vitamins and amino acids?  What could they help with?

I don’t want this to be a post urging you to buy something, because it’s not, I’m just sharing how my dream to help people with health has finally come into its own.  I have been able to help one guy in our church avoid a knee replacement by directing him to supplements, and he’s thrilled that he can also now see better than ever before and doesn’t need his hearing aids much either.

I was asked by international speakers to organise an event for Toowoomba, and in their tour of 5 cities, it was the biggest event in the smallest town. 

I’ve been able to start a business helping people get well naturally, something I’ve always wanted to do, and start saving away little bits of money. 

My year of bearing fruit and of Hope, of knowing what my vision was, even if it didn’t quite all end up the way I thought it would, has been incredible.

If you do have health problems, ranging from deafness, cavities, eyesight troubles, diabetes, chronic fatigue, cystic fibrosis, or anything in between, I encourage you to have a listen to this link, and then e-mail me for more information or write in the comments,  because even though I’m in Toowoomba, Australia, 90 for Life has networks all over the world.  :) 

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