Favorite ♥ Moments #7 Captivated

For a few years now, Pete and I have been praying over and selecting a word for the year for our family and homeschooling.

There is nothing magical about picking a word as a focus for the year. It can have as much or as little emphasis as a family is willing to give it. I find that if I set my mind and heart on something, I am continually coming back to a foundation of something the Lord is showing me or wants to show me. It helps me say no to those things that would detract from our emphasis, whether or not they are good things. This is why prayer goes into the selecting of a word and focus for our family. It will help us determine what we do in the coming year.

As we prayed over the past month in preparation for 2018, Abba kept bringing us back to the concept of being captivated by Him. Our schedule alone in this season is enough to make anyone dizzy. Just about every single task we are committed to doing is important and necessary for some reason or another so it remains vital that we stay connected and “distracted” by the beauty of the Lord. Our hearts as we walk through this temporary time of being “productive busy” is that we would continually come back to our Life source, our enjoyment, our motivation, our charisma, our very living and being. The heart behind the word captivated is one of pure delight in the thoughts of God and His work through us. It is meant to emphasize a continual heart connection despite having a season of lots of working out in the fields at tasks He has laid out for us to do. It is meant to help us focus on those times when He draws us away to Himself, never letting those heart strings be broken between us and Him. It is to lay aside those things that do NOT satisfy, being ever increasingly dissatisfied with anything that causes us to forget our captivation with Him. We have cut out many superfluous activities as every hour has become precious to us now that we have a very full schedule. Being captivated will be a reminder to fill the down-time hours with activities that truly are refreshing to the spirit and/or enable us to live as better vessels for His purposes.

As we discussed the meaning of the word captivated as a family this morning, Noah narrowed it down beautifully. “Captivated means paying attention to the thing that matters.”

We spent some time as a family creating a vision collage/board with each person contributing his/her own unique talent and interpretations for what captivated will mean individually in the coming year.