"I will bless the Lord at all times: His praise shall continually be in my mouth"
PSALM 34:1
WELCOME TO 2017!
I feel so grateful to be writing to you today and starting this year off by giving praise to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I can't think of anything better than to honor His great name.
As I look back on the trials and tribulations of 2016, being diagnosed with triple negative stage 3C invasive breast cancer, going through 3 surgeries (including a lumpectomy and axillary lymph node dissection), and enduring 16 rounds of aggressive chemotherapy and radiation treatments, no one has to tell me to praise the Lord. Only by God's amazing grace did I make it to sit and write to you today. At the start of 2016 I didn't know what the year was going to bring.
I won't sit here and say that 2016 was easy, but it was a necessary path that the Lord took me down in order to grow my faith. I would never had imagined that cancer was to be a tool God used to test how much I was going to trust Him, but indeed this storm He took me through so that my relationship with Him would be stronger, and that there was no doubt who was in control of my life. I have such a renewed will to write and share all that Jesus places within my heart with the world. When you face something like getting a diagnosis that you have a potential terminal disease it definitely puts things in a whole new perspective in your life. I go into 2017 with a bold faith that God holds my future in His hands, and for this I'm so thankful. I praise Jesus with all that I have.
I will be taking my blogs into a different direction this year. I will still be sharing scriptures daily, but I will also be writing more of what the Lord places on my heart to share with His people. Also I have enlisted other talented writers who will be sharing inspirational words and testimonies of what the Lord is doing in their lives. This has me excited beyond words!
It is my prayer that 2017 is a year that you've made plans to spend time with the Lord in daily prayer and bible study. There are many resolutions being made to do this or that, but have you included Jesus in those plans? We never know what tomorrow is going to bring, or even if we will live to see tomorrow. Wouldn't it be so wonderful to develop an attitude to praise the Lord at all times, through the good and bad? He has promised to never leave nor forsake us. We are not promised that things will always be easy, but that through all that we go through, He will be with us.
"Fear you not; for I am with you: be not dismayed; for I am your God: I will strengthen you; yea, I will help you; yea, I will uphold you with the right hand of My righteousness"
Isaiah 41:10
