I am currently finishing up the Flourish Devotional and Study Steadfast: Cultivating a Heart Like Mary by Jennifer R Kochert and Mindy Kiker.
This week I have been reading, looking at, dissecting, discovering in Luke 2:19, “But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.”
We need to practice awareness and notice the things God is doing in our lives. We like Mary need to treasure what God does for us in our hearts so that when we are tempted to doubt we can hold onto the Truth we have stored in our hearts.
We need to continually and consistently practice treasuring and pondering so we never lose God’s Word and we never forget what He has done.
We are a forgetful people. I don’t know about you, but I forget the name of someone who I have not seen in a couple years. I forget specifics about what happened last week. If I want to remember something I must practice remembering. I have to repeat the story, keep it before me in my mind.
This world is full of distractions. If we are not careful, if we are not paying attention, we can find ourselves having drifted to a path we did not intend to be on. If we are not daily keeping God’s Truth before us we can find ourselves confused about what direction we are to go.
May we be found constantly focusing and renewing our minds on God’s Truth! Remembering God’s Truth keeps us steadfast and firmly secured to Him.
This world is full of negativity. If we are not careful, if we are not paying attention, our thoughts and minds will wander and rehearse conversations and events that are not edifying, not beneficial, not lovely or praiseworthy. We can quickly find ourselves in negative thinking, rehearsing all the “wrong” someone else did, or thinking about how misguided they were. If we do not pay attention to our thinking our thoughts will run rampant and cause us to spiral into self-pity and despair.
Our emotions follow our thoughts. We must choose what we think. We must choose to renew our minds on God’s Truth. We must be intentional. We choose what we allow to turn over and over in our minds.
We must fix our hearts on God. Spend time with Him. Sit in His Presence. Soak up His shalom.
We choose to believe we are loved by God and that He is working for our good. We focus on God’s Truth not the what-ifs of life that want to persuade us to doubt and fear.
We trust God! Moment by moment. Day by day. Week by week. Month by month. Year by year. We have faith. We believe before we see/have the evidence.
We choose to live in love not fear. Being rooted, grounded, established in the Truth we have been taught, overflowing with thankfulness! (Colossians 2:7)
We are transformed gradually, incrementally, as we live our lives trusting God in the normal daily stuff of living.
We keep showing up.
We keep seeking and discovering.
seeking and discovering a better WAY 
Thanks again Stephanie for sharing your heart. That verse in the Bible is one that always fascinated me because of the implications. Of all the people who knew Jesus, she was the only one who had special knowledge and was alive to see his death, burial and resurrection. She was the one who had an Angel visit her to tell her she was pregnant with the son of God. She was the one who gave birth to a child that she knew was miraculously conceived. She was the one who encouraged him to perform his first miracle and witnessed it happen. I can only imagine what was going through her head when she saw him crucified and then resurrected. She still may not have known exactly what just happened, but of all people, she knew it was special. It had to be because of her part in it and how it transpired. No one else could look at it like she could. Even Joseph, if he were alive, could not have the same vision as Mary.
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