breathe. pray. create. || Part 1

If you have been following my Instagram account (if you haven't, you're missing a bunch since I barely make time for the blog anymore), you'll know that the theme words God has revealed to me for 2015 are the title of this post.

breathe. pray. create.

On the surface, these seem fairly simple.  I have to breathe just to stay alive.  Check! Done.  Since it's already January 2, I have officially breathed in 2015.  I also breathed last year and the year before that  and all the other years before that since 1973.  And pray?  Well yeah, duh.  I'm a Christian and Christians should generally talk to God in the form of prayer regularly -- or at least now and then.  Create seems pretty obvious, too, especially for those of you who appreciate making stuff.  I like to write.  I like to take photos.  Lately, I've even started incorporating some regular painting and drawing into my daily schedule.

So if it's so easy for me to do these three things, why is it that God is leading me to really focus on the trio for the whole year?

That's the question I'm left pondering.  While it's still January, I want to dive in a little bit to each part of this challenge in a separate post and then possibly a post about all three as a unified idea.  That's five posts I'm promising this month, including this one you're currently reading.  Hopefully I'll do a better job of following through than I did on my month-long challenge that lasted like three days.  These posts are about some of the ideas that I think the Lord may want me examining in my life a little closer beyond just doing what the words say.

THEN, maybe in December or at least later in the year, I can recap and post about what I've learned over the year and what God showed me with regard to these concepts of breathing, praying and creating.  So I'll be able to see where I started and then compare it with what actually happens over the course of the year.  I have a feeling it's going to be good -- because stuff with God usually is.  So I hope you'll journey with me here in the blog (when I show up) and maybe even over there on Instagram (link to the right) and see where this theme takes me.

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, so I like this plan of hearing God whisper these words to me and seeing what He does with them in my life.  Do you have any New Year's traditions or practices?  This whole "word" concept is something I tried in 2014 and it had its ups and downs, but I don't think I really spent time doing the evaluation I needed to the way I'm planning to do with these words, so hopefully it'll go better this year.

Okay ... see you in Part 2.