Reflecting and Projecting: How to Live Each Year with Purpose

[Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Britney Christian Miller. Britney is sharing her story today about being a Christian missionary and musician abroad and her goals now that she is home in California this year. You may be noticing more music on Devotional Diva! I’m thrilled about this, and there is more to come 😉 Thank you, Britney!]

This time of year, all of us do two things; we reflect and we project. We reflect on the year we just lived and then we project our ideals on to a new year. Whether we do this for five minutes when we post our best nine on Instagram, or we spend several weeks pondering, none of us escape this deep desire for our lives to count for something in the future and wonder if it did in the past.

Each year, instead of doing a new years resolution, I pick a theme that I want to work on. In 2016 my theme was “yearning.”

I wanted to wake up every morning with a deeper yearning for God: to know him more, to seek him more and to experience him to greater depths.

My husband and I were about to move across the world, to a country most people have never heard of, and serve as missionaries to women enslaved to sexual exploitation and human trafficking.

Yearning for God wasn’t just a luxury; it was part of my lifeline. It was my only security in an otherwise completely uncertain realm.

Our experience overseas was full of curveballs. We moved there to work at a center for women coming out of sexual exploitation and the day we arrived, all the women who were living there had moved out for various reasons. But instead, I got to focus my efforts on street outreach to women who were still being exploited and God infused in me a deeper passion for reaching those who are held captive to the enemy. My yearning for God grew as I wrestled with witnessing evil and yet knowing the power of God in the midst of it all. Yearning was no longer something I had to muster up or work for; it became absolutely necessary to process the world around me.

Another curveball came when after only six short months of us living overseas we felt God calling us back home. Our original plan was to be there at least a year and a half, but most likely longer. Again, I wrestled and yearned for God in the most desperate way to help me make sense why he called us across the world only to bring us right back. I didn’t receive a glorious revelation of God’s plans for our future right off the bat, but we followed anyways not quite sure of what the next season would hold.

Shortly after I arrived home, God gave me my theme for 2017:

“This is why I remind you to fan into flames the spiritual gifts God gave you when I laid my hands on you. For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love and self-discipline.” – 2 Timothy 1:6-7

God has called me to “fan into flames” the gifts he put inside of me not only during my time overseas, but my whole life. I am beginning to see the glimpses of why God called us overseas in the first place. My passion for fighting for those who are enslaved to human trafficking was not just something I could do overseas. In fact, it turns out that my seemingly beautiful hometown in the midst of southern California is also darker than I ever realized growing up surrounded by all of my church friends.

I have already begun to serve with another Christian non-profit called “Forever Found” which allows me to connect with girls much like the ones I worked with overseas. I even get to be a part of launching a brand new team that will come alongside girls in my county the moment they are being rescued out of trafficking.

I stand at the edge of this great cliff with 2017 before me; my toes dangle over the edge as I peek forward in curiosity. In some ways, this year feels far more uncertain than the one before it, because I have no idea what it will hold. But I know one thing; I will spend this year fanning the flames of the spiritual gifts God has put inside of me.

Watch Britney’s debut music video filmed overseas while she was serving in missions. A message of hope that no matter how far we wander, or how forgotten we feel, there is a God chasing after us with an unrelenting love:

Britney Christian Miller is a missionary, singer-songwriter, blogger and worship leader from southern California. Her biggest passion is reaching girls who are enslaved to human trafficking and sexual exploitation and sharing with them the hope to be found in Christ. She spent her teens and early 20’s writing and recording music and touring all over the country as a spokesperson for a national campaign. In 2016, her and her husband moved overseas to serve as missionaries with YWAM Freedom 61. She now lives back in southern California and works directly with girls coming out of human trafficking and exploitation. Read more about her journey on her blog: www.worthyoffreedom.com