I want you to ask yourself something. As you're going about listening to this episode today, I want you to ask yourself this question. What am I searching for? Just sit with that. Think about it. It might be one immediate thing that comes to your mind. It might be an entire list of things that come to your mind, or maybe you just need a second to marinate on it. Think about it and truly ask yourself, what are you searching for? What are you chasing after? Now, this could be a lot of things. It could be a specific goal, especially financial goals. I know a lot of us have those financial goals. It could be something in relation to better health. It could be you searching for a specific status. You looking for happiness. You trying to fulfill a specific part of you. It could be so many things. And there is no wrong answer. This is a question that's going to depend on where you're at in life, and who you are as a unique person, what it is that you feel like you are searching for. So, whatever that is, just keep that in the forefront of your mind throughout the remainder of this episode, because I want to help you. redirect you a bit, if you'll let me. All right. Again, I am here on these episodes to plant seeds, to try to help, to try to encourage, to try to educate based off of what I have experienced, or am currently experiencing, or just based off of what I feel that God is putting on my heart to speak about and to normalize. So let me back up a little bit and talk about why I'm asking you this question. At the beginning of this year, I did what all of us do. We think about how we want this new year to go. What do we want to change? Uh, how do we want to show up? What do we want to improve on? Any goals that we have? Any things we want to try? We either start thinking about it or we really start making an entire game plan for it with vision boards and productivity tools and all the things. And I had this moment where I was sitting there just thinking about all the things that I wanted to do or achieve or improve on or get better at, start doing, stop doing in this new year. And as I was journaling about this, I then tried to go deeper by coming up with specific action steps I can take, coming up with a game plan to reach these specific goals and ultimately fulfilling what it is that I'm searching for, getting what it is that I'm searching for this very year. But, I noticed that as I attempted to come up with those steps and think about an entire game plan, I started bumping into roadblocks mentally. I started feeling confused. I started feeling really overwhelmed at all the things. And then I started to feel really unmotivated to search after these things. I could feel that that non motivation was coming from a place of feeling taken aback by all the things that there are to do, all the tasks that there are to do to get what it was that I was searching for this year within my business, within my health, within the projects, everything that I wanted to try this year, I just started to get overwhelmed and started to fear me reaching a point of burnout to the point where all of these things I was searching for when it came to achieving them this very year, I wouldn't be able to do. because I was overwhelmed by it all, or I was burnt out by it all. So then I stopped. I stopped writing. I stopped trying to come up with a game plan. And I just sat there for a minute. And when I picked my pen back up to continue journaling, I found myself writing about something else. I started writing about how I was feeling. in the midst of me trying to set all these goals. And then as I wrote and it just flowed, there was this phrase that I wrote down in my journal that stood out to me. And I knew for a fact that spiritually God was telling me that this is the phrase that I need to search after. This phrase is the ultimate goal, nothing else. And that phrase was. redirect the search. Redirect the search. And I knew in that moment what that meant. I knew that it meant instead of me searching for all the things in this world and everything that comes with it, the personal goals, the business goals, the financial management goals, the family goals, all of those things, although those can be really good, instead of that being my priority search redirected. and search after God. So then I just started thinking about, well, what does that look like? And spiritually, I just felt when we search after God, first and foremost, and allow everything else to be on the back burner, then over time, things fall into place Goals fall into place. Certain achievements or callings you're wanting to answer, it just falls into place the way that God wants it to. All because you took the time to search after Him first. He was the priority. Now, I know this can come off as like super self explanatory. You might be listening to this and you might be like, Angel, look, I already know, like, put God first. I get it. I already know that. I feel like I'm already doing that. But are you really? Because I will honestly and bluntly say right now on this podcast episode that I struggle in putting God first. I say I put God first because I try to put God first, but a lot of times my actions show otherwise. My actions show in some cases that I put my business first. I put my money first. I put myself first. And it's not about those things never being prioritized or anything like that. At the end of the day, God does call you to steward what he does give you in this world and the ideas that he wants you to shape. It's just about, are those things coming before God himself? And if they are, then it's a problem. If they are, you're going to reach that state of constant burnout. of never feeling fulfilled, never being satisfied, things never seeming like they're good enough. Why? Because you didn't search after God first so that he could fill those empty spaces, so that he could give you peace when burnout comes, so that he can fill you up to the point where you always feel fulfilled no matter what you do, so that he can satisfy you. So, again, I want to ask you, what are you searching for? And maybe, just maybe, could you challenge yourself to redirect your search? Have your goals. Set your plans. But God's plan will always prevail. And the best way for you to fall in line with God's plan, always prevailing, and allowing Him to be your provider, allowing Him to make the impossible happen, allowing Him to be your comforter, is to put Him first. First, search after God. So, then I started thinking about, okay, well, what does that mean? Because I can just say, top of mind, searching for God means you read your Bible, right? You're searching for Him. You're trying to understand Him. You read and you pray and your heart is just all for God. Yes, it's about that. But I want us to think about the depths of the word search. Think about You being in your house and you lost your phone. You have no idea where it is. And for the life of you, you cannot find it. Your phone is something so valuable. Something that you bring with you everywhere. Something that you need in today's world. But you just can't find it. So if you can't find it, what are you doing? You're searching everywhere and spending a lot of time searching for it to the point where you don't do anything else in that moment but search for it. And until you find your phone, that is when you feel ready to take on the rest of the day or go about your day or do whatever it was that you were going to do. But before you find your phone, you're searching, you're looking everywhere, you're digging deep in your drawers and on the bed and in the kitchen and through the fridge, through the desk, in the living room. I'm just throwing out random places inside of a home here, but you get what I'm saying. You are dedicated to searching for your phone. At least I know that that is what I would do because I've done that. When I lost my phone, I receive Google calendar alerts on that, text messages, calls. I mean, there's a ton on my phone that I use. So of course I'm going to spend time searching for it and I'm not going to go about the rest of my day until I find it. That is the kind of depth of search that I'm talking about when it comes to you searching after God. What does it look like to focus on nothing else but searching for God? Where He is. What He is. The history of him, the stories of him, the way of life that he calls us to, the words he speaks over you, the comfort he brings, the counsel he gives, the providing that is accessible to us if we would just have faith in him. That is the kind of searching I'm talking about. And it is biblically written. It literally says in the Bible, in the book of Matthew, Seek first the kingdom of God and everything else will be given to you. Search. Seek. Put Him first and everything else will be given to you. You will be okay. You will be taken care of. God's hand will be over your life. And here's the thing. This is not an easy task. It's not easy to search for God first. in your day to day. Why? Because all the things in our lives call to us. We have things to do. We have stuff we want to get done. We got work to get to. We got a business to run. We have family to tend to. We got a home to run. We have so many things happening that it's really difficult to search for God first above everything else. But that's the spiritual challenge. That I would love to see myself. I would love to see you. boldly going into that challenge, because we know that searching for God is the answer. Like I said before, when you search for God, everything else falls into place. When you search for God, your life starts to change, your character starts to change to the point where you achieving specific goals or you Getting confident to go after your calling to do that thing to stop that thing. You are now in the mindset to be able to do it and to do it well. Why? Because you put God first. You searched for him first above everything else. That was your new year goal. Search for God. When you do, you start to change and when you start to change, your life starts to change and everything in it for the better. Now that's not to say your life all of a sudden is bliss and you don't face any challenges, okay? Because God will put you through some challenges for reasons that only he knows. Whether it might be to test you or to grow you, to strengthen your faith. I don't know, whatever that might be. My point to search for God. That is a new year phrase that I am living by. And for a while, I wasn't going to talk about this. I was going to keep it private. But then I was like, you know what? I'm going to talk about this. There are things that I keep private between me and God and God alone. I do believe that there are things that God might speak over your life that should be kept held private and not shared publicly. It should just be between you and God. But there are other things where God might want you to boldly tell someone, to proclaim it, to put it in a conversation, so that it can help other people. And that's what I'm doing in this episode. You can receive it or not, it's up to you. You can think about that. You can reflect on it, But what I really want you to do is just pray about it. Especially because it's a new year and I know you're thinking about goals and changes that you want to make and what this year can look like for you. I just want to encourage you to bring God into your thoughts and your ideas. Bring Him in it with you and just ask Him what He wants you to do with it. How He might want you to redirect the search. And maybe as you pray on that, God gives you your own phrase to live by this year, something that you specifically need in this current season of your life. And what's helped me is to just journal, let the pen flow. You would be amazed at what you end up writing simply because you flowed, you journaled about it, and all of a sudden it's like a light bulb came on and something clicked. It's such a norm to have vision boards and to set these goals and these timelines. I'm not saying that they're wrong. I still have things that I want to achieve this year. All I'm saying is what is the priority? And can your actions this year reflect that that is in fact a priority? Can your actions reflect that God is a priority? Not just you saying it, not just you believing it in your mind, but your actions reflecting it. I want to normalize searching for God more than searching for goals is normalized in this world. I want to normalize having God's vision in your heart rather than having your vision board on the wall. That's what I want to normalize. Because I'm a huge believer that that is not only where true genuine change happens, but where satisfaction starts to take place. There's always going to be something that you're chasing after, something new that you want to achieve, something you want to try, something to improve on, something to overcome. There's always going to be something different year after year, season after season. But what never changes, my friend. is the search after God. He is stable. He is ever present. He is the same God yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And if you can keep the consistency of searching for him and allowing your actions to show that it would be an honor to hear your testimony of what your life is like when you do. So just sit with that as you go about your business goals and your creativity goals and wanting to launch this or try this, just sit with that. Bring God into your thoughts, journal about it, and let him speak to you uniquely in the way that he needs to in this specific season of your life and in this specific new year. Thanks so much for tuning in to today's episode. It was a shorter one today. I just wanted to come on here and encourage you this week with a new perspective. Now to wrap up this episode, I would personally love to hear from you on more episodes or topics that you'd love to hear from us. So if you can go ahead and text us in the link that is in the podcast show notes or in the YouTube description, if you're watching it there, go ahead and send us a text and just let us know what topics would you like to learn about this very year? What God empowered episodes would you like to tune into? We are an open book. It can be a topic about anything. We're open to hearing it, and we would love to consider talking about it on these episodes this very year. Thanks so much, friend. So happy to have you tuning in and I'll see you next week.