Like so many other people, I began 2019 with hopes of big changes in my life. I was going to lose weight, save more money, and become more organized with my time. And like a few of you, I ended 2019 a few pounds heavier, wishing I had more money saved and I was less organized. So, I began 2020 with a plan to change. The more I meditated on how to make changes in my life, the more one word came to my spirit: Recalibrate. My first thought was that it sounded painful and unpleasant. I looked up the meaning of recalibrate just to make sure that I wasn’t jumping to bad conclusions. What I found was that the word perfectly fit what I felt needed to happen in my life. At this point in the year, many of us are reevaluating the goals we made just a couple of weeks ago. Instead of reevaluating, we should recalibrate.
Recalibrate means to correct a measuring process by checking or adjusting again in comparison with a standard. It’s about tweaking something that appears to be working just fine. For example, you can re-calibrate the touch screen on a tablet or Smartphone that allows it to work better. When I first read this definition, I thought about the areas of my life that needed to be re-calibrated. If I was honest with myself, I had to admit that in the past year I hadn’t become a back slider but things in certain areas of my life (especially spiritually) weren’t working as well as they could. Without realizing it, I’d drifted away from my previous standard of consistent prayer, fasting and consecration.
Sometimes we think change comes because God is trying to move us to another level of faith which sometimes is true. However, sometimes change comes to show us that we need to return back to a more authentic place of praise and intimacy with God where we honored His standard for our lives. Isaiah 59:19 says “When the enemy comes in like a flood, The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.” For me, recalibration came after a season of great spiritual questioning where my faith was tested. Even though God’s standard of holiness remains unchanged, recalibration is different for everyone. For some, recalibration may mean that you finally join that church that you’ve been attending for years.
The standards that I’d set for myself in 2019 I’d met but these were not the standards that God had for me…. which is why in 2020, my focus is on recalibration. In other words, we have to recalibrate and make adjustments based on the standard God has set and not the standard that we set for ourselves. Often we expect God to ask us to make big changes, but recalibration involves trusting Him to give you the faith to make the more necessary smaller and important adjustments.
Shewanda Riley is a Dallas, Texas based author of “Love Hangover: Moving From Pain to Purpose After a Relationship Ends” and “Writing to the Beat of God’s Heart: A Book of Prayers for Writers.” Email her at preservedbypurpose@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @shewanda.