The New Year
A newborn infant, newly fallen snow, a new day, a new creation, a new year: all speak of purity and freshness and endless possibilities.
And here we are, on the first day of the New Year. Many are making resolutions; some may even keep them! Others are looking ahead with cautious hope—maybe this year will be different; maybe this year I’ll find what I’ve been searching for; maybe…
The Lord understands times and seasons and change and newness. He speaks of newness often in His Word, and He also speaks of change. Of His children, He declares “… if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). To His people Israel, He declared, “Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:18-19).
Jeremiah prophesied, “Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3).
If you’re anything like me, you crave hearing from the Lord. And if you’re anything like me, you long to grow and change and make a difference in the lives around you. You and I feel this way because of God’s presence in our lives. And He says to us what He said through Jeremiah so many centuries ago, “Call to Me…” The way to hear from God is to call out to Him.
He said that if you will call out, He will answer you. God is a God of His Word. You call and He answers. I can think of no better way to start the year.
Not only did God say He would answer you when you call, but He also declared that He would tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.
These great and mighty things are unknown to you, but He will make them known. That means that these things will be new to you.
Are you and I prepared for the new which God has prepared for us? Are we really?
New means that the old is gone. New means that you let go of what was to step into what God has prepared. Now, don’t get me wrong—I believe in being a student of the past and learning from its wisdom. I believe in overcoming the devil with the word of my testimony. I believe in peering at memorial stones and receiving encouragement from their mighty witness. When Isaiah spoke of not bringing to mind or even pondering the things of the past, he did not intend for God’s people to forsake their rich history; no, he was instructing them to expect God to do a fresh thing, a miraculous thing now, in their time—just like He did a fresh and miraculous thing in the past. In other words, sometimes God’s people can get so tied to past ways of doing things that they are too rigid to receive what He wants to do now—it’s either the way we did it before or it’s no way. And here’s God, ready to move, but He is blocked by human insistence as to how it should be done.
However, there are other things hiding in the past that were never from God. These old things, if allowed, have a way of slithering their way into the present, bringing with them the poison of the past. Perhaps God is seeking to bring you into a new thing, but you insist on nurturing past wounds, hurts, or misperceptions. Quite frankly, only you can prevent God from doing a new thing in your life. If you’re on board with Him—if you let go of the past—then no one can stop God from moving in your life.
Listen to what Paul said. “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ” (Philippians 3:7). He was speaking of all the honors and prestige he had acquired in his life—those things he cast aside without a qualm to follow Christ. By the same token, others cling tenaciously to the opposite—a “victim” mentality—considering it gain. Perhaps you, yourself, have felt justified in holding on to bitterness or resentment. Perhaps, in your mind, “they” deserve your disdain. Even if clinging to those things has “comforted” you by making you feel validated in your pain, it’s time to count old wounds as loss for the sake of Christ.
Whether it’s prestige or poison, Paul said to “count them but rubbish” so that you “may gain Christ” (see Philippians 3:8). Here is the goal: that you may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of [your] own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith” (verse 9).
My guess is that the new thing that God wants to accomplish in your life and mine has something to do with this: “that [we] may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that [we] may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (verse 10). We can’t proceed in any of this, however, if we insist upon clinging to either end of the spectrum—past honors or past hurts.
So what do you do? Paul said it this way: “...one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (verses 13b-14).
Indeed, there’s a time to look back and a time to stop looking back. Anything that hinders you from reaching forward to what lies ahead of you in Christ is something you must lay aside; and anything that overshadows the goal for the prize in your life of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus is something that you must forget.
Let nothing stop you from calling out to God; let nothing muffle the sweet sound of His response. Let nothing hinder that new thing which He has prepared for you; let neither prestige nor poison block you from the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
May God’s grace empower you to press on in Christ for all you’re worth this year. Happy New Year!
Dorothy
Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:18-19