Fresh Start in a New Year

Reading Ps Ben's blog for 1 January 2006...

1. Change Your Focus - Stop Looking Behind

If we want a fresh start, we can't dwell in the past. If we spend all our time looking over our shoulder at the past, we’ll miss what God is doing today.

Sometimes, saying this is so much easier than doing this. But God has been teaching me this very important lesson to "Let Go and Let God"... Our past determines who we are today. And Ps Ben is right to say that it is not discarding the past but to reflect on the decisions we made and the choices we took and to ask God to change the areas that He has been highlighting to us...THEN move forward! Why? Because God loves us enough not to leave us where we are but to help us develop our character and mould our life...and because God STILL has a "good plan" (Jeremiah 29:11) for us even when we may have made mistakes or taken wrong turns in life...And He will surely not leave us as God promised but He will turn our life around if we will let him...

Stop looking behind means:

a) Avoid allowing past failures to paralyse you. We have painful experiences we need to put behind us.

Christ came to set you free – if you let Him. He's already done everything He needs to do. We can only benefit from what Christ did when we personally trust Christ. New life can't be inherited, it must be experienced. To stop looking behind also means:

b) Avoid depending on past victories to sustain you. Going forward we also need to deal the good and fun bits of our past. That was then but this is now. God's about to do something better.

You need a new miracle, a new victory for a new day.

The second pointer for the New Year is:

2. Clarify Your Purpose - Start Looking Ahead

A new start is possible because God has a future in store for us...God created us to love us and for us to know God...Know God’s purpose and flow with God. Start looking ahead means:

a) Look forward to the new things God has for you. God's doing something new in our midst if only we will open our eyes and ears, see and hear what He is doing. God has done a new thing even this morning. He has given you new breath. He has given us new mercies and compassions today. Looking ahead also means:

b) See possibilities as God sees them. This New Year can be a watershed year in your life. God will make a way when we think it is impossible. Let Him do a new thing in your heart, home, marriage, job, school or community. God’s new journey for us will write a new story for our journey of faith.

Perhaps you made unwise choices in 2005. You can stop making wrong choices and start making right choices.

...For the first time, this is a struggle that I feel deep in me as I consider the choices I have made in my life, and yes, some were unwise and circumstances have since emerged to bring me to see it that way. In my life, I have not faced many failures or made choices that I have looked back to regret. But for the first time, I know what that feels like. But yet, it is neccesary that I go through this so that God can show me what it means to walk by His grace and to learn to trust even when everything around you doesn't make sense.

I encourage you to seek a new vision and interest in the things of God. Allow God to bring direction and correction into your life. God's in the business of renewing, reviving and restoring people. God has great plans for you. Look forward to your fresh start in 2006.

Reading Ps Ben's sermon stirs and confirms what God has already been speaking to me about...That I should look forward and not look back anymore to the decisions I have made in 2005. I do not know what lies ahead but I just need to continue to cling on to His promises and His strength, grace and love upon my life. I wonder how people like Abraham, Moses and Joshua did it when they could not see what was ahead. All they had was a promise from God. And that is what we all have as well. A promise from God that He will walk with us and bless us...that He will personally guide our paths towards righteousness...towards that narrow path that defines our destiny and calling as pre-told by God even before we were in our mother's womb.