“See, I am doing a new thing!”
Isaiah 43:18-19
18 “Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
19 See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
I love the New Year.
And I love New Year’s Resolutions.
But sometimes, if I’m honest, I hate New Year’s Resolutions.
Some of us have made a resolution that has changed our life. Someone started exercising, and never stopped. You quit smoking and never started again. I have a friend, Kathy, who recently posted that she is now 34 years clean and sober! God saved her life, changed her life, and has continued to faithfully strengthen her life! That is awesome.
Some of us have had more failures than success stories. We started working out… and then stopped. We stopped eating junk food… and then started again. We started something for all the right reasons… but it just didn’t stick.
I’ve made some resolutions that have stuck and have changed my life. The big one, the resolution to give any life to God, that’s stuck! I’ve made some resolutions that have vastly improved my life. Last year I made the resolution to work on patience, and God gave me a pandemic to put that into practice! And of course I’ve made many resolutions that have fallen flat on their face, bringing me guilt and shame.
Whatever your past successes or failures, our God is the God of new things! As we move into 2021 my prayer is that, like Isaiah, we forget the former things- the things that bring us guilt or shame or just hold us down. I pray we look forward to a new thing- a new thing in our world, our church and in all of our lives!
Our God is doing a new thing. He can make you a new creation and give you a new life through Jesus Christ. If you’ve given your life to Jesus- confess your sin, received forgiveness, declared that he is your Lord and savior- the bible says you’ve actually been born again. And the bible says that you can demonstrate and seal this new life by baptism. If you’ve never been baptized before I invite you to consider making this next step in your faith.
If you have been born again and have been baptized, but you are wanting that “new thing” in your life, you can reaffirm your baptism. This too can be a celebration and a turning point in your life.
I pray that in 2021 we will find our way through the wilderness with Jesus, who declared himself to be the way, the truth and the life! That we will drink deeply from the stream of living water, who is Jesus, who promises us a spring of eternal life! I pray that we will forget the things of the past that are holding us down, and that we look to the new thing that God is doing- he is offering us a new life in Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit!
