God Is The God Of New Beginnings Series

A Life-Plan for the New Year and Face it without Fear

God is the God of new beginnings

“You crown the year with your goodness, and richness overflows wherever you are.” (Psalm 65:11 GOD'S Word)

What a joy to seek an eternal and spiritual perspective as we begin a new year. David wrote Psalm 65 some 3,000 years ago; "You crown the year with Your goodness, and Your paths drip with abundance." God’s goodness is going to be made manifest in 2013 by abundance and we know that God crowns each year with his goodness. This has been the case from beginning of times and beyond! in the thankful cries of the psalmists who reflect the care of God for his people we see a God who is there in the darkest night, in the most hopeless of situations, who provides strength support, nourishment and sustenance time and again. God provides for us, he allows us the strength to raise our heads up and hope. He restores the joy to our living; he is our hope and salvation. As we come to the end of another year, let us pray that 2013 will be a year filled with love, hope, and peace.

A brand New Year is about to start and a new year is in full swing, How to use every aspect of our life and time to make an impact this year? Nothing will change this year until we change. This is now the time to contemplate on our previous years. Have we achieved our goals that we have set from the past? Have we learned something from our previous endeavors? It’s never too late to start again. We have the opportunity to make it right this time. With the advent of New Year, a new era begins and with it comes new hopes and new possibilities. Every year teaches us some of life's most important lessons, and with that learning we put our step forward and stand on the threshold of a new year. Most people generally look at the New Year as a fresh beginning, as an opportunity to kind of start over, to overcome a habit, or do a better job of something they see as important and that needs improvement. It may be parenting, being a better spouse etc. It may be developing different priorities, using our time better, or a whole host of things that people would like to change. So, we usually hear a lot about New Year's resolutions, resolutions which are usually broken in a matter of weeks. Many people are very pessimistic about the whole issue of making resolutions, and rightly so, because so many good intentions are followed by a history of past failures.

Bible says “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:18-19)

God has a reason in asking us to remember not the things of the past. Perhaps we have made a mess of our life. Failures, frustrations, sins and sufferings, hurts and offences have marked our journey. With this heavy burden we cannot move forward. Whatever might have happened, we need to leave it all to the ocean of the mercy of God. We are called to trust Him for He promises us to meet us where we are.

As Paul said "One Thing I Do, Forgetting What Lies Behind And Straining Forward To What Lies Ahead" (Philippians 3:13)

Firstly we require the attitude of letting go of the old. There are people who are resolute about holding on to the past. Many things have happened to us in the last year that caused us pain, guilt and regret. We have a store of unhappy and unholy memories. Absolutely nothing good can come out of keeping alive the past that is dead. Yet we have a tendency to cling on to this past. We end up then living our life from the premises of our past experiences. If this is so, we are incapable of living this New Year in the vision that God has for us. Therefore along with the New Year, God is offering us the grace at this blessed moment to forget the past.

"Cast All Your Anxieties On Him, For He Cares About You" (1 Peter 5:7)

People carry a great burden of complaints. Their bitter experiences of the arrogance of the offensive words and deeds of others leave them disillusioned. People never rose up to their expectations. When people linger on with these thoughts, many linger on in time; they are consumed by the fire of anger and bitterness. They slip into self pity or languish in guilt. When we provide room for such ugly emotions and attitudes, the peace of our heart is quenched. God does not want us to dwell in the past.