A New Beginning

A NEW BEGINNING

JOSHUA CHAPTER 1

Webster defines "Beginning " as a starting, or a commencement.

To set forth on a particular path, or course.

When you get married, you begin a new course, you begin afresh. nd I believe we as a church body are at a place of new beginnings.

Isaiah 43:19 says, "Behold, I will do a new thing: now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert."

I believe that God is beginning a new and vibrant work among his people. And it’s an exciting time to be alive in the Body of Jesus Christ, to see what God is about to do in the world.

How many like new adventures? How many like sometimes to just get in your car and start driving, not knowing where you are going, or when you might return? It’s exciting!

I believe God is taking the church in a new and exciting direction. The way we begin will usually determine the outcome! (Repeat)

The way we begin a thing will often determine the outcome. It’s the difference between something succeeding or becoming a failure.

(Building a House you better get the foundation square; Football Don’t fumble in your own end of the field)

We as a church are at a place of new beginnings. We are traveling down a road that we as a corporate body have never been down before. In traveling down this road we will encounter the un-expected; We will encounter the un-familiar; Things and circumstances will stretch us and challenge us; And although there’s a sense of excitement, there’s a sense of nervousness and maybe even fear of the unknown.

How many know that falling down, making wrong decisions, getting in the flesh are all a part of growing up. You take a new born baby, and as the child grows they’re going to spill things, burp all over the place; When they try to take those first steps they will fall down, run into things, it’s a part of development. That’s all part of maturity. How many know churches are the same.

We have new born babes in Christ, and we as mature Christians must allow these to grow up and make mistakes. If you find a church where none of this is happening, you’ve found yourself a dead church that is stuck in form and ritual, and programmed to death. Why the nervousness? Our lives are being changed; Our comfort zone is being squeezed; Most people don’t like change! But, God is calling us to a new place in Him, a place of challenge, yet it’s full of obstacles.

There will be times the adversary will trip us up, and seek to discourage us, to put road blocks in this journey, seek to distract us, and we need to keep our focus clear and realize that if God has ordained this path, we must keep tunnel vision on Him. You know you can’t always believe what you see or read or hear.

*** An Illinois man left the snow-filled streets of Chicago for a vacation

in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day.

When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick e-mail. Unable to find the scrap of paper on which he had written her e-mail address, he did his best to type it in from memory.

Unfortunately, he missed one letter and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher’s wife whose husband has passed away only the day before. When the grieving widow checked her e-mail, she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream, and fell to the floor in a dead faint. At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen: DEAREST WIFE: JUST GOT CHECKED IN. EVERYTHING IS PREPARED FOR YOUR ARRIVAL TOMORROW. P.S. SURE IS HOT DOWN HERE!

And if you set back and begin to judge those who are trying to go forward, and you become critical, you will be as Peter, who got his eyes off Jesus, and began to sink in the water.

The point is, THE WAY WE BEGIN IS SO VITAL, for what God has for us. I want to look at Joshua chapter one, because here is a people who were about to enter into a place they never traveled before. For forty years they had traveled around in circles with no clear direction.

If you have no direction in life, any road you take will get you there. For forty years the only voice of authority they heard was that of Moses. Moses a man greatly used of God, who talked face to face with God, who led them thru hardships, but now he is dead, there is now new leadership. They were excited, yet they were nervous as well. So they find themselves at a place of beginnings.