How To Make The Most Of Your New Year

HOW TO MAKE THE MOST FROM YOUR NEW YEAR

Proverbs 17:24 (GN)

Proverbs 17:24 (The Good News Version) "An intelligent person aims at wise actions, but a fool starts off in many directions."

Can you believe that this year is over? It seems that with each passing year time just speeds up. It seems that only yesterday we were worried about the Y2K bug. We made it through Y2K and now we are faced with another New Year. We all can do the one of two things this year:

· We can waste it away by sitting around and worrying about the things we failed to accomplish last year, or the mistakes we made through out the year. We can sit around and mope or have a pity party because things didn’t go the way we wanted them to. OR

· We can decide to make the most of this New Year that God as granted us. This could be the greatest year of your you have had up to this point, if you make a conscience decision to do whatever it takes to have a great year.

The point I want to get across is, whatever we’re going to do with our lives this year, we had better get on the move because time is moving on. Time is not going to sit still until we can make up our mind about what we are going to do. One other point that I want to make is, if we’re not doing something with our lives it really doesn’t matter how long the year is or how much time we have left in the year.

So what are you going to do with 2001? How will this year be any different than last year? How many of you would like 2001 to be better than 2000? Last year was a tough year. It was a year of challenges, a year of choices. It was a year of changes. It was a year of some crises. The fact is for some of you the year 2000 was more of a disappointment than a joy. Some of you may have experienced a loss of some kind. For some of you it may have been a year of set backs and failures.

The bad news is there is nothing we can do to change last year. The good news is we can learn from last year and today we have the opportunity to start over and make some changes. God brings life to us in small pieces, that we know as hours, days and months. At the beginning of every year He says, let’s wipe the slate clean and let’s start with a brand new year. Its like God is saying, “ Let’s start over. ” And that’s good news.

Proverbs 17:24 (The Good News Version) "An intelligent person aims at wise actions, but a fool starts off in many directions."

For many the last part of that verse describes them. It says, “ A fool starts off in many directions. ” Does that describe any of you? You start your year off in haste going in to many different directions at one time with no plan of action.

Then notice the words at the beginning of this verse: it says, " An Intelligent person aims at wise actions". That means they have a goal, an objective, an aim, a target. Have you set any goals for 2001? Or are you just going to walk into this year and hope it’s better? You’ve got to have a plan.

This morning I want to share with you four keys that will help all of us get the most out of the year 2001. Keys can be used to start something or used to open doors. It is my prayer that these for keys will start you off on the right foot in the right direction. It is also my prayer that you will use these keys to open the doors of opportunity that God places before you. I will label these keys A, B, C and D.

A - Accept responsibility for my life.

This is something that is hard for many people to do. Some people would rather blame someone else for the problems and difficulty in their lives. These are people that go around looking for someone who will accept responsibility for them. Someone who will accept responsibility for the way they live their lives and the choice they make. When things don’t turn out the way the hope, they have someone they can blame.

Accepting responsibility for ones life is not popular concept in our society, because we live in a culture that embraces a concept called "political correctness". This basically says, "None of your problems are your fault. Everything bad in your life is somebody else’s fault. Blame the environment. Blame the educator. Blame your parents. Blame anybody else, but it’s not your fault." If you get in an accident, it’s never your fault. If you spill some hot coffee on yourself, sue McDonalds; it’s their fault. It’s always somebody else’s fault. We will never be a success in life and we will never make our lives count if we have the attitude that it’s someone else’s fault. We must accept responsibility for our own lives.