New Year

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NEW COMMITMENTS FOR THE NEW YEAR

Introduction

Well it’s that time of year again when in a fit of optimism many of us make great promises to ourselves about what we are going to do in the New Year

many we usually abandon about the second week in January.

Let’s be honest now.

How many of you kept to the diet?

How many of you actually kept exercising past February?

Well this year I am determined its going to be different.

I have made a New Years resolutions I know I will be able to keep for the whole of 2015

I have decided to eat more and exercise less.

Now I believe i'll be able to keep that kind of resolution

But seriously

This morning I want to talk to you about some resolutions, some commitments which I guarantee you will make a radical difference in our lives if we will just follow through on them.

In fact, what I want to do is to offer to you a way of starting the New Year in a way which will significantly change your life.

Here is what I want to suggest to you: if you will make four commitments that God in His Word encourages us to make

I guarantee you that the start of 2015 could become one of the most significant events in your life.

in fact I tell you that if you will follow God’s advice, that 2015 could be the best year of your life thus far

I want to challenge you to make 4 new commitments for this New Year.

Here they are

First

1: COMMIT YOURSELF TO FORGET YOUR FAILURES

Phil 3:13-14

13Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, 14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus

That advice from God’s Word has stood the test of time.

I don’t know of any more relevant and practical advice for us at the start off 2015. That that advice that I have just read

We don't have to live our lives imprisoned by our past.

All of us have failed in some way in our lives over the last year.

Probably we won’t see our failures recorded for history on tv but they are recorded in our hearts and minds.

For many of us our failures are painful memories.

Maybe for you it is a memory of how you failed in a relationship.

You made the wrong decisions,

said and did the wrong things and the relationship ended.

Some of you who are parents probably know that you failed your children in some way, some of you children downstairs listening are aware that you have failed your parents

it’s more than likely that many of us know that we have failed ourselves in some ways.

And all of us should know that in some way we have failed God

What God’s Word is saying to us here is that we must not allow ourselves to be bogged down by our past failures.

That we have not got to dwell on our past so much that it stops us from moving forward into the future that God has for us.

I think that the start of the New Year is a good time for us to rise to that challenge.

To say to yourself I am going to, with the help of God, forget my past.

I am going to stop torturing myself about what I did or didn’t do.

This New Year is a good time to stop being chained to our past failures.

God is saying here in His Word that he doesn’t want you to go through your life branding yourself as a failure.

Jesus Christ died on the cruel Cross of Calvary so that we could be forgiven

When we become Christians that forgiveness becomes a reality in our lives.

When we have received Christ’s forgiveness it allows us to forgive ourselves and forget our failures.