FACING THE YEAR 2005
Phil. 1:1-11
(Some ideas and content of this message are taken mostly from Dr. Joel Santos sermon "Great Investment for the New Year")
Introduction:
We stand on the threshold of a new year! Great opportunities lie ahead! Great challenges will confront us! Many disappointments will occur. All of these and probably much more!
And perhaps some of us now are anticipating great challenges and more blessings this Year. The question is: What we can expect this year – what we will do for ourselves this year to improve our performance over the past year?
Paul’s letter to the Philippians was written while he was in prison. Yet even there he still praying for his brethren and still expecting spiritual progress even in his absent.
The content of our text today will guide us in deciding what to do today in order to face the whole year!
I. THANK GOD FOR OUR EXPERIENCES IN THE PAST
“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.” vs. 3-5
Paul keeps them in prayer, rejoicing in the fact that they received the good news of Christ and continued to live in it. He invested himself in their lives by sharing Christ with them, but he didn’t stop there. Paul continued to pray for them. With joy he remembered them and thank the Lord for his prayers. He thanks the Lord for what they did in the Gospel in the past.
Let’s thank the Lord for our past, both the negatives and positives ones!
Remember: “Failing does not make you a failure. Failing does not make you a faithless. Quitting after you fail makes you a failure."
Don’t live with your past like the Israelites
We are special beings in that God has given us the ability to remember. Your memory may be your friend or your enemy. Negative things or positive!
Israelites were crippled by their past experiences. They don’t want anymore to enter the “Promised land” because of failures in the past. They camp to Mt. Sinai. Normally it takes only 11 days to travel from Mt. Sinai to Kadesh-barnea, (Kadesh-barnea is the threshold of promise. It was the desert entry point to the promise land. It was the place from where they sent the 12 spies to spy out the land) but they did not pursue God’s directives and remain in the place crippled by the past. (Deut. Chapter 1)
Theodore Roosevelt said, "The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything." We all commit mistakes!
You see, living in the past can cripple us & hold us in bondage. But one day God said to them to move on! (Deut. 1:6-7)
“Success is the ability to move from one failure on to the next.” – Winston Churchill
“No matter what you did in the past, your future is clean” – John R. Rice
“A righteous man may fall 7 times and rise again..” Proverbs 24:16
For Apostle Paul “Forget the past and straining toward the future!”
In Phil. 3:13 "I forget about what lies behind and reaching forward to those thins which are ahead."
Prov. 28:13 LB “A man who refuses to admit his mistakes can never be successful. But if he confesses and forsakes them, he gets another chance.”
But for me I would say, “Thank God for the past!”
But I say to you today, consider the past and thank God for the experiences!
We need to thank the Lord from the past and for giving us another challenges in the present and future to come.
II. EXPECT GOD TO BRING US THE BEST THING IN THE PRESENT
“And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent…” vs.. 9-10A
Paul makes an appeal to the Lord that their love will flourish in the heart and life of another. He prayed that they be set free to love others freely. Pray that love will continue to grow and flourish.
Illustration
The slum district of Manila is already overcrowded, but a gold rush has made it worse. It all started when 15-year-old Alfredo Gallo, who was combing the riverbed that runs through the Philippine capital, found a chunk of gold. His father immediately sold the nugget for about $500 and bought a television and a bicycle.
Once word got out, hundreds of people flocked to the banks of the filthy river looking for the precious metal.
Though the river is polluted and strewn with garbage, many people see it with new eyes. One village chief commented, "It is a puzzle. All we got from this before was trash."
Citation: "Gold Fever Grips Slum," AP (10-4-04); Philippine Slum Stream Turns into Gold Rush Site (10-4-04
God wants to bless us even in the midst of many trials! God can turn our trails into triumphs! God is able to bless us!
“I have come to give you life super abundantly.” (John10:10)
"God is able to do superabundantly, far over and above, all that we dare ask or think. Infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thought, hopes, or dreams." (Eph. 3:20 in the Amplified Version)
This year, let us expect God to bring us the best things in our lives!
The Law of Expectations says that, basically, we get what we expect out of life. We tend to see what we expect to see, we tend to feel what we expect to feel, we tend to act the way we expect to act, and eventually, we tend to achieve what we expect to achieve.
According to your faith it will be done to you!
So this year, let’s expect the Lord to bring the best in our lives this year!
III. ENTRUST TO THE LORD OUR LIVES IN THE FUTURE
“For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” v. 6
“…in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ.” v. 10b
Paul prayed the Lord for the bright future of the believers in Philippi. Since he can do nothing because of his imprisonment, he entrusted everything in the hands of God. After all he can do nothing except to trust God.
“You will not succeed by your own strength or power, but by my Spirit says the Lord.” Zech. 4:6
Paul can face the future and imprisonment and all that waits because he knows God will ultimately deliver him out. Paul looks forward to what lies ahead! He is confident! Confident that what God starts he finishes!
Illustration
Norman Vincent Peale wrote more than 46 books during his lifetime. His most popular book, The Power of Positive Thinking, was written in 1952 and has sold more than 20 million copies in 41 languages. Peale and his wife started Guideposts magazine; its circulation now tops 5 million, the largest of any religious magazine. Peale also pastored New York City’s (Manhattan) Marble Collegiate Church for 52 years (a Protestant Dutch Reformed church founded in 1628). It had 600 members when he arrived to pastor in 1932; it had over 5,000 by the time he retired in 1984. For 54 years Peale’s weekly radio program, "The Art of Living," was broadcast on NBC. His sermons were mailed to 750,000 people a month. His life was subject of a 1964 movie entitled One Man’s Way.
He was once flying on an airplane when the Captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker: ’We need to inform you that one of our engines has shut down, but the other one will enable us to complete our journey.’ Then he added, ’to reassure any of you who might be worried’ let me tell you that we have one Anglican bishop on board today.’ A woman sitting beside Peale called a stewardess over and said, ’With the greatest respect, could you please tell the Captain that I’d be much more confident if there were 1 bishop and two engines.’
Illustration. Many years ago, a man was hired an experienced guide to lead him on a hike into the Swiss Alps. After many hours, they came to a high and remote mountain pass. To the man’s dismayed, he saw the path had almost been washed out. What could he do? To the left was a sheer rock cliff; to his right, a precipice that dropped nearly 1000 ft. and looking down, the felt his head growing faint and his knees beginning to buckle. At that moment his guides shouted, "Do not look down or you are a dead man, keep your eyes on me, and where I put my feet, put yours there as well."
The man did as he was instructed and soon he passed from danger to safety.
This is a good advice for the beginning of a new year. No one knows what lies ahead for any of us. We all have plans and dreams but the times and seasons of life are in God’s hands. Sooner or later we will come in a dangerous pass where the way ahead seems to be washed out. At that moment we can panic and fall into terrible trouble, or we can fixed our eyes on the Lord Jesus and follow carefully his steps before us. If we will follow him, we will find out at the end of this year that we have been kept safe by His amazing grace.
Psalm 37:4-5 “Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.”
Conclusion
So, then, Let’s do these great prayers this year:
Let’s thank the lord for our experiences in the past,
Let’s expect the lord to bring the best thing to the present, and
Let’s entrust to the lord our lives in the future
