Reset: New Year

So our first bible text this year is from Isaiah 43:18-19

We are now in a New Year and a New Decade! I felt this was a good passage to put up on our fridge in 2020.

There are magnets . ..

Former things.

What are the former things to forget?

• It’s when someone said something that pulled us down.

•

• It’s every time we try to do that thing, then remember what that person said

•

• It’s when we’ve sinned, and we’re tempted to keep holding on to it because of guilt

That’s the former things – it’s the weights around our legs that we’ve picked up over time.

As I’m talking about these things, some of you are thinking, “I’ve been carrying around “former things for a long time”.

• The guilt,

• the words of others,

• the burdens you picked up months, or even years ago.

• The missed opportunities that you wished you have taken.

• How many of us are admitting to “former things” slowing us down in life?

For the most part, can we do anything to change those former things?

I mean, they may well teach us a life lesson.

But we know those former things are a weight to carry around, and they are stopping us from functioning in the way God made us.

They maybe even preventing us from carrying out the plan God has for us!

So…. God says through Isaiah:

Forget (say forget) the former things.

• We have come through them

• We have learnt from them

• Our character may have changed because of them,

BUT: do not dwell on those former thing.

When we dwell on the former things – what direction are we looking?

Backwards.

Move on – look forward rather than backward.

Why? Because in verse 19 God says though Isaiah:

New things

19 See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

It’s 2020 – a new decade!

Welcome to the twenties!

And this year – this decade – God is ready to do a New Thing

- With you

- With us!

“Do you not perceive it?”??

“Do you not notice it?”

“Do you not recognise it?”

God is ALWAYS making things NEW

Are you sensing the new things God is starting to do

in your life?

In His Church at Highfield?

I was reading a book that helped me understand how to perceive what the Lord is doing and saying.

God is Spirit – He put His Holy Spirit with me and you.

To really tune into the Spirit within us, we have to do so spiritually.

We have a spirit.

God made us physical and spiritual beings.

The trouble is, we spend much of our time on the physical.

To understand what God is doing, we need to spend more time and energy tapping into our spiritual.

I may well expand on this in the next few weeks, but I’d encourage you to think about it.

How can you get closer the Holy Spirit within you?

Spirit needs to connect with Spirit.

So God is about to do a new thing with us – do you sense it?

It’s a good time to be looking to God’s new things. It’s 2020

Now we often say about 20-20 that’s it’s perfect vision.

With 20/20We can see clearly.

And in 2020 I hope we all want to see clearly.

God has brought us through lots of things, and He is going to do a

NEW thing –

The Lord says through Isaiah, “Do you not perceive it?” do you not SEE it happening?

Do we have 2020 vision to perceive what new thing God is doing?

Sometimes it’s just LOOKING for it –

Realising that there is something New to look for

Let’s look for, and see clearly what God is doing in you and me, and us as His church.

Want a clue? Verse 19b:

A way through

I am making a way in the wilderness

and streams in the wasteland.

You know, even if you think that 2019 was a wilderness year, you can come through it and out of it in 2020.

• If you think 2019 was the year you lost God along the wandering, God is doing a New Things in 2020

• If you think 2019 was the year you didn’t feel like you were achieving much, God is doing a New Things in 2020

• If you think 2019 was the year you got stuck somewhere, God is doing a New Things in 2020

• If you think 2019 was the year you are happy to see the back of, God is doing a New Things in 2020

• If you think 2019 was the year of repeats in life, God is doing a New Things in 2020!