Your Best Year Ever

Your Best Year Ever

Psalm 37:3-5

Pastor Brian Chandler

New Season, New Goals, New Dreams, New Resolutions. It’s a new year with great new possibilities.

Now most people when they start the new year they make new year’s resolutions and most people fail to keep their new year’s resolution. In fact statistics tell us that four in five people will break their new year’s resolution.

Here is a list of new year’s resolutions I found online. Some of these might be the same or different than some of yours. Here they are…

1. Lose weight

2. Get organized

3. Spend less and save more

4. Enjoy life to the fullest

5. Staying fit and healthy

6. Learn something exciting

7. Quit smoking

8. Helping others

9. Fall in love

10. Spend more time with family

Now 3 in 4 of your will not keep your resolutions, in fact most of you will break these resolutions within the first couple of weeks of this year. Maybe you already failed and where just 8 days into the new year.

So if most people fail when they make a resolution or set a goal, the question we need to address is, “How can you increase your chances of keeping any resolution or commitment that you make?”

If you are going to be successful you have to make a commitment. You have heard they saying, “Better to have tried and failed than not to have tried.”

A chicken and a hog were walking past a church building one day when they noticed the Sunday morning sermon posted on the outside bulletin board, "Helping the Poor." They walked a ways when the chicken suddenly came across with a suggestion. "Say, Brother Hog, why don’t we give all the poor people a nice breakfast of ham and eggs?" The hog thought a moment and replied, "That’s all right for you to say because for you it is only a contribution, but for me, it’s total commitment!"

Here’s an even better question than how you can increase your chances of keeping your commitments, “How can you make 2012 your best year ever?”

Today I want to share with you four steps to making 2012 your best year ever.

Psalm 37:3-5 “Trust in the LORD and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper. Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires. Commit everything you do to the LORD. Trust him, and he will help you.” NLT

Step # 1 - Trust in the Lord

Psalm 37:3a “Trust in the Lord…”

In the promise land there were many battles the Israelites faced, there were giants they faced, there were many unknown things before them, but God’s greatest desire was for them to learn to trust in Him. And God’s greatest desire for you is that you learn to trust in Him in all things.

Maybe things just didn’t go your way last year. Trust in the Lord. Maybe you didn’t get the job you were hoping to get. Trust in the Lord. Maybe it wasn’t a good year financially. Trust in the Lord. Maybe a relationship went south. Trust in the Lord. In all things you need to trust in the Lord.

You have heard the saying…When you have lemons make lemonade. How about this, this is a lot better…God causes all things to work together for your good.

Whatever didn’t go well for you or the way you thought it should have gone, you need to continue to trust in the Lord.

None of us can control our circumstances and what happened last year or even what will happen to us this year, but we can control how we react to our circumstances.

What is your new resolutions do you have this year? What goals have you set for yourself this year? What commitments have you made? What are you hoping to achieve in 2012?

God wants each of us to learn to trust in Him more and more.

The word trust here means – To attach oneself too something, that something here being God. Attach yourself to God.

You have heard of Marsupials right? Marsupials are animals that attach themselves to their mother’s backs. The animal is born in an immature state so they are carried by their mother or in a pouch. i.e. - Opossum, kangaroo.

And the principle here is to attach ourselves to God so completely that our only trust is in Him.

i.e. – Jesse Ventura former Governor of Minnesota and ex-pro wrestler said this about Christians. “Christians are a group of weak and feeble people depending on God for strength instead of themselves.

The reality is that is a true statement, we are weak people and we desperately need God’s help.

Our attitude need to be, “I can’t get through this month, or this week, or this day without you God.”