The New Year is just about here. We are all looking back thinking and wondering how we spent our last year and trying to decide if we are going to do better in some areas or simply have wishful thinking, and hope we do better. Often times we struggle in making changes, because we never really set our minds to do them or maybe because we have failed in the past in trying to change so we simply say, “I hope to do better this year!”, and leave it at that.
Maybe you've failed at something in life, and you think that your dream is lost or you will never get the victory over a bad habit or situation. May I tell you that through my own experience, if you are a child of God that you serve the God of another chance. He doesn't keep score on how many times you have failed Him either. Whether its marriage, a job, a relationship, or your finances or simply your walk in Him, He hasn't given up on you. He wants to help you, make you better, and guide you into the purpose He has for your life. In your obedience to Him, God will give you every tool and circumstance that you will need to accomplish those goals.
So very often we tend to expect too little from God. We tend to imagine that He's too angry with us from our past failures or that He does not bother with us, if we do not bother with Him. That's not the God of the Bible, and that's certainly not how Jesus works in our lives. Jesus continually reaches out to people, people who need another chance. When ask how many times we should forgive other, Jesus replied seven times seven……and that is how He forgives us! You must start seeing God realistically. I mean by seeing Him mending your hurts and disappointment. Seeing Him running out to meet you, to give you another chance, just like the father of the prodigal son did. The more we view Him as He really is, the more we can trust Him with what we give Him. Your pain, hurts and disappointments aren’t wrecked for good. Because the most loving, powerful Creator of the universe wants to heal them; and if He can create a world and place it the arms of a universe, don’t you think that He has the power and creativity to meet your needs and minister love and compassion in your life where it is needed?. His word tells us that He holds us in the palms of His hands…..what better place to be?There is no sin that God cannot forgive. He does demand that we repent and turn away from all our sin, and if we truly love Him, His word says that we will and as we love Him more, we will strive to live according to His Word and what He ask of us.
There are many accounts in the Bible where God gave people other chances to do better. Moses, found in the book of Exodus, killed an Egyptian taskmaster who was abusing Hebrew slaves. God wouldn't listen to any excuses Moses gave upon his unworthiness to sever Him. God simply forgave Moses for those failures. He didn't care about Moses' low self-esteem or his speech disability because God had a job for Moses to do, and he was going to give him as many chances as he needed to get it done. And God will do the same thing for us today. The woman in John 8 got a second chance upon being charged with a wrong that she had committed. The devil not only wants to break the one who seeks forgiveness, he also wants to hurt God’s Son by using our wrongdoing to accuse us before the Father. Just like those teachers of the law trying to use the women’s sin as a trap to accuse Jesus in John 8. satan hates that God can forgive sin. He hates the fact that God even wants to forgive sin. You see satan loves sin and sin is what separates God from man. That is why God went to all the trouble He did, to reconcile those that could not reconcile themselves to Him. For He knows that we are but dust and wants to help us!
Satan is unrelenting in his attempts to shame you, strip and dishonor you in order to challenge God's work in your lives. He wants you to believe that because of the life you have been living, you aren’t worthy for the Kingdom of God. He wants you to give up. He wants you to think that God can’t use you anymore. But sweet friend, when you are feeling down and unworthy, remember all those God used in the past. Moses was a murderer; David slept with another man’s wife and had him killed so he could be with her. Abraham lied about Sarah being his wife, Peter betrayed his good friend, the Son of God, and the list could go on, yet as they became broken before God, they became mighty instruments for His Kingdom. Even the story of Jonah wasn’t about a fish. It was about the God of the second chance.
You might think it this way….Life is like a football game….and until it is over you have many opportunities to get into the game and make a difference. For many of us, the game is only half over. Not only do we get a new year to start over, but every day we wake up we are given a new opportunity to do it again; to choose that day…. Whom we will serve and how we will go about it.
I Cor. 9:24-27 say’s, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”
Let us learn to beat our bodies and make them do what our heart wants them to do, and not what our flesh hungers for. This year let us, feed the spirit so that we are stronger and put to death the flesh in us by denying it what it wants…
God Bless your New Year, may it be the best one yet!
Loving you always,
Bren
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