Welcome to 2020! It’s a brand new year. I was contemplating what this new year brings and I started to focus on that word, “NEW.” It implies something that is a the very least improves and quite possibly even something that has never existed before. It’s exciting when you think about it. New years are often times of new beginnings, when people tend to focus on turning the page, making changes or maybe even starting over completely. Then another thought occurred to me. What does God call new?
There were a couple of scriptural things that came to mind.
Consider Isaiah 43:18, 19:
18
“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
19
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
This reminds me so much of all those folks turning over a new leaf, yet the speaker in this case is God. His people went astray, again. He sent Isaiah to them with a message of warning. Keep going on your current path and disaster is coming. Yet even in the midst of this prophecy, God showed them that He still loved them and had something fantastic for them. I love this passage, because it speaks to freedom. Yes ultimately it is freedom in Christ, but there is something else. How many of us are haunted by our past? Maybe it’s something we’ve done, or maybe it’s something that’s been done to us, but regardless, it keeps us stuck. This is often a prison of our own making. Oh we’re not necessarily the one who caused the problem, but we are making the choice to dwell there. God has something new for us. Something better. This verse is at least in part a prophecy of a coming Kingdom, the Kingdom of Christ, the one who came to set the captives free. Maybe today is the day to trust Christ and step into a new thing.
The Bible tells us that he who the Son sets free is free indeed, and further it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Maybe today is the day to leave that cell you’ve been living in behind and step into the freedom of the Children of God.
There is grace and forgiveness in Christ, and there is freedom. This new year, why not step into God’s new thing?
Be free!
Pastor Dave