New Year’s Day is a favourite in every culture. Fireworks, celebrations, parades, and all manner of celebrating ushers within the New Year world wide. Looking towards a recent season brings fresh hope, anticipation, and possibilities.
Personally, I really like Christmas, but when all of the decorations are taken down there’s fresh hope and anticipation as I look to the New Year. Every yr, between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I spend time with the Lord in prayer, asking Him what He has for me in the brand new yr and the way He might want me to vary. As I read scripture and spend time in prayer and worship, I ask Him for a promise or verse to cling to as I step into the brand-new season.
Many, not less than here within the West, make New Year’s resolutions or set goals for themselves about how they are going to improve their lives. Having said that, only about 9% of individuals keep those resolutions. Many resolutions are forgotten one month into the yr. Most of the goals appear to revolve around fitness, health, funds, or personal success, which demonstrates that on the core of our humanity, we crave life transformation.
G. K Chesterton has been quoted as saying, “The object of a New Year will not be that we must always have a recent yr. It is that we must always have a recent soul.” One of the explanations that the New Year holds such joy for us is the anticipation of latest blessings and opportunities, but greater than that, each recent yr holds the promise of life transformation.
The great truth for those of us who follow Jesus is that God guarantees life transformation. Jesus got here to rework our lives and convey us wholeness. When we’re reborn, our transformation begins, and it culminates once we meet Christ head to head. In the meantime, each recent day brings anticipation and hope. We see this all throughout the scriptures.
The Old Testament book of Isaiah is crammed with the anticipation of transformation. The prophet reminds us that we’ve got a God who redeems and restores. He gives us hope as we glance to the longer term, “The desert and the parched land will likely be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom” (Isaiah 35:1). He continues with other guarantees like, “See, I’m doing a recent thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I’m making a way within the wilderness and streams within the wasteland” (Isaiah 43:19).
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul assures us, “And all of us, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who’s the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). He goes on to jot down, “Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he’s a recent creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they have gotten recent” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NAS).
“New” just the sound of it brings hope. New implies a change and brings a way of anticipation. God is within the business of making recent things. New growth. New attitudes, New peace. New joy. God brings recent seasons of beauty out of old seasons of chaos. He transforms our broken lives into lives that shine for his glory.
How can we, as believers, internalize the sense of anticipation and the hope of life transformation day-after-day? Beyond throwing confetti or setting off fireworks, listed here are ten ways you could make day-after-day feel like New Year’s Day:
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