A New Year is Upon Us.

December 31, 2006

With the coming of another new year in the Christian world I am moved to think in terms of rebirths.  In particular I am thinking about how the messiah told us we must be born from above, if we are to enter the kingdom of heaven.  Thus each of us need a new personal beginning, and just like the new year brings a new cycle of growth to the earth we can renew our own spiritual growth each time we turn back to God and turn away from the ways of Satan.

            A new year always seems to give a sense of new hope for a better future for us individually, our loved ones, and the world.  This sense of hope reminds me of the hope we share as believers in the coming of a new heaven and earth as it is promised to us in Revelations chapter 21.  Our Lord and Messiah will govern this new heaven and earth.  Won’t it be wonderful to look towards an eternity joyful existence without the fears and prejudices we feel today? 

            But any hope to the future is always based on the past.  Lets look to what God tells us in Ezekiel 20:43_44 “And ye shall there remember your ways, and your devices wherewith ye defiled yourselves; and ye shall bewail yourselves for all your wickedness.  And ye shall know that I am Yahweh, when I have done thus to you, that my name may not be profaned in your evil ways, and in your corrupt devices, saith the Lord Yahweh.”  Surely our future is bright but that brightness is based on a fire that will be set in our heart by the light of God, which shall lead us out of our current state of mundane existence into one of eternal life.  There we shall be guided and governed by the love of God and our ability to turn from that love, which is the only sin from which all evil deeds are symptomatic of, shall be eliminated forever.

            When I look back over the last year I remember many events that seemed impossible to overcome at that time.  I remember, the fear of being ripped away from my family by the evil power of Satan manifesting itself through mankind.  I remember the worry of what tomorrow will bring.  I remember the sadness of learning the many truths uncovered in my quest for the logos or knowledge of Yahweh.  Each of these events seemed so overwhelming to me as they unfolded before my eyes.  How would I get through them?  How would I survive?  Yet more the miraculously, the power of Yahweh regained supreme and each and every one of the feared events fizzled into oblivion.  Now each is but a mere shadow in the memories of my soul.  How can such triumph over the power of darkness be anything less then miraculous?  Because it has always been that the power of Yahweh’s is absolute and unfailing.  Many self-proclaimed believers who refer to themselves as Christians have been lead astray by Satan’s lies that it is possible to be stolen from God.  There is no miracle in God’s strength because there was never any possibility for it to fail.  This is one of the most important messages of the Messiah that reaches out to us from two thousand years ago and lights our way through another year of unknowns.  For those of us that truly believe the words of the Messiah, in another sense to believe in him, there is no possibility of failure and as such there is no miracle, there is only Yahweh’s majesty above all else.

            What a precept to enter into a new year of possibility with.  The power of God over Satan cannot fail.  We don’t need to look to miracles because with Yahweh, it has already been decided that his people, those of us that truly believe in him, have already conquered every challenge the coming year will bring.  Unlike the “fair weather believers”, those who love God when the checkbook is still full of blank checks, we can look to the future with the success of the past before us.  We do not look to the past for our success, but to the future, which has already been decided for us to succeed in.  When Yeshua tells us in Matthew 6:34  "So don't ever worry about tomorrow.  After all, tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.”, he is giving us, those who believe him our very special new years resolution, one that is guaranteed to be fulfilled by the love of God. How do we know that the evil of this world cannot overcome us in the coming year?  We know this because unlike the unbelievers, we have the all-powerful Yahweh before us as our shield and our God.  See what Yahweh tells us in Isaiah 45:7  “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am the LORD, that doeth all these things.”  God himself made both good and bad to exist, he made the light our Messiah and he made the darkness Satan.  Both were made for a reason and both exist as they are by the sheer will of Yahweh.  We are told why Yahweh intentionally created evil in the world Romans 9:17  “For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, For this very purpose did I raise thee up, that I might show in thee my power, and that my name might be published abroad in all the earth.”   And in Exodus 10:1-2 we see what Yahweh said himself  “And Yahweh said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I may show these my signs in the midst of them, and that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son's son, what things I have wrought upon Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that ye may know that I am Yahweh.”  So God tells us himself that the challenges we face are to give us the opportunity to see his power. 

Was this true for you during the past year?  Can you point to challenges in your life and see when God’s strength pulled you through successfully.  In the year ahead you can look forward to new challenges but if you have been forged on the anvil of God’s love then these challenges have already become mere trinkets of annoyances that will be cast aside as worthless jumble.  Through the knowledge of God’s love for us given to us by the Messiah are moved from the ranks of those who God uses as he did Pharaoh, to the companionship of those who can see the future that has been promised us. 

Know that God is in control of all things in this world both good and bad.  We can put aside the fairy tales of Satan that can steal us away from our God.  We can focus on the real meaning of what Yeshua says in John 3:3  “Yeshua replied to Nicodemus, ‘I can guarantee this truth: No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’"  Now many claim to be born again, but that is not what Yeshua truly said for to be born again is not the same as being born from above.  To be born from above means to receive the spirit of God in our hearts and in our minds.  Being born from above means to open ourselves up to the power of God and let it permeate our bodies and souls so that we can no longer step out of the circle of God’s will and experience the symptoms of this sin.

In the year ahead we can look forward to sharing the Messiah’s love that comes from God with our families and our neighbors.  We can know from the triumphs we had over last year’s challenges that we are God’s children and that no one can steal that from us, not even we ourselves.  The year to come will bring us new growth in wisdom, strength, and the love of God, which was forged on the anvil of his strength and tempered with the softness of his grace.

I look forward to the new year as a blessing from Yahweh and pray that each of you will join in the fellowship of God’s people to experience the joy of his love and forever cast off the darkness of this world.

Amen.