As this new year comes I do not want to put my goals and visions for myself and life on a pedestal because I do not know what tomorrow will bring let alone a whole year. The only thing I know is, I know who holds tomorrow and He has my best interest in mind, He has proven that to me my dying on the cross and the defeating death for all of us.
I used to put myself under a lot of pressure on this day. Writing all my goals and how the year was going to go. Lately I have been reading James 4 and at the end of the chapter it says
““Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”” James 4:12-15 For years I had been planning my whole year when in reality I don’t even know what tomorrow will be like.
Instead of writing a bunch of goals I will not achieve and be disappointed in myself I wrote prayers, knowing God is who holds tomorrow and who knows what 2022 will look like so He is the one I should turn too.
Some of my prayers were these:
• Lord please take good care of me and all those I love.
• Lord please help me to never feel scared because faith and fear cannot be in the same place.
• That He gives me boldness.
• I never go a day not reminded of his love for me.
• That each time I pick up a pen He guides me in what I shall right.
• Lord please never allow me to forget all you have done and sacrificed for me.
Last year my word was create.
This year my word is rejoice.
Romans 5 talks about life in a sense of what comes from hard suffering “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:3-5
I have seen this head on in my life the last couple of years. What God can make out of suffering for “he gives beauty for ashes”
The word rejoice, my word for the year is so I am reminded I can rejoice everyday this year no matter what the circumstance is because Jesus has already over come it and the victory has been won.
I pray none of you put your hope in this new year but in Christ, for He will never put you to shame.
