Beginning a new year is a good time to give thanks to God for His faithfulness and blessings. It is also a time to look forward in anticipation to what God has in store. Each new year brings promise of a new day, a new day in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Scripture talks about "a new day of restoration." If 2014 was not the greatest year you have ever experienced, if it was a really tough year, let me encourage you that God is the God who can turn the worst of circumstances into blessing if we look to Him and allow Him to work in our lives.
Over and over in scripture, we see God's people facing tough challenges, but in the midst of tough challenges, we see a God who is “more than enough.” In Psalm 27:13, David said, “I would have fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." In Philippians 3:12-13, Paul says, “I press on toward the mark of the high calling in Christ Jesus. Forgetting those things that are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead."
It is so easy to look back in life and think about what could have been, but there is no help there. Real help comes when we begin to believe we will see God's goodness, no matter what circumstances we may currently face. Believe that God loves me and has a good plan for my life. Believe “Greater is He who is in me than he that is in the world." Believe that God is able to deliver me from all the powers of darkness and put me in a place where His blessings freely flow. If we will believe these truths and press into the things of God, we are well on our way to a great new year.
