Good New Years Advice

Proverbs 3:1-8

It is hard to imagine that if I live to see June 22 of this year I will be saved and serving the Lord for 25 years. I can remember as a young Christian waking up and thinking “I hope I can stay saved today.” I understood the difficulty and demands of the Christian life and on many occasions felt as though I wouldn’t be able to hold out until the end. But now I realize that after almost 25 years God has truly been faithful to me!

It has been a delight to walk with the Lord over the years. On this journey I have stumbled many times, but yet God has been there to steady me and get my back on my feet, preventing me from falling into grave sin. There were many times where I didn’t know where he would lead, so I had to be determined to follow him by “Trusting him and leaning not to my own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5,6 Looking forward sometimes created some uncertainty, fear, and anxiety, but looking back on it all I have found that not only did God know what he was doing, his timing was also right as well.

I share this personal experience to encourage you at the beginning of this new year. If there was ever a time that we faced uncertainty it is now. Nothing has ever been stable in an unstable world, and we see that magnified more now than ever before. But yet God still orders and keeps the world. He has it in his hands and our times are in his hands also. We just need to trust him!

How do we do this?

First, we need to do as David said in Psalms 16:8, “I have set the LORD always before me: Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” We need to start by putting God first. (Verse 6) This is not reckless abandon, but faith in our God who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. We do this by “Taking up our cross and following him daily.” Mathew 16:24

Secondly, we do not need to try to understand infinite things with a finite understanding. (Verse 5) I recently have read a book titled 21 Lessons For The 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari. He is not a professing Christian, but is Jewish and an Historian. He has a pretty good concept of how the world through technology has become smaller and yet more difficult to manage in Politics, Religion, Ethics, Economy, Hunger, Terrorism, etc. These things are hard to figure out and if we look from a horizontal standpoint then not only will we be discouraged, but in many ways we can become hopeless and despair. We must look at these things vertically. We must try to see things from God’s point of view. And when we do then we know God is working all of these things together for good to those who love him and are called according to his purposes. (Romans 8:28)

Thirdly, by putting God first and leaning not to our own understanding, it will cause us to be Strong and healthy Christians! (Verse 8) The Bible is nourishment to the soul. “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” Matthew 4:4 This year we will all get a little older. The outward man dies a little everyday. But the inward man must be renewed and this renewal comes from a healthy daily dose of prayerful Bible reading.

So the lesson for us going into a new year is “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; And lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, And he shall direct thy paths…It shall be health to thy navel, And marrow to thy bones.”

Pastor Robby