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Introduction to A New Year
I may have written this at the beginning of 2015, but this is relevant for every new year. Because it’s truths are timeless, as truth always is. I offer you this following encouragement. Return here to read it as many times as you like, and may it give you a fresh perspective for every new year ahead.
As I thought about what to write, I wanted to talk about looking back on 2014. But somehow I couldn’t get the words out, because what I really wanted to talk about was this New Year. I am not one to make New Year’s resolutions. So don’t worry, I am not filling your heads with lofty plans of personal glory and sacrifice. But I wanted to say something very important.
The Backstory
The last sermon I heard before going home for two weeks on block leave was about New Year’s. And the Chaplain said something remarkable that I cannot forget. He said that instead of making New Year’s resolutions, we should bare our hearts before God and beg Him to show us weeds in our lives. Perhaps a persistent temptation A sin we’ve let fester. Or something that has become an idol because we don’t want to lose it. It could be any struggle.
But the most important thing we can do is not let it carry us into the new year. A new year is a time for new beginnings, a fresh start. So before the year ended he encouraged us to carry our problems to the cross instead and leave it behind as we moved forward into the New Year.
Though I really didn’t think about it for quite a while, I did take it to heart. Then as I sat at the airport last Sunday, reading a book while waiting for my delayed flight, I came across this piercing quote. John Wesley’s mother wrote it in a letter to him. She says:
“Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things–in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind–that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be.”
The Concept for the New Year
And that is when I knew what I could not carry with me into the New Year. One of the most prominent and shameful regrets of 2014 for me was that I had tolerated unobtrusively evil influences in the most justifiable form. Things that could be passed off as small, “gray areas”, neutral, or not “inherently wrong”. But they can and will morph into “bigger things”, lead to greater temptations, and ultimately distract from what is most important. I had let them creep into my life quietly, almost without protest, and I can see how my flesh has grown stronger over the will of my spirit.
That is a hard one to swallow…even in its most justifiable form. Sometimes it is hard to ask ourselves those probing questions. What things have we justified to ourselves that must be laid aside to make the race before us unhindered, and the room in our hearts all His?
A New Year. A fresh perspective. A compelling thought.
urther reading on the topic of faith, visit my page at https://www.thoughtspirations.com/faith/.
Click here for more articles on the spiritual significance of the New Year.
Writer’s note: I had not read this post from my old blog in quite some time. When I was migrating a selection of my former blog’s posts over to my new website, I paused to read it again. It is so easy to forget things like that with the passing of time, so I am glad I wrote it down. I found it just as deep and inspiring now as I did then, hence the preface to the original introduction at the beginning of the article.
