New Year Old Habits

Posted by anointedplace on December 30, 2009 · 2 Comments 

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Soon we will be preparing for New Year’s eve parties or watch services at our local churches. Some of us have already made our declarations for the new year and our lives ahead. We have made vows on how we will change who we are. We have made a wish list to pray for during the watch service. We have better jobs, bigger homes, more financial independence, prosperity, health, better personal relationships and so much more listed for God to grant. Funny, my Lord God sounds like a genie? Some will toast to better days ahead and some will stumble into 2010 so drunk that they will not remember anything. Some will spend it with family and friends with memories of those that will not be here in the year to come. In the mist of all of this we will finally give God thanks for last year and pray that He will be with us in the next.

James 4
13Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. 17Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.

Funny this scripture from the bible never comes up during New Year’s Eve? We pray alot about God removing the hurdles in our live?

2 Corinthians 12:7
7And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.

The thing is that all the “things” we pray for and make commitments to change are usually bad habits. And by the summer we will be at it again. The problem is that we approach it the wrong way.

First let us approach the new year like this:

Luke 9:23-27

23Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. 25What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? 26If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. 27I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”

Then throughout the year let these verses remind us of our election in Christ:

Romans 6:3-10

3Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? 4Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 5For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: 6Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. 7For he that is dead is freed from sin. 8Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: 9Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. 10For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.

Romans 6:12-14

12Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.13Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. 14For sin shall not have dominion over you:

Where ever you are remember without Christ we are powerless. Go into the new year following Christ with your new focus on God’s will for your life. Don’t go into the new year with your focus on saving your life and increasing your physical comfort while neglecting what God wants.

God bless you & may the Holy Spirit lead you
Rev. W. R. Martin Jr.
visit me at: https://anointedplace.wordpress.com
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