A Fresh New Start

As we enter the new year many will endeavor to make new resolutions. We often see the new year as an opportunity for a fresh start, another chance to keep promises to ourselves and to others. Perhaps (probably) we have resolved many times before to be better or to do better in some particular area of our lives and failed to

follow through on our commitment.

I am so grateful that our God gives us fresh new starts. He gives us another opportunity to: grow in Christ, grow in our prayer life, share the gospel with others, to lead our families in the truth, etc. If we sin against the Lord, He is always quick to forgive us when we confess and turn to Him. He gives us a second chance, and a third chance, and a 10,000th chance. Not only does He forgive us and cleanse us, but He restores us to Himself and continues to work mightily in us to make us like His Son. God goes far beyond pardoning our sins, He restores us and sets us back on a straight path…a path to do and be what is right in His sight. Even if we have failed the Lord greatly and often, even if we promised before to never commit that sin again, the Lord is ready to forgive us and move us forward in His holy plan. Peter failed the Lord miserably by denying Jesus three times the night He was arrested. Peter thought that his fellowship with the Lord and usefulness to God were over. He decided to go back to fishing, the life he had before coming to Christ. Jesus, though, was not finished with Peter and purposed to restore this broken man back to Himself. “Simon, do you love Me?” “Then feed My sheep.”

What a Savior and Friend we have in Jesus!

Don’t give up on the Lord! Don’t give up on His promises! Don’t give up simply because you have tried and failed before. Our God is able to help us. He is able to finish the work He has begun in us. Because of our failures, we may think that God cannot fulfill His glorious plan for our lives. He can! The Lord says in Joel 2:12-13, 25, “Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil. And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.” The Lord can restore all that we have lost and wasted and forfeited. He makes all things new!

God bless and have a great new year in the Lord!

Randy Currier